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acre: acre: [OE] Acre is a word of ancient ancestry, going back probably to the Indo-European base *ag-, source of words such as agent and act. This base had a range of meanings covering ‘do’ and ‘drive’, and it is possible that the notion of driving contributed to the concept of driving animals on to land for pasture. However that may be, it gave rise to a group of words in Indo- European languages, including Latin ager (whence English agriculture), Greek agros, Sanskrit ájras, and a hypothetical Germanic *akraz.

By this time, people’s agricultural activities had moved on from herding animals in open country to tilling the soil in enclosed areas, and all of this group of words meant specifically ‘field’. From the Germanic form developed Old English æcer, which as early as 1000 AD had come to be used for referring to a particular measured area of agricultural land (as much as a pair of oxen could plough in one day).
=> act, agent, agriculture, eyrie, onager, peregrine, pilgrim
Dalek: Dalek: [20] The name of these pathologically destructive robots, which first appeared on BBC TV’s Dr Who in 1963, was coined by their creator, Terry Nation. The story went about that he had come up with it one day while staring in a library at the spine of an encyclopedia volume covering entries from DA to LEK, but he has subsequently denied this.
diary: diary: [16] Like its semantic cousin journal, a diary is literally a ‘daily’ record. It comes from Latin diarium, a derivative of diēs ‘day’. Originally in classical Latin the word meant ‘daily allowance of food or pay’, and only subsequently came to be applied to a ‘record of daily events’. From the 17th to the 19th century English also had an adjective diary, from Latin diarius, meaning ‘lasting for one day’.
ephemeral: ephemeral: [16] Ephemeral, now used fairly loosely for ‘transitory’, originally meant specifically ‘lasting only one day’. It comes from Greek ephémeros, a compound formed from the prefix epí- ‘on’ and hēmérā ‘day’. The Greeks named the mayfly ephémeron, since its adult form lives only one day, and English adopted ephemeron [16] as the scientific name for the insect.
leap year: leap year: [14] The inspiration for the term leap year is probably simply that in such a year the day on which any given date falls ‘jumps’ one day ahead of where it would have been in an ordinary year. The metaphorical application of the notion of ‘jumping’ to this phenomenon predates the first record of the term leap year: medieval Latin, for instance, used the term saltus lunae ‘moon’s jump’ for the nineteen-yearly omission of a day from the lunar calendar, and this was translated into Old English as mōnan hlyp ‘moon’s leap’.
Augean (adj.): "filthy," 1590s, in reference to Augean stable, the cleansing of which was one of the labors of Herakles, from Greek Augeias, like the stable of Augeas, king of Elis, which contained 3,000 oxen and had gone uncleansed for 30 years. Herakles purified it in one day by turning the river Alpheus through it.
butterfly (n.): Old English buttorfleoge, evidently butter (n.) + fly (n.), but of obscure signification. Perhaps based on the old notion that the insects (or witches disguised as butterflies) consume butter or milk that is left uncovered. Or, less creatively, simply because the pale yellow color of many species' wings suggests the color of butter. Another theory connects it to the color of the insect's excrement, based on Dutch cognate boterschijte. An overview of words for "butterfly" in various languages can be found here. Also see papillon.

Applied to persons from c. 1600, originally in reference to vain and gaudy attire; by 1806 in reference to transformation from early lowly state; in reference to flitting tendencies by 1873. The swimming stroke so called from 1936. Butterflies "light stomach spasms caused by anxiety" is from 1908.
The butterfly effect is a deceptively simple insight extracted from a complex modern field. As a low-profile assistant professor in MIT's department of meteorology in 1961, [Edward] Lorenz created an early computer program to simulate weather. One day he changed one of a dozen numbers representing atmospheric conditions, from .506127 to .506. That tiny alteration utterly transformed his long-term forecast, a point Lorenz amplified in his 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" [Peter Dizikes, "The Meaning of the Butterfly," The Boston Globe, June 8, 2008]
correspondent (n.): "one who communicates with another by letters," 1620s, from correspondent (adj.). The newspaper sense is from 1711.
THE life of a newspaper correspondent, as may naturally be supposed, is one of alternate cloud and sunshine--one day basking in an Andalusian balcony, playing a rubber at the club on the off-nights of the Opera, being very musical when the handsome Prima Donna sings, and very light fantastic toeish when the lively Prima Ballerina dances; another day roughing it over the Balkan, amid sleet and snow, or starving at the tail of an ill-conditioned army, and receiving bullets instead of billets-doux. ["New Monthly Magazine," vol. 95, 1852, p.284]
ephemera (n.): late 14c., originally a medical term, from Medieval Latin ephemera (febris) "(fever) lasting a day," from fem. of ephemerus, from Greek ephemeros "daily, for the day," also "lasting or living only one day, short-lived," from epi "on" (see epi-) + hemerai, dative of hemera "day," from PIE *amer- "day." Sense extended 17c. to short-lived insects (Modern Latin ephemera musca) and flowers; general sense of "thing of transitory existence" is first attested 1751. Compare Greek ephemeroi "men," literally "creatures of a day."
ephemeral (adj.): 1560s; see ephemera + -al (1). Originally of diseases and lifespans, "lasting but one day;" extended sense of "transitory" is from 1630s. Related: Ephemerally; ephemerality.
journey (n.): c. 1200, "a defined course of traveling; one's path in life," from Old French journee "day's work or travel" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin diurnum "day," noun use of neuter of Latin diurnus "of one day" (see diurnal). Meaning "act of traveling by land or sea" is c. 1300. In Middle English it also meant "a day" (c. 1400); a day's work (mid-14c.); "distance traveled in one day" (mid-13c.), and as recently as Johnson (1755) the primary sense was still "the travel of a day."
leap year (n.): late 14c., from leap (v.) + year. So called from its causing fixed festival days, which normally advance one weekday per year, to "leap" ahead one day in the week.
Rome: capital of Italy; seat of an ancient republic and empire; city of the Papacy, Old English, from Old French Rome, from Latin Roma, a word of uncertain origin. "The original Roma quadrata was the fortified enclosure on the Palatine hill," according to Tucker, who finds "no probability" in derivation from *sreu- "flow," and suggests the name is "most probably" from *urobsma (urbs, robur) and otherwise, "but less likely" from *urosma "hill" (compare Sanskrit varsman- "height, point," Lithuanian virsus "upper"). Another suggestion [Klein] is that it is from Etruscan (compare Rumon, former name of Tiber River).

Common in proverbs, such as Rome was not buylt in one daye (1540s); for when a man doth to Rome come, he must do as there is done (1590s); All roads alike conduct to Rome (1806).
Samarra: city in north-central Iraq; phrase an appointment in Samarra indicating the inevitability of death is from an old Arabic tale (first in English apparently in W. Somerset Maugham's play "Sheppey," 1933), in which a man encounters Death (with a surprised look on his bony face) one day in the marketplace in Baghdad; he flees in terror and by dusk has reached Samarra. Death takes him there, and, when questioned, replies, "I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."