quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- bizarre
- bizarre: [17] Bizarre can probably be traced back to Italian bizzarro, of unknown origin, which meant ‘angry’. It passed into Spanish as bizarro, meaning ‘brave’, and then found its way into French, where its meaning gradually mutated from ‘brave’ to ‘odd’ – which is where English got it from. It used to be thought that the French word might have come from Basque bizarra ‘beard’ (the reasoning being that a man with a beard must be a brave, dashing fellow), which would have made bizarre almost unique as a word of Basque origin in English (the only genuine one in everyday use now is the acronymic name ETA, standing for Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna ‘Basque Homeland and Liberty’), but this is now not thought likely.
- colonel
- colonel: [17] Historically, a colonel was so called because he commanded the company at the head of a regiment, known in Italian as the compagna colonnella, literally the ‘little-column company’; hence the commander himself took the title colonnella. The word colonnella is a diminutive form of colonna, which is descended from Latin columna ‘pillar’ (source of English column).
It appears first to have entered English via French in the form coronel, in which the first l had mutated to r. Spellings with this r occur in English from the 17th and 18th centuries, and it is the source of the word’s modern pronunciation. Colonel represents a return to the original Italian spelling.
=> column - mutate (v.)
- "to change state or condition," 1818, back-formation from mutation. In genetic sense, 1913, from Latin mutatus, past participle of mutare "to change" (see mutable). Related: Mutated; mutating.
- permutate (v.)
- 1898 in modern use, "change the order of," from Latin permutatus, past participle of permutare (see permutation). "Probably regarded by those who use it as a back-formation from permutation" [OED]. Related: Permutated; permutating.