badgeryoudaoicibaDictYouDict[badger 词源字典]
badger: [16] The Old English term for a ‘badger’ was brock, a word of Celtic origin, and badger does not begin to appear, somewhat mysteriously, until the early 16th century. The name has never been satisfactorily explained, but perhaps the least implausible explanation is from the word badge, in reference to the white stripes on the animal’s forehead, as if it were wearing a badge (a term originally applied to a distinctive device worn by a knight for purposes of recognition); the early spelling bageard suggests that it may have been formed with the suffix -ard, as in dullard and sluggard. (Badge itself is of even more obscure origin; it first turns up in Middle English, in the mid 14th century.) Other early terms for the badger were bauson (14th– 18th centuries), from Old French bausen, and grey (15th–17th centuries).
[badger etymology, badger origin, 英语词源]
berserk (adj.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1844, from berserk (n.) "Norse warrior," by 1835, an alternative form of berserker (1822), a word which was introduced by Sir Walter Scott, from Old Norse berserkr (n.) "raging warrior of superhuman strength;" probably from *ber- "bear" + serkr "shirt," thus literally "a warrior clothed in bearskin." Thus not from Old Norse berr "bare, naked."
Thorkelin, in the essay on the Berserkir, appended to his edition of the Krisini Saga, tells that an old name of the Berserk frenzy was hamremmi, i.e., strength acquired from another strange body, because it was anciently believed that the persons who were liable to this frenzy were mysteriously endowed, during its accesses, with a strange body of unearthly strength. If, however, the Berserk was called on by his own name, he lost his mysterious form, and his ordinary strength alone remained. ["Notes and Queries," Dec. 28, 1850]
The adjectival use probably is from such phrases as berserk frenzy, or as a title (Arngrim the Berserk).
mysterious (adj.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1610s, "full of mystery," from Latin mysterium (see mystery (n.1)) + -ous. Related: Mysteriously; mysteriousness. Earlier in same sense was mysterial (early 15c.), from Late Latin mysterialis.