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altar [altar 词源字典]: altar: [OE] The etymological notion underlying the word altar is that of sacrificial burning. Latin altar, which was borrowed directly into Old English, was a derivative of the plural noun altāria, ‘burnt offerings’, which probably came from the verb adolēre ‘burn up’. Adolēre in turn appears to be a derivative of olēre ‘smell’ (the connection being the smell made by combustion), which is related to English odour, olfactory, and redolent. (The traditional view that altar derives from Latin altus ‘high’ is no longer generally accepted, although no doubt it played a part, by association, in its development.) In Middle English, the Old French form auter replaced altar, but in the 16th century the Latin form re-established itself.
=> odour, olfactory, redolent[altar etymology, altar origin, 英语词源]
arbour: arbour: [14] Despite its formal resemblance to, and semantic connections with, Latin arbor ‘tree’, arbour is not etymologically related to it. In fact, its nearest English relative is herb. When it first came into English it was erber, which meant ‘lawn’ or ‘herb/flower garden’. This was borrowed, via Anglo-Norman, from Old French erbier, a derivative of erbe ‘herb’.

This in turn goes back to Latin herba ‘grass, herb’ (in the 16th century a spelling with initial h was common in England). Gradually, it seems that the sense ‘grassy plot’ evolved to ‘separate, secluded nook in a garden’; at first, the characteristic feature of such shady retreats was their patch of grass, but their seclusion was achieved by surrounding trees or bushes, and eventually the criterion for an arbour shifted to ‘being shaded by trees’.

Training on a trellis soon followed, and the modern arbour as ‘bower’ was born. The shift from grass and herbaceous plants to trees no doubt prompted the alteration in spelling from erber to arbour, after Latin arbor; this happened in the 15th and 16th centuries.
=> herb
bleak: bleak: [16] Bleak originally meant ‘pale’, and comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *bhleg-, possible source of black and a variant of *phleg-, which produced Greek phlégein ‘burn’ and Latin flagrāre ‘burn’ (whence English conflagration and flagrant; flame, fulminate, and refulgent are also closely related).

From *bhlegcame the prehistoric Germanic adjective *blaikos ‘white’, from which Old English got blāc ‘pale’ (the sense relationship, as with the possibly related blaze, is between ‘burning’, ‘shining brightly’, ‘white’, and ‘pale’). This survived until the 15th century in southern English dialects as bloke, and until the 16th century in the North as blake.

Its disappearance was no doubt hastened by its resemblance to black, both formally and semantically, since both ‘pale’ and ‘dark’ carry implications of colourlessness. Blake did however persist in Northern dialects until modern times in the sense ‘yellow’. Meanwhile, around the middle of the 16th century bleak had begun to put in an appearance, borrowed from a close relative of bloke/blake, Old Norse bleikr ‘shining, white’.

The modern sense ‘bare’ is recorded from very early on. A derivative of the Germanic base *blaikwas the verb *blaikjōn, source of Old English blǣcan ‘whiten’, the ancestor of modern English bleach (which may be related to blight). And a nasalized version of the stem may have produced blink [14].
=> bleach, blight, blink, conflagration, flagrant, flame, fulminate
bodkin: bodkin: [14] A bodkin was originally a small dagger, and only in the 18th century did it develop the perhaps more familiar sense ‘long blunt needle’. Initially it was a three-syllable word, spelled boidekyn, and its origins are mysterious. Most speculation has centred on Celtic as a source. Welsh bidog ‘dagger’ being cited (the -kin is no doubt a diminutive suffix).
bump: bump: [16] The earliest recorded sense of bump is ‘swelling, lump’, but the evidence suggests that the primary meaning is ‘knock’, and that this led on to ‘swelling’ as the result of being hit. It is not clear where the word came from, although it may be of Scandinavian origin; no doubt ultimately it imitates the sound of somebody being hit. The verbal sense ‘swell’, now obsolete, is probably responsible for bumper, which originally meant ‘full glass or cup’, and in the 19th century was extended to anything large or abundant (as in ‘bumper crop’).
celandine: celandine: [12] Etymologically the celandine, a buttercup-like spring flower, is the ‘swallow’s’ flower. Its name comes, via Old French, from Greek khelidonion, which was based on khelidon ‘swallow’. The original reference was no doubt to the appearance of the flowers around the time when the swallows began to arrive in Europe from Africa. Its juice was used in former times as a remedy for poor eyesight, and, no doubt in an over-interpretation of the name, it was said that swallows used the juice to boost the sight of their young.
chicken: chicken: [OE] Chicken is a widespread Germanic word (Dutch has kuiken, for instance, and Danish kylling), whose ancestor has been reconstructed as *kiukīnam. This was formed, with a diminutive suffix, on a base *keuk-, which some have claimed is a variant of a base which lies behind cock; if that is so, a chicken would amount etymologically to a ‘little cock’ (and historically the term has been applied to young fowl, although nowadays it tends to be the general word, regardless of age). Chick is a 14thcentury abbreviation.

