quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- 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] - anecdote




- anecdote: [17] In Greek, anékdotos meant ‘unpublished’. It was formed from the negative prefix an- and ékdotos, which in turn came from the verb didónai ‘give’ (a distant cousin of English donation and date) plus the prefix ek- ‘out’ – hence ‘give out, publish’. The use of the plural anékdota by the 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius as the title of his unpublished memoirs of the life of the Emperor Justinian, which revealed juicy details of court life, played a major part in the subsequent use of Latin anecdota for ‘revelations of secrets’, the sense which anecdote had when it first came into English.
The meaning ‘brief amusing story’ did not develop until the mid 18th century.
=> date, donation - badminton




- badminton: [19] The game of ‘battledore and shuttlecock’ has been around for some time (it appears to go back to the 16th century; the word battledore, which may come ultimately from Portuguese batedor ‘beater’, first turns up in the 15th century, meaning ‘implement for beating clothes when washing them’, but by the 16th century is being used for a ‘small racket’; while shuttlecock, so named because it is hit back and forth, first appears in the early 16th century, in a poem of John Skelton’s).
This was usually a fairly informal, improvised affair, however, and latterly played mainly by children; the modern, codified game of badminton did not begin until the 1860s or 1870s, and takes its name from the place where it was apparently first played, Badminton House, Avon, country seat of the dukes of Beaufort. (A slightly earlier application of the word badminton had been to a cooling summer drink, a species of claret cup.)
- billiards




- billiards: [16] Billiard comes from French billard, which is the name not only of the game, but also of the cue it is played with. And the cue is the clue to the word’s history, for it comes from French bille ‘tree trunk’, hence ‘long cylindrical bit of wood’. The import of the -ard suffix is not altogether clear, but another suffix used with bille was the diminutive -ette, from which English got billet ‘piece of wood’ [15] (not to be confused with billet ‘assignment to lodgings’; see BILL). Bille itself came from medieval Latin billa or billus, which may have been of Celtic origin.
=> billet - bridge




- bridge: [OE] A distant relative of bridge, Old Slavic bruvino ‘beam’, coupled with the meaning of the cognate Old Norse bryggja ‘gangway’, suggest that the underlying etymological meaning of the word is not ‘spanning structure’ but ‘road or structure made of logs’. The Norse word, incidentally, produced the Scottish and northern English brig ‘bridge’.
The card game bridge is first unambiguously mentioned in English in the 1880s, and its name has no connection with the ‘spanning’ bridge. The earliest recorded form of the word is biritch. Its source has never been satisfactorily explained, but since a game resembling bridge is known to have been played for many centuries in the Middle East, it could well be that the name originated in that area.
One suggestion put forward is that it came from an unrecorded Turkish *bir-ü, literally ‘one-three’ (one hand being exposed during the game while the other three are concealed).
- cart




- cart: [13] Old English had a word cræt ‘carriage’, which may, by the process known as metathesis (reversal of speech sounds), have produced the word which first appeared at the beginning of the 13th century as karte or carte. But a part must certainly also have been played by Old Norse kartr ‘cart’, and some have also detected the influence of Anglo-Norman carete, a diminutive form of car (source of English car).
=> car - conker




- conker: [19] A conker was originally a ‘snail shell’. Small boys tied them on to pieces of string and played a game involving trying to break their opponent’s shell (another method of playing was simply to press two shells together and see which one broke). The first record of the use of horse chestnuts instead of snail shells is from the 1880s, but in the succeeding century this has established itself as the word’s sole application.
It is not entirely clear where it originally came from. The connection with molluscs has inevitably suggested a derivation from conch (itself ultimately from Greek kónkhē), but early 19th-century spellings of the game as conquering, and of conker as conqueror, point to a simpler explanation, that the stronger snail shell defeated, or ‘conquered’, the weaker.
- 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.
- devil




- devil: [OE] English acquired devil in the 8th century via late Latin diabolus from Greek diábolos, which originally meant ‘slanderer’. It was a derivative of diabállein ‘slander’, a compound verb literally meaning ‘throw across’, formed from diá ‘across’ and bállein ‘throw’ (whence English ballistics). The Greek word has reached most European languages: for example French diable, Italian diavolo, German teufel, Dutch duivel, Swedish djāvul, and Russian djavol. It has also given English diabolical [16], and indeed diabolo [20], a game played by spinning a top (named from a variant of Italian diavolo) on a string.
=> ballistics, diabolical - domino




