英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

baby [baby 词源字典]: baby: [14] Like mama and papa, baby and the contemporaneous babe are probably imitative of the burbling noises made by an infant that has not yet learned to talk. In Old English, the term for what we would now call a ‘baby’ was child, and it seems only to have been from about the 11th century that child began to extend its range to the slightly more mature age which it now covers. Then when the word baby came into the language, it was used synonymously with this developed sense of child, and only gradually came to refer to infants not yet capable of speech or walking.
[baby etymology, baby origin, 英语词源]
panic: panic: [17] Panic is etymologically ‘terror caused by the god Pan’. The ancient Greeks believed that he lurked in lonely spots, and would frighten people by suddenly appearing, or making noises. He was evidently invoked to account for alarming but harmless natural phenomena, and so the element of ‘irrationality’ in the English word was present from the beginning. English acquired it (originally as an adjective) via French panique and modern Latin pānicus from Greek pānikós ‘of Pan’.
=> pan
guinea pig (n.): rodent native to South America, 1660s. It does not come from Guinea and has nothing to do with the pig. Perhaps so called either because it was brought back to Britain aboard Guinea-men, ships that plied the triangle trade between England, Guinea, and South America [Barnhart, Klein], or from its resemblance to the young of the Guinea-hog "river pig" [OED], or from confusion of Guinea with the South American region of Guyana (but OED is against this). Pig probably for its grunting noises. In the extended sense of "one subjected to an experiment" it is first recorded 1920, because they were commonly used in medical experiments (by 1865).
guttural (adj.): "pertaining to the throat," 1590s, from Middle French guttural, from Latin guttur "throat, gullet," perhaps expressive of throat-noises. "Note that gula, glut- and gurgulio also refer to the 'throat' and 'swallowing', and also contain g(l)u-. Guttur may belong to this same family, which has no PIE etymology" [de Vaan]. The noun, in linguistics, is from 1690s.
swashbuckler (n.): also swash-buckler, 1550s, "blustering, swaggering fighting man" (earlier simply swash, 1540s), from swash "fall of a blow" (see swash) + buckler "shield." The original sense seems to have been "one who makes menacing noises by striking his or an opponent's shield."
craic: "Variant spelling of crack (sense 4 of the noun)", 1970s: Irish, from English crack. The English word apparently entered Irish English from Scots in the mid 20th century and subsequently assumed an Irish Gaelic form. More crack from Old English:In Old English crack meant ‘make a sudden sharp or explosive noise’. The drug known as crack, or crack cocaine, is a hard crystalline form of cocaine broken into small pieces and smoked. It gets its name from the ‘cracking’ noises the crystals make as they are heated. The ‘crack’ or lively socializing in a pub is an Irish use, first recorded in the 1920s and sometimes written craic, that comes from the Scottish sense ‘chat, conversation’. You can talk about a time very early in the morning as the crack of dawn. The expression is first recorded in the late 19th century, in the form crack of day. The crack here is the crack of a whip, with an additional echo perhaps of break of day and daybreak, and the notion of the sky cracking or breaking open to reveal a sliver of light. The crack of doom is a peal of thunder which, according to the Book of Revelation, will announce the Day of Judgement. See also paper, pop