The modern adjectival sense ‘scared’ is a 20th-century revival of a 17thand 18th-century noun sense ‘coward’, based no doubt on chicken-hearted.
=> cock
clutch: clutch: Clutch ‘seize’ [14] and clutch of eggs [18] are separate words, although they may ultimately be related. The verb arose in Middle English as a variant of the now obsolete clitch, which came from Old English clyccan ‘bend, clench’. The modern sense of the noun, ‘device for engaging a motor vehicle’s gears’, which was introduced at the end of the 19th century, developed from a more general early 19thcentury meaning ‘coupling for bringing working parts together’, based no doubt on the notion of ‘seizing’ and ‘grasping’. Clutch of eggs is a variant of the now obsolete dialectal form cletch [17].

This was a derivative of the Middle English verb clecken ‘give birth’, which was borrowed from Old Norse klekja (probably a distant relative of clutch ‘seize’).
coil: coil: [16] Ultimately, coil, cull, and collect are the same word. All come from Latin colligere ‘gather together’. Its past participial stem produced collect, but the infinitive form passed into Old French as coillir, culler, etc, and thence into English. In the case of coil, its original general sense ‘gather, collect’ (of which there is no trace in English) was specialized, no doubt originally in nautical use, to the gathering up of ropes into tidy shapes (concentric rings) for stowage.
=> collect, cull
compound: compound: There are two distinct words compound in English. The one meaning ‘combine’ [14] comes ultimately from Latin compōnere ‘put together’. Old French took two verbs from this: the perfect stem composproduced composer (whence English compose) while the infinitive became compondre, source of English compound. Its original Middle English form was compoune; the final d came from the adjectival use of the past participle compouned. Compound ‘enclosure’ [17] is of Eastern origin: it comes from Malay kampong ‘group of buildings, village’, and was borrowed via Portuguese campon or Dutch campoeng.

The English form was no doubt remodelled on the basis of compound ‘combine’.
=> compose, composite, position
crank: crank: [OE] There appears to be a link between the words crank, cringe, and crinkle. They share the meaning element ‘bending’ or ‘curling up’ (which later developed metaphorically into ‘becoming weak or sick’, as in the related German krank ‘ill’), and probably all came from a prehistoric Germanic base *krank-. In Old English the word crank appeared only in the compound crancstoef, the name for a type of implement used by weavers; it is not recorded in isolation until the mid-15th century, when it appears in a Latin-English dictionary as a translation of Latin haustrum ‘winch’.

The adjective cranky [18] is no doubt related, but quite how closely is not clear. It may derive from an obsolete thieves’ slang term crank meaning ‘person feigning sickness to gain money’, which may have connections with German krank. Modern English crank ‘cranky person’ is a backformation from the adjective, coined in American English in the 19th century.
=> cringe, crinkle
cricket: cricket: English has two completely unrelated words cricket. The name of the small grasshopper-like insect [14] comes from Old French criquet, a derivative of the verb criquer ‘click, creak’, which no doubt originated as an imitation of the sound itself. The origins of the name of the game cricket [16] have never been satisfactorily explained. One explanation often advanced is that it comes from Old French criquet ‘stick’, or its possible source, Flemish krick, although it is not clear whether the original reference may have been to the stick at which the ball was aimed (the forerunner of the modern stumps) or to the stick, or bat, used to hit the ball.

