quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- buccaneer



[buccaneer 词源字典] - buccaneer: [17] A buccaneer was originally ‘someone who dried meat on a wooden frame over a fire’. The word comes ultimately from mukem, the term for such a frame in the Tupi language of the Caribbean islands, which in the mouths of early French settlers became boucan (the Haitian term was barbacoa, from which we get barbecue). French boucanier thus came to be applied in the 17th century to a woodsman in the West Indies who prepared his food in such a way; such men were fairly lawless, and took to piratical ways, bringing their name with them in the late 17th century.
[buccaneer etymology, buccaneer origin, 英语词源] - bloody (adj.)




- Old Engish blodig, adjective from blod (see blood). Common Germanic, compare Old Frisian blodich, Old Saxon blôdag, Dutch bloedig, Old High German bluotag, German blutig.
It has been a British intensive swear word since at least 1676. Weekley relates it to the purely intensive use of the cognate Dutch bloed, German Blut. But perhaps it ultimately is connected with bloods in the slang sense of "rowdy young aristocrats" (see blood (n.)) via expressions such as bloody drunk "as drunk as a blood."
Partridge reports that it was "respectable" before c. 1750, and it was used by Fielding and Swift, but heavily tabooed c. 1750-c. 1920, perhaps from imagined association with menstruation; Johnson calls it "very vulgar," and OED writes of it, "now constantly in the mouths of the lowest classes, but by respectable people considered 'a horrid word', on par with obscene or profane language."
The onset of the taboo against bloody coincides with the increase in linguistic prudery that presaged the Victorian Era but it is hard to say what the precise cause was in the case of this specific word. Attempts have been made to explain the term's extraordinary shock power by invoking etymology. Theories that derive it from such oaths as "By our Lady" or "God's blood" seem farfetched, however. More likely, the taboo stemmed from the fear that many people have of blood and, in the minds of some, from an association with menstrual bleeding. Whatever, the term was debarred from polite society during the whole of the nineteenth century. [Rawson]
Shaw shocked theatergoers when he put it in the mouth of Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion" (1914), and for a time the word was known euphemistically as "the Shavian adjective." It was avoided in print as late as 1936. Bloody Sunday, Jan. 30, 1972, when 13 civilians were killed by British troops at protest in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. - brachiopod (n.)




- type of bivalve mollusk, 1836, Modern Latin, from Greek brakhion "arm" (see brachio-) + pous "foot," from PIE root *ped- (1) "a foot" (see foot (n.)). They have long spiral "arms" on either side of their mouths.
- creek (n.)




- mid-15c., creke "narrow inlet in a coastline," altered from kryk (early 13c.; in place names from 12c.), probably from Old Norse kriki "corner, nook," perhaps influenced by Anglo-French crique, itself from a Scandinavian source via Norman. Perhaps ultimately related to crook and with an original notion of "full of bends and turns" (compare dialectal Swedish krik "corner, bend; creek, cove").
Extended to "inlet or short arm of a river" by 1570s, which probably led to use for "small stream, brook" in American English (1620s). Also used there and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand for "branch of a main river," possibly from explorers moving up main rivers and seeing and noting mouths of tributaries without knowing they often were extensive rivers of their own. Slang phrase up the creek "in trouble," often especially "pregnant," first recorded 1941, perhaps originally armed forces slang for "lost while on patrol." - delta (n.)




- c. 1200, Greek letter shaped like a triangle, equivalent to our "D," the name from Phoenician daleth "tent door." Herodotus used it of the mouth of the Nile, and it was so used in English from 1550s; applied to other river mouths from 1790.
- giddy-up (interj.)




- command to a horse to go, 1909, probably an extended form of earlier giddap (1867), itself probably from get up. Compare gee.
The terms used to start horses in harness and to urge them to a better appreciation of the value of time comprise vulgar corruptions of ordinary speech and peculiar inarticulate sounds. Throughout England and the United States drivers start their horses by picking up the reins, drawing them gently against the animals' mouths, and exclaiming go 'long and get up; the latter appears in the forms get ap (a as in hat), giddap, and gee-hup or gee-up. [H. Carrington Bolton, "Talking to Domestic Animals," in "The American Anthropologist," March 1897]
- lamprey (n.)




- c. 1300 (c. 1200 as a surname?), from Old French lamproie, from Medieval Latin lampreda, from Late Latin lampetra "lamprey," of uncertain origin, usually explained as literally "lick-rock," from Latin lambere "to lick" (see lap (v.1)) + petra "rock" (see petrous). The animals attach themselves to things with their sucker-like mouths.
- prosopopeia (n.)




- also prosopopoeia, 1560s, from Latin prosopopoeia, from Greek prosopopoiia "the putting of speeches into the mouths of others," from prosopon "person, face" (literally "that which is toward the eyes," from pros "to" + ops "eye, face;" see eye (n.)) + poiein "make" (see poet). Generally, a rhetorical figure in which an imaginary or absent person is made to speak or act.
- polystome




- "Having several mouths or mouthlike structures; polystomatous; specifically designating or relating to a monogenean trematode of the family Polystomatidae, characterized by several suckers", Mid 19th cent. From scientific Latin Polystoma from ancient Greek πολύστομος many-mouthed from πολυ- + -στόμα mouth; compare -stome. Compare French polystome.