- domino: [18] The word domino was borrowed from French, where it originally signified (in the 16th century) a sort of hooded cloak worn by priests. It presumably represents a form of Latin dominus ‘lord, master’, but the reason for the application has never been satisfactorily explained (one suggestion is that it comes from the ritual formula benedicamus Domino ‘let us bless the Lord’).
By the time English acquired it, it had come to mean ‘hooded cloak with a halfmask, worn at masquerades’, and by the 19th century it was being used for the mask itself. It is far from clear whether the application to the game played with small rectangular blocks, which dates in English from the 19th century, represents a new use of the same word or a return to the original Latin, but either way the reason behind the usage is not known.
A possibility that has been advanced is that the winner of the game originally shouted domino! ‘lord!’.
- down




- down: Effectively, English now has three distinct words down, but two of them are intimately related: for down ‘to or at a lower place’ [11] originally meant ‘from the hill’ – and the Old English word for hill in this instance was dūn. This may have been borrowed from an unrecorded Celtic word which some have viewed as the ultimate source also of dune [18] (borrowed by English from Middle Dutch dūne) and even of town.
Its usage is now largely restricted to the plural form, used as a geographical term for various ranges of hills (the application to the North and South Downs in southern England dates from at least the 15th century). The Old English phrase of dūne ‘from the hill’ had by the 10th century become merged into a single word, adūne, and broadened out semantically to ‘to a lower place, down’, and in the 11th century it started to lose its first syllable – hence down.
Its use as a preposition dates from the 16th century. (The history of down is closely paralleled in that of French à val, literally ‘to the valley’, which also came to be used for ‘down’; it is the source of French avaler ‘descend, swallow’, which played a part in the development of avalanche.) Down ‘feathers’ [14] was borrowed from Old Norse dúnn.
=> dune - druid




- druid: [16] Druid is, not surprisingly, of Celtic origin, although English probably acquired it via French druide or the Latin plural druides. The source of these forms was Gaulish druides, which came ultimately from Old Celtic *derwíjes. There are two opposing theories on the derivation of this: one is that it comes from an Old Celtic adjective derwos ‘true’ (source of Welsh derw ‘true’), in which case its etymological meaning would be ‘someone who says the truth’ (a parallel formation to English soothsayer); the other is that it was formed from the Old Celtic base *dru- ‘tree’ (source of Welsh derwen and Irish daur ‘oak-tree’ and related to Greek drus ‘oak’ and English tree) in reference to the central role played by oak-trees in druidic ceremonies.
- enjoy




- enjoy: [14] Originally, enjoy was used intransitively in English, rather as in the modern American Yiddish-influenced injunction ‘Enjoy!’: ‘Yet he never enjoyed after, but in conclusion pitifully wasted his painful life’, Robert Laneham 1549. However, by the end of the 16th century the transitive sense ‘take pleasure in’ had virtually taken over the field. The word probably comes from Old French enjoïr, a compound formed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and joir ‘rejoice’, which in turn came from Latin gaudēre (ultimate source of English joy).
Old French did have another, similar verb, however, enjoier (formed from the noun joie), which probably also played a part in the English acquisition.
=> joy - fiddle




- fiddle: [OE] Like its distant cousin violin, fiddle comes ultimately from the name of a Roman goddess of joy and victory. This was Vītula, who probably originated among the pre-Roman Sabine people of the Italian peninsula. A Latin verb was coined from her name, vītulārī, meaning ‘hold joyful celebrations’, which in post-classical times produced the noun vītula ‘stringed instrument, originally as played at such festivals’.
In the Romance languages this went on to give viola, violin, etc, but prehistoric West and North Germanic borrowed it as *fithulōn, whence German fiedel, Dutch vedel, and English fiddle. In English, the word has remained in use for the instrument which has developed into the modern violin, but since the 16th century it has gradually been replaced as the main term by violin, and it is now only a colloquial or dialectal alternative.
The sense ‘swindle’ originated in the USA in the mid-to-late 19th century.
=> violin - 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.
- gammon