Another possible candidate is Flemish krickstoel, a long low stool with a shape reminiscent of the early types of wicket.
crow: crow: [OE] The verb crow began in prehistoric West Germanic as an imitation of the harsh call of the cockerel. Its relatives still survive in other Germanic languages, including German krähen and Dutch kraaien. Early examples of birds other than cockerels being described as ‘crowing’ are comparatively rare, but nevertheless there seems no doubt that the verb formed the basis of the name given to birds of the genus Corvus [OE]. The crowbar [19] was so named from the resemblance of its splayed end to a crow’s foot.
curlew: curlew: [14] The name of the curlew was no doubt originally inspired by its haunting flutelike call, but it has been speculated that other forces have been at work too. The word was borrowed from Old French courlieu, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Old French courliu ‘messenger’ (a compound formed from courre ‘run’ and lieu ‘place’, from Latin locus), and it seems quite possible that the latter may have influenced the formation of the former.
dale: dale: [OE] Both dale and dell [OE] come ultimately from the Germanic base *dal- (which also produced German tal, ultimate source of English dollar). Dale goes back to the Germanic derivative *dalam, *dalaz, dell to the derivative *daljō. Cognate forms such as Old Norse dalr ‘bow’ and, outside Germanic, Greek thólos show that the underlying meaning of the word family is ‘bend, curve’. Those members which mean ‘valley’ (including Gothic dals, which also signified ‘ditch’) were no doubt named from their rounded, hollowed-out shape.
=> dell, dollar
dash: dash: [13] Dash is probably of Scandinavian origin – Danish daske ‘beat’ has been compared – but whether it was a borrowing or a home- grown word, it was no doubt formed in imitation of rapid impulsive violent movement. Its original sense in English was ‘hit, smash’ (now rather eclipsed, put preserved in such phrases as ‘dash someone’s hopes’). ‘Move quickly and violently’ followed in the 14th century, and the noun sense ‘stroke of a pen’ in the 16th century (this probably gave rise to the use of the word as a euphemism for damned, from the replacement of that word in print with a dash).
edify: edify: [14] As its close relative edifice [14] suggests, edify has to do literally with ‘building’. And in fact its underlying etymological sense is ‘building a hearth’. That was the original sense of Latin aedis. Gradually, though, it was extended, in a familiar metaphorical transition, from ‘hearth’ to ‘home’ and ‘dwelling’. Addition of a verbal element related to facere ‘make’ produced aedificāre ‘build a house’, or simply ‘build’.

Its figurative application to ‘instruction’ or ‘enlightenment’ took place in Latin, and has no doubt been reinforced in English (which acquired the word from Old French edifier) by its accidental similarity to educate.
errand: errand: [OE] Despite the passing similarity, errand has no etymological connection with err and error. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *ǣrundjam, which meant ‘message’ – a sense which in fact survived in English until as recently as the 18th century (Miles Coverdale, for example, in his 1535 translation of 1 Samuel 11:5 wrote ‘So they told him the errand of the men of Jabesh’ – where the Authorized Version has ‘tidings’).

The main modern meaning, ‘task one goes to perform’, developed in the 13th century (in American English it has latterly gained specific connotations of ‘shopping’). The source of the Germanic word is not known, but it is no doubt related to Swedish ärende and Danish ærinde ‘errand, message, business’.
fizzle: fizzle: [16] Originally, fizzle meant ‘fart silently or unobtrusively’: ‘And then in court they poisoned one another with their fizzles’, Benjamin Walsh’s translation of Aristophanes’ Knights 1837. Then in the mid-19th century it started to be used for a ‘weak spluttering hissing sound’, and hence figuratively ‘end feebly’. In the earlier sense, fizzle was probably a derivative of the now obsolete English verb fist ‘fart’ (source of feisty), which came ultimately from Indo-European *pezd- (no doubt imitative of the sound of breaking wind).

The later sense is close enough semantically to suggest that it is probably a metaphorical extension of the earlier, but it could also be a new formation, based on fizz [17] (which was also of onomatopoeic origin).
=> feisty
flat: flat: [14] The Old English word for ‘flat’ was efen ‘even’, and flat was not acquired until Middle English times, from Old Norse flatr. This came from a prehistoric Germanic *flataz, source also of German platt ‘flat’. And *flataz probably goes back to an Indo-European *pelə -, *plā-, denoting ‘spread out flat’, from which came Sanskrit prthūs ‘broad’, Greek platūs ‘broad’ (source of English place, plaice, plane [the tree], and platypus), Latin plānus ‘flat’ (whence English plane and plain ‘unadorned’), and also English place, plaice, plant, and flan. Flat ‘single-storey dwelling’ [19] is ultimately the same word, but it has a more circuitous history.

