英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

aggression: aggression: [17] The violent associations of aggression have developed from the much milder notion of ‘approaching’ somebody. The Latin verb aggredī ‘attack’ was based on the prefix ad- ‘towards’ and gradī ‘walk’, a verb derived in its turn from the noun gradus ‘step’ (from which English gets, among many others, grade, gradual, and degree).
=> degree, grade, gradual
dizzy: dizzy: [OE] Dizzy originally signified ‘foolish, stupid’, a meaning which from the 13th century retreated into dialectal use and has only comparatively recently returned to the mainstream language in the milder form ‘scatterbrained’. The now central sense ‘giddy’ is recorded from the 14th century. The word comes from a West Germanic base *dus-, which also produced Dutch duizelen ‘be giddy’. Its formal and semantic similarity to doze and tizzy are obvious, but no actual etymological link between the three seems ever to have been established.
gag: gag: [15] Middle English gaggen meant ‘strangle, suffocate’, so the word started out with strong connotations that seem to have become submerged in local dialects as it came to be used more commonly in the milder sense ‘obstruct someone’s mouth’. In the 20th century, however, they have re-emerged in the intransitive sense ‘choke’. It is not clear how the 19th-century noun sense ‘joke’ is connected, if at all. As for the word’s source, it is generally said to have originated as an imitation of someone retching or choking.
nostalgia: nostalgia: [18] Etymologically, nostalgia is pain connected with returning home – in other words, homesickness. It is a modern coinage, based ultimately on Greek nostos ‘homecoming’ and algos ‘pain, grief’ (as in analgesic [19] and neuralgia (see NEURAL)). At first it was used as the name of what was regarded virtually as a form of mental illness (the earliest known record of it is in the journal kept by the botanist and explorer Joseph Banks on Captain Cook’s round-the-world voyage, in which he noted (1770) that most of the ship’s company were ‘now pretty far gone with the longing for home which the Physicians have gone so far as to esteem a disease under the name of Nostalgia’).

The milder present-day connotations of wistful longing for a past time emerged in the early 20th century.
quell: quell: [OE] Quell and kill are probably closely related – indeed, in Old and Middle English quell was used for ‘kill’ (‘birds and small beasts with his bow he quells’, William of Palerne 1350). Quell goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *kwaljan (source also of German quälen ‘torture’), which may have had a variant *kuljan, that could have produced English kill. The milder modern sense of quell developed in the 14th century.
shamble: shamble: [17] Shamble ‘slouch’ and the noun shambles [15] are probably related. The latter originally meant ‘meat market’. It arose out of the plural of the now obsolete shamble ‘meat stall, meat table’, which represented a semantic specialization of Old English sceamul ‘stool, table’. This was descended from prehistoric Germanic *skamul (source also of German schemel ‘stool’), which in turn was borrowed from Latin scamellum, a diminutive form of scamnum ‘bench’.

In the 16th century, the signification of shambles moved on to ‘slaughterhouse’, and hence metaphorically to any ‘scene of bloodshed and slaughter’, but the milder modern sense ‘scene of disorder or ruin’ did not emerge until as recently as the early 20th century. The verb shamble is thought to come from the now obsolete expression shamble legs ‘ungainly legs’, an allusion to the rickety legs of the stalls or tables in meat markets.
fault (n.): late 13c., faute, "deficiency," from Old French faute, earlier falte, "opening, gap; failure, flaw, blemish; lack, deficiency" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *fallita "a shortcoming, falling," from Latin falsus "deceptive, feigned, spurious," past participle of fallere "deceive, disappoint" (see fail (v.)).

The -l- was restored 16c., probably in imitation of Latin, but the letter was silent until 18c. Sense of "physical defect" is from early 14c.; that of "moral culpability" (milder than sin or vice, but more serious than an error) is first recorded late 14c. Geological sense is from 1796. The use in tennis (c. 1600) is closer to the etymological sense.
pick (v.): early 13c., picken "to peck;" c. 1300, piken "to work with a pick," probably representing a fusion of Old English *pician "to prick," (implied by picung "a piercing, pricking," an 8c. gloss on Latin stigmata) with Old Norse pikka "to prick, peck," both from a Germanic root (source also of Middle Dutch picken, German picken "to pick, peck"), perhaps imitative. Influence from Middle French piquer "to prick, sting" (see pike (n.2)) also is possible, but that French word generally is not considered a source of the English word. Related: Picked; picking.

Meaning "to eat with small bites" is from 1580s. The meaning "to choose, select, pick out" emerged late 14c., from earlier meaning "to pluck with the fingers" (early 14c.). Sense of "to rob, plunder" (c. 1300) weakened to a milder sense of "steal petty things" by late 14c. Of forcing locks with a pointed tool, by 1540s. Meaning "to pluck (a banjo)" is recorded from 1860. To pick a quarrel, etc. is from mid-15c.; to pick at "find fault with" is from 1670s. Pick on "single out for adverse attention" is from late 14c.; pick off "shoot one by one" is recorded from 1810; baseball sense of "to put out a runner on base" is from 1939. Also see pick up. To pick and choose "select carefully" is from 1660s (choose and pick is attested from c. 1400).
quell (v.): Old English cwellan "to kill, murder, execute," from Proto-Germanic *kwaljanan (cognates: Old English cwelan "to die," cwalu "violent death;" Old Saxon quellian "to torture, kill;" Old Norse kvelja "to torment;" Middle Dutch quelen "to vex, tease, torment;" Old High German quellan "to suffer pain," German quälen "to torment, torture"), from PIE root *gwele- (1) "to throw, reach," with extended sense of "to pierce" (cognates: Armenian kelem "I torture;" Old Church Slavonic zali "pain;" Lithuanian galas "end," gela "agony," gelti "to sting;" see ballistics). Milder sense of "suppress, extinguish" developed by c. 1300. Related: Quelled; quelling.
scarlatina (n.): 1803, from Modern Latin scarlatina (Sydenham, 1676), from Italian scarlattina (Lancelotti, 1527), fem. of scarlattino (adj.), diminutive of scarlatto "scarlet" (see scarlet). It is a synonym for scarlet fever, not a milder form of it. Related: Scarlattinal.