- gammon: Gammon ‘bacon’ [15] is not related to the gammon [18] of backgammon. It comes from Old Northern French gambon (source also of modern French jambon ‘ham’), which was a derivative of gambe ‘leg’ – hence etymologically ‘leg meat’. This seems to go back ultimately to Greek kampé ‘bend’, which was used particularly as an anatomical term for joints of the body.
Latin took it over as a veterinary expression, gamba, denoting a ‘horse’s hoof’, and it passed in due course into Italian as gamba (whence English gambit, gambol, jamb [14], and the gamba of viola da gamba [18], played between the legs) and into French as jambe, both meaning ‘leg’. The gammon of backgammon comes from Middle English gamen, the ancestor of modern English game (see also BACKGAMMON).
=> gambit, gambol, jamb - guide




- guide: [14] The ancestor of guide was Germanic *wit- ‘know’, source of English wise, wit, and witness. From it was derived a verb *wītan, and the Franks, a West Germanic people who conquered Gaul in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, brought it with them. It eventually became Old French guider, and was borrowed by English. The semantic progression from ‘knowing’ to ‘showing’ is also displayed in the related German weisen ‘show, direct, indicate’.
=> wise, wit, witness - harmony




- harmony: [14] The etymological idea behind harmony is ‘fitting things together’ – that is, of combining notes in an aesthetically pleasing manner. It comes via Old French harmonie and Latin harmonia from Greek harmoníā ‘means of joining’, hence ‘agreement, concord’, a derivative of harmós ‘joint’. As a musical term in Greek it appears to have denoted ‘scale’, or more simply just ‘music’, and its original use in English was for what we would now call ‘melody’.
It was not applied to the combination of notes to form chords (a practice which originated in the 9th century) until the 16th century. The term harmonica was coined in 1762 by the American physicist and statesman Benjamin Franklin for a musical instrument consisting of a set of water-filled glasses tuned to different notes and played with the fingers. It was first applied to the mouth-organ in the 19th century.
- hazard




- hazard: [13] The word hazard was introduced to English as the name for a game played with dice. It was borrowed from Old French hasard, which came via Spanish azar from Arabic azzahr, earlier al-zahr ‘luck, chance’. Its associations were thus from the first with ‘uncertainty’, and its central modern sense ‘danger’ did not develop until the 16th century.
- hockey




- hockey: [19] The first known unequivocal reference to the game of hockey comes in William Holloway’s General Dictionary of Provincialisms 1838, where he calls it hawkey, and describes it as ‘a game played by several boys on each side with sticks, called hawkeybats, and a ball’ (the term came from West Sussex). It is not known for certain where the word originated, but it is generally assumed to be related in some way to hook, with reference to the hockey stick’s curved end. The Galway Statutes of 1527 refer to the ‘hurling of the little ball with hockie sticks or staves’, which may mean ‘curved sticks’.
=> hook - jukebox




- jukebox: [20] The jukebox – a coin-operated record-player – got its name from being played in jukes; and a juke (or juke-house, or jukejoint), in US Black English slang of the middle years of the 20th century, was a roadhouse providing food and drink, music for dancing, and usually the services of prostitutes. The word probably came from the adjective juke or joog, which meant ‘wicked’ or ‘disorderly’ in the Gullah language, a creolized English of South Carolina, Georgia and northern Florida; and that in turn may well have originated in some as yet unidentified West African language.
- lacrosse




- lacrosse: [18] French la crosse means ‘the hooked stick’ (crosse was originally borrowed from a prehistoric Germanic *kruk-, from which English got crook and crutch). French speakers in Canada used the term jeu de la crosse ‘game of the hooked stick’ to name a game played by the native Americans with netted sticks, and in due course this became reduced and lexicalized to lacrosse.
=> crook, crutch - link




- link: [14] Link goes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic *khlangkjaz, whose underlying meaning element was ‘bending’ (it also has close relatives in English flank [12], flinch [16], and lank [OE]). ‘Bending’ implies ‘joints’ and ‘links’, and this is the meaning which is the word is presumed to have had when it passed into Old Norse as *hlenkr – from which English acquired link.There is, incidentally, no etymological connection with the now obsolete link ‘torch’ [16], which may have come via medieval Latin linchinus from Greek lúkhnos ‘lamp’, nor with the links on which golf is played, which goes back to Old English hlincas, the plural of hlinc ‘rising ground, ridge’.
=> flank, flinch, lank - liquorice