It is an alteration (inspired no doubt by the adjective flat) of a now obsolete Scottish word flet ‘interior of a house’, which came from a prehistoric Germanic *flatjam ‘flat surface, floor’, a derivative of the same source (*flataz) as produced the adjective.
=> flan, flatter, floor, place, plaice, plane, platypus
Frisbee: Frisbee: [20] The name of this spinning plastic disc had its origin in a catching game played in Bridgeport, Connecticut in the 1950s. The participants were no doubt not the first to notice that an aerodynamically volatile flat disc produces more interesting and challenging results than a spherical object, but it was their particular choice of missiles that had farreaching terminological results: they used pie tins from the local Frisbie bakery. The idea for turning the dish into a marketable plastic product belonged to Fred Morrison, and he registered Frisbee (doubtless more commercially grabby than Frisbie) as a trademark in 1959.
garotte: garotte: [17] Garotte is widely used simply for ‘strangle’, but its strict application is to a former Spanish method of capital punishment by strangulation or breaking the neck, in which a metal collar was screwed increasingly tight. It got its name from Spanish garrote, which originally meant ‘cudgel’: in earlier, less sophisticated or more impromptu versions of the execution, a cudgel or stick was inserted into a band around the neck and twisted round and round so as to tighten the band. The immediate source of garrote was no doubt Old French garrot, from an earlier guaroc ‘club, stick, rod for turning’, whose form suggests a Celtic origin.
gloss: gloss: English has two words gloss. The one meaning ‘shining surface’ [16] is of unknown origin, although no doubt it belongs ultimately to the general nexus of words beginning gl- which mean broadly ‘bright, shining’. Forms such as Icelandic glossi ‘spark’ and Swedish dialect glossa ‘glow’ suggest a Scandinavian origin. Gloss ‘explanation, definition’ [16] goes back to Greek glossa ‘tongue’, source also of English epiglottis [17].

This developed the secondary sense ‘language’ (as English tongue itself has done), and was borrowed by Latin as glōssa meaning ‘foreign word needing an explanation’, and eventually the ‘explanation’ itself. It passed into English via medieval Latin glōsa and Old French glose as gloze in the 14th century, and was reformulated as gloss on the basis of classical Latin glōssa in the 16th century. Glossary [14] comes from the Latin derivative glossārium.
=> epiglottis, glossary
graphic: graphic: [17] The profoundest influence that Greek gráphein ‘write’ has had on English has no doubt been through its combining form -graphos, which has provided us with a whole host of words, both original Greek formations and new English ones, from autograph to telegraph. But descendants in their own right include graphic (which came via Latin graphicus from the Greek derivative graphikós), graphite [18] (originally coined in German as graphit, from its being used in writing implements), and graph [19] (short for graphic formular, a term used in chemistry for a diagram representing in lines the relationship between elements).

Greek gráphein itself originally meant ‘scratch’ (it is etymologically related to English carve); it was applied to early methods of writing, by scratching on clay tablets with a stylus, and kept its job when writing technology moved on.
=> carve, graft, graph, graphite
henchman: henchman: [14] Early spellings such as hengestman and henxstman suggest that this word is a compound of Old English hengest ‘stallion’ and man ‘man’. There are chronological difficulties, for hengest seems to have gone out of general use in the 13th century, and henchman is not recorded until the mid-14th century, but it seems highly likely nevertheless that the compound must originally have meant ‘horse servant, groom’.

