英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

pidgin [pidgin 词源字典]: pidgin: [19] A pidgin is a reduced form of language used for communication between speech communities which do not share the same native language. A characteristic of such languages is that words in the base language from which the pidgin evolved become altered. And this is how the word pidgin itself arose. It comes from pidgin English, an alteration of business English in the commercial pidgin used in Far Eastern ports in the mid-19th century.
=> business[pidgin etymology, pidgin origin, 英语词源]
coca (n.): South American plant, 1570s, from Spanish coca, from Quechua cuca, which is perhaps ultimately from Aymara, a native language of Bolivia.
gaucho (n.): "a Spanish-descended native of the pampas," 1824, guacho, from Spanish gaucho, probably from a native South American language. Compare Araucanian (native language spoken in part of Chile) cauchu "wanderer." Noted for their independence and skill in horsemanship and with the lasso.
Guatemala: Central American country, from words in a native language, variously identified as Quauhtemellan "land of the eagle" or Uhatzmalha "mountain where water gushes." Related: Guatemalan.
kangaroo (n.): 1770, used by Capt. Cook and botanist Joseph Banks, supposedly an aborigine word from northeast Queensland, Australia, usually said to be unknown now in any native language. However, according to Australian linguist R.M.W. Dixon ("The Languages of Australia," Cambridge, 1980), the word probably is from Guugu Yimidhirr (Endeavour River-area Aborigine language) /gaNurru/ "large black kangaroo."
In 1898 the pioneer ethnologist W.E. Roth wrote a letter to the Australasian pointing out that gang-oo-roo did mean 'kangaroo' in Guugu Yimidhirr, but this newspaper correspondence went unnoticed by lexicographers. Finally the observations of Cook and Roth were confirmed when in 1972 the anthropologist John Haviland began intensive study of Guugu Yimidhirr and again recorded /gaNurru/. [Dixon]
Kangaroo court is American English, first recorded 1850 in a Southwestern context (also mustang court), from notion of proceeding by leaps.
mother (n.1): Old English modor "female parent," from Proto-Germanic *mothær (cognates: Old Saxon modar, Old Frisian moder, Old Norse moðir, Danish moder, Dutch moeder, Old High German muoter, German Mutter), from PIE *mater- "mother" (cognates: Latin mater, Old Irish mathir, Lithuanian mote, Sanskrit matar-, Greek meter, Old Church Slavonic mati), "[b]ased ultimately on the baby-talk form *mā- (2); with the kinship term suffix *-ter-" [Watkins]. Spelling with -th- dates from early 16c., though that pronunciation is probably older (see father (n.)).

Mother nature first attested c. 1600; mother earth is from 1580s. Mother tongue "one's native language" first attested late 14c. Mother of all ________ 1991, is Gulf War slang, from Saddam Hussein's use in reference to the coming battle; it is an Arabic idiom (as well as an English one), for instance Ayesha, second wife of Muhammad, is known as Mother of Believers. Mother Carey's chickens is late 18c. sailors' nickname for storm petrels, or for snowflakes. Mother lode attested by c. 1882, from mining [1849].
pulque (n.): 1690s, from American Spanish pulque, of unknown origin, said to be a word from Araucanian (native language spoken in part of Chile), or else from some language of Mexico.
quagga (n.): zebra-like South African animal, 1785, from Afrikaans (1710), from the name for the beast in a native language, perhaps Hottentot quacha, probably of imitative origin. In modern Xhosa, the form is iqwara, with a clicking -q-. What was likely the last one died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883.
sasquatch (n.): 1929, from Halkomelem (Salishan), a native language of the Pacific Northwest, sæsq'ec, one of a race of huge, hairy man-monsters supposed to inhabit the Pacific northwest woods in American Indian lore and also known as bigfoot.
Tupi (n.): a native language group of South America, also Tupian.
yucca (n.): Central and South American name for the cassava plant, 1550s, from Spanish yuca, juca (late 15c.), probably from Taino, native language of Haiti.