The word hengest would no doubt have remained alive in popular consciousness as the name of the Jutish chieftain Hengist who conquered Kent in the 5th century with his brother Horsa; it is related to modern German hengst ‘stallion’, and goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European kənku-, which denoted ‘jump’. Henchman remained in use for ‘squire’ or ‘page’ until the 17th century, but then seems to have drifted out of use, and it was Sir Walter Scott who revived it in the early 19th century, in the sense ‘trusty right-hand man’.
knapsack: knapsack: [17] The -sack of knapsack is no doubt essentially the same word as English sack, but the knap- presents slightly more of a problem. The term was borrowed from Low German knappsack, and so probably knapprepresents Low German knappen ‘eat’ – the bag having originally been named because it carried a traveller’s supply of food.
lull: lull: [14] There are several words similar to lull in various Germanic languages, including Swedish lulla ‘lull’ and Dutch lullen ‘prattle’, but it is not clear to what extent they are interconnected. But either individually or collectively they all no doubt go back ultimately to a repitition of the syllable lu or la, used in singing a baby to sleep. Lullaby was coined from lull in the 16th century, perhaps using the final syllable of goodbye.
marigold: marigold: [14] The Old English term for this yellow-to-orange-flowered plant was golde, which was presumably derived from gold, in allusion to the colour. In the Middle Ages the name Mary (no doubt a reference to the Virgin Mary) was added to it. Another English word based ultimately on Mary is marionette [17], which was borrowed from a French word derived from the diminutive form Marion.
moor: moor: Counting the capitalized form, English has three separate words moor. The oldest, ‘open land’ [OE], comes from a prehistoric Germanic *mōraz or *mōram, whose other modern descendants, such as German moor, mean ‘swamp’, suggest the possibility of some connection with English mere ‘lake’ (see MARINE). Moor ‘tie up a boat’ [15] was probably borrowed from a Middle Low German mōren, a relative of Dutch meren ‘moor’.

And Moor ‘inhabitant of North Africa’ [14] comes ultimately from Greek Mauros, a word no doubt of North African origin from which the name of the modern state Mauritania is derived. English relatives include morello [17], the name of a dark-skinned cherry which comes via Italian from Latin morellus or maurellus, a derivative of Maurus ‘Moor’; and morris dance.
=> marine, mere; morello, morris dance
moss: moss: [OE] The prehistoric Germanic ancestor of moss was *musam. This had two distinct meanings: ‘swamp’ and ‘moss’. It is not altogether clear which was primary, but it seems more probable than not that ‘moss’ (a plant which frequents damp places) was derived from ‘swamp’. The only meaning recorded for its Old English descendant mos was ‘swamp’ (which survives in place-names), but no doubt ‘moss’ (not evidenced before the 14th century) was current too.

Words from the same ultimate source to have found their way into English include mire [14] (borrowed from Old Norse mýrr ‘swamp’), mousse [19] (borrowed from French, which got it from Middle Low German mos ‘moss’), and litmus [16] (whose Old Norse source litmosi meant literally ‘dye-moss’ – litmus is a dye extracted from lichens).
=> litmus, mire, mousse
oasis: oasis: [17] The ultimate origins of the word oasis no doubt lie in North Africa, and although no positive link has been established, it is likely to be related in some way to Coptic ouahe. This means literally ‘dwelling area’ (it is derived from the verb ouih ‘dwell’), but since isolated fertile spots in the desert are natural centres of habitation, it is used also for ‘oasis’. The farthest back we can actually trace English oasis is, via Latin, to Greek óasis.
owl: owl: [OE] Owl has several relatives in the other modern Germanic languages (German eule, Dutch uil, Swedish uggla), which point back to a prehistoric source *uwwalōn, *uwwilōn. Like most owl-names, such as Latin ulula and the possibly related German uhu, this no doubt originated as an imitation of the owl’s call.
pagoda: pagoda: [17] The immediate source of pagoda was Portuguese pagoda, but this is generally assumed to have been an adaptation of Persian butkada, a compound put together from but ‘idol’ and kada ‘dwelling, temple’. Its form was no doubt influenced by bhagodī, a word for ‘holy’ in the vernacular languages of India.
parsnip: parsnip: [14] The Romans called the ‘parsnip’ (and the ‘carrot’) pastināca. This was a derivative of pastinum, a term for a sort of small two-pronged fork, inspired no doubt by the forked appearance of some examples of the vegetable. In Old French the word had become pasnaie, but when English took it over, it altered the final syllable to -nep, under the influence of Middle English nep ‘turnip’ (source of the second syllable of turnip).
pick: pick: English has two distinct words pick. The verb [15], which originally meant ‘pierce’ (a sense which survives in ‘pick holes in’), appears to come via Old French piquer from a Vulgar Latin *piccāre ‘prick, pierce’. Picket [17], which originally meant ‘pointed stake’, is probably derived from the same source (its modern sense ‘guard’, which emerged in the 18th century, comes from the practice of soldiers tying their horses to stakes). Pique [16] is a slightly later borrowing from French. Pick ‘sharp implement’ [14] (as in toothpick) is probably related to Old English pīc ‘pointed object’, source of English pike ‘spear’.

It also lies behind English peak. In view of their close semantic similarity, it seems likely that the two picks share a common ancestor, which was no doubt responsible also for Old French picois ‘pickaxe’, altered in English, under the influence of axe, to pickaxe [15].
=> picket, pique; peak, pike
plonk: plonk: English has two distinct words plonk. The one that means ‘put down firmly and heavily’ [19] was no doubt originally simply an imitation of the sound made by the action (alternative realizations of which are plank and plunk). The other, ‘cheap bog-standard wine’ [20], appears to have originated among Australian troops serving in France during World War I, which lends credence to the supposition that it was based on a French original – generally supposed to be vin blanc ‘white wine’.

It is true that not until the 1930s do we have any written evidence of plonk in this sense, nor of its possible precursor plinkety-plonk (which could have been a comical rhyming variation on vin blanc, and which also produced the shorter-lived spin-off plink in the same sense), and that nowadays the term seems to be applied mainly to red wine rather than white. Nevertheless, there are relevant records of Great-War-period puns (for example von blink as a ‘humorous corruption’ of vin blanc), and the explanation has an air of plausibility.
plot: plot: [11] Two separate and unrelated words have come together to form modern English plot. The earlier was late Old English plot, a term of unknown origin which denoted ‘area of ground’ (as in a ‘plot of land’). This subsequently developed to ‘ground plan’ and ‘diagram’, which formed the basis of ‘set of events in a story’ (first recorded in the 17th century). The other ancestor was Old French complot ‘secret scheme’ (also of unknown origin), which was originally borrowed into English in the 16th century as complot, but soon lost its prefix com-, no doubt under the influence of the already existing noun plot.
pope: pope: [OE] Etymologically, the pope is the ‘daddy’ of the Roman Catholic church. Greek páppas was a nursery word for ‘father’, based no doubt on the first syllable of patér ‘father’ (a relative of English father). In the form pápas it came to be used by early Christians for ‘bishop’, and its Latin descendant pāpa was applied from the 5th century onwards to the bishop of Rome, the pope.

English acquired the word in the Anglo-Saxon period, and so it has undergone the normal medieval phonetic changes to become pope, but the derivatives papacy [14] and papal [14] arrived later, and retain their a. Latin pāpa also gave English papa [17], via French papa.
=> papa, papacy, poplin
puffin: puffin: [14] Puffin probably goes back to one of the ancestral Celtic languages of the British Isles – perhaps Cornish. Its English guise is no doubt due to its plump appearance, which suggested associations with puff [13] (a word which originated as an imitation of the sound of puffing).
pump: pump: [15] The precise origins of pump have never been established. It is now widespread throughout the European languages, by dint of assiduous borrowing (French pompe, for instance), but its epicentre appears to have been northwestern Europe, with Middle Low German pumpe or Middle Dutch pompe. It started out, no doubt, as a vocal imitation of the sound of pumping.
rattle: rattle: [14] Rattle probably existed in Old English, but in the absence of any direct evidence, it is usually suggested that the word was borrowed from Middle Low German rattelen, a relative of German rasseln ‘rattle’. Whatever its ultimate source, it no doubt originally imitated the sound of rattling.
rosemary: rosemary: [15] Originally, rosemary had no connection with either ‘roses’ or ‘Mary’. Etymologically it means ‘sea-dew’. It comes, probably via Old French rosmarin, from late Latin rōsmarīnum. This in turn was a conflation of Latin rōs marīnus, rōs meaning ‘dew’ and marīnus ‘of the sea’ (an allusion to the fact that the plant grew near sea coasts). The word originally entered English in the 14th century as rosmarine, but association with rose and Mary (the Virgin Mary, no doubt) led to its alteration to rosemary.
=> marine, mere, mermaid
sack: sack: English has three separate words sack, one of them now a historical relic and the other two ultimately related. Sack ‘large bag’ [OE] was borrowed from Latin saccus (source also of English sac, sachet, and satchel). This in turn came from Greek sákkos ‘rough cloth used for packing’, which was of Semitic origin (Hebrew has saq meaning both ‘sack’ and ‘sackcloth’).

The colloquial sense ‘dismissal from work’ (as in get the sack) arose in the early 19th century, perhaps from the notion of a dismissed worker going away with his tools or clothing in his bag. Sack ‘plunder’ [16] came via French sac from sacco ‘bag’, the Italian descendant of Latin saccus. This was used in expressions like mettere a sacco, literally ‘put in a bag’, which denoted figuratively ‘plunder, pillage’ (no doubt inspired by the notion of ‘putting one’s loot in a bag’). Sack ‘sherry-like wine’ [16] (Sir John Falstaff’s favourite tipple) was an alteration of seck.

This was short for wine sec, a partial translation of French vin sec ‘dry wine’ (French sec came from Latin siccus ‘dry’, source of English desiccate [16]).
=> sac, sachet, satchel; desiccate, sec
saddle: saddle: [OE] Saddle comes from a prehistoric Germanic *sathulaz, which also produced German sattel, Dutch zadel, and Swedish sadel. Etymologically it no doubt signifies something to ‘sit’ on, hailing ultimately from the Indo- European base *sed- ‘sit’, from which English gets sit.
=> sit
sauce: sauce: [14] Sauce is one of a range of English words (others include salad, salary, and sausage) that go back ultimately to Latin sāl ‘salt’ (a relative of English salt). From it was formed the adjective salsus ‘salted’, whose feminine form salsa was used in Vulgar Latin for a ‘brine dressing or pickle’. This later evolved into Italian and Spanish salsa ‘sauce’ (the latter adopted into English as salsa [20]) and French sauce, from which English gets sauce.

The derivative saucy ‘cheeky’ no doubt arose from the ‘piquancy’ or ‘tartness’ of sauces. Saucer [14] originally meant ‘sauceboat’, and was borrowed from Old French saussier, a derivative of sauce. The modern application to a ‘dish for a cup’ did not evolve until the 18th century.
=> salt, saucer
scalp: scalp: [13] Scalp originally meant ‘top of the head, cranium’; it was not used for the ‘skin on top of the head’ until the 17th century. It is not altogether clear where the word came from, but its resemblance to Old Norse skálpr ‘sheath, shell’ and the fact that it first appeared in Scotland and the north of England suggest that it was borrowed from a Scandinavian language. Its ultimate ancestor was no doubt the Germanic base *skal-, *skel-, *skul-, source also of English shell and probably skull.
=> scale, shell, skull
scone: scone: [16] The word scone first appeared in Scottish English, and does not seem to have made any significant headway south of the border until the 19th century (helped on its way, no doubt, by that great proselytizer of Scottish vocabulary, Sir Walter Scott). It was borrowed from Dutch schoonbrood ‘fine white bread’, a compound formed from schoon ‘beautiful, bright, white’ (first cousin to German schön ‘beautiful’ and related to English sheen and show) and brood ‘bread’.
=> sheen, show
scratch: scratch: [15] Early Middle English had two words for ‘scratch’ – scrat and cratch; and it seems likely that scratch represents a blend of them. Where exactly they came from is not clear, although cratch is no doubt related to German kratzen ‘scratch’, and both probably had their origins in imitation of the sound of scratching.
screw: screw: [15] Screw comes ultimately from a Latin word meaning ‘female pig’ – scrōfa (source also of English scrofula [14], a disease to which pigs were once thought to be particularly prone). By the medieval period scrōfa was being used for a ‘screw’, mainly no doubt in allusion to the pig’s curly, corkscrew-like tail, but also perhaps partly prompted by the resemblance to Latin scrobis ‘ditch, trench’, hence ‘cunt’, which was used in Vulgar Latin for the ‘groove in a screw-head’ (the use of the verb screw for ‘copulate’, first recorded in the early 18th century, is purely coincidental).

English got the word from Old French escroue, which came either directly from Latin scrōfa or via prehistoric West Germanic *scrūva (source of German schraube ‘screw’).
=> scrofula
set: set: English has two words set. The verb [OE] is simply the causative version of sit. That is to say, etymologically it means ‘cause to sit’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *satjan (source also of German setzen, Dutch zetten, Swedish sätta, and Danish sætte), which was a causative variant of *setjan, ancestor of English sit. Set ‘group’ [14] is essentially the same word as sect.

It comes via Old French sette from Latin secta, source of English sect. It originally meant strictly a ‘group of people’, and its far broader modern application, which emerged in the 16th century, is no doubt due to association with the verb set and the notion of ‘setting’ things together.
=> sit; sect