- liquorice: [13] Liquorice, or licorice as it is usually spelled in American English, has no direct etymological connection with liquor (although liquor has played a significant role in its development). It goes back to Greek glukúrrhiza, which meant literally ‘sweet root’ (it was a compound of glukús ‘sweet’, source of English glycerine, and rhíza ‘root’, source of English rhizome [19]). Under the influence of liquor, this was borrowed into post-classical Latin as liquiritia, which passed into English via Old French licoresse and Anglo-Norman lycorys.
=> glycerine, rhizome - marble




- marble: [12] Greek mármaros, a word of unknown origin, denoted to begin with ‘any hard stone’, but association with the verb marmaírein ‘shine’ led to a particular application to ‘marble’. Latin took it over as marmor, and it passed into Old French as marbre. Here, by a process known as dissimilation, in which one of two similar sounds is replaced by a different one, marbre became marble – whence English marble. The use of the word for the little ball with which the game of ‘marbles’ is played dates from the late 17th century.
- mature




- mature: [15] ‘Earliness’ is the etymological notion underlying the word mature. It goes back ultimately to a pre-Latin base *mātu-, which produced the Latin adjective mātūrus ‘timely, early’, direct source of the English word (in Old French mātūrus became mur ‘ripe’, which played a part in the emergence of English demure). Another Latin derivative of *mātu- was Mātūta, the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn. From this in turn was derived the adjective mātūtīnus ‘of the morning’, source of English matins [13] and matutinal ‘of the morning’ [17].
=> demure, matins - morgue




- morgue: [19] The original Morgue was a Parisian mortuary where unidentified corpses were displayed for visitors to try and put names to faces (a process described in gruesome detail by Émile Zola in Thérèse Raquin 1867). Its name is presumed to be a reapplication of an earlier French morgue ‘room in a prison where new prisoners were examined’, which may ultimately be the same word as morgue ‘haughty superiority’ (used in English from the 16th to the 19th centuries). Morgue was first adopted as a generic English term for ‘mortuary’ in the USA in the 1880s.
- ocarina




- ocarina: [19] The ocarina, a primitive sort of musical instrument played by blowing, gets its name from a supposed resemblance to a goose (it is shaped like an elongated egg, with a neck-like mouthpiece). Italian ocarina means literally ‘little goose’. It is a diminutive form of oca ‘goose’, which in turn goes back to Latin auca, a derivative of avis ‘bird’.
=> aviary - orchestra




- orchestra: [17] In ancient Greece, the term orkhéstrā denoted a ‘semicircular space at the front of a theatre stage, in which the chorus danced’ (it was a derivative of the verb orkheisthai ‘dance’). English originally took it over (via Latin orchēstra) in this historical sense, but in the early 18th century orchestra began to be used for the ‘part of a theatre where the musicians played’, and hence by extension for the ‘group of musicians’ itself. The derivative orchestrate [19] was adapted from French orchestrer.
- pedigree




- pedigree: [15] Etymologically, pedigree means ‘crane’s-foot’. It comes from Anglo-Norman *pe de gru, pe meaning ‘foot’ (from Latin pēs) and gru ‘crane’ (from Latin grūs). The notion behind the metaphor is that a bird’s foot, with its three splayed-out toes, resembles the branching lines drawn to illustrate a family tree.
=> crane, geranium - person




- person: [13] Latin persōna originally denoted a ‘mask, particularly one worn by an actor’ (it may have been borrowed from Etruscan phersu ‘mask’). It gradually evolved through ‘character played by an actor’ (a meaning preserved in English persona [20], a term introduced by Jungian psychology) to ‘individual human being’. It entered English via Old French persone, and by the normal processes of phonetic development has become parson.
But this in the Middle English period was hived off (for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained) to ‘priest’, and the original Latinate spelling person was restored for ‘human being’. Other derivatives to have reached English include impersonate [17], personage [15], personal [14], personality [14], and, via French, personnel [19].
=> impersonate, parson, personnel - polo




- polo: [19] In Balti, a Tibetan language of northern Kashmir, polo means ‘ball’. English travellers in Kashmir in the 1840s observed a game being played on horseback which involved trying to knock a wooden polo into a goal using a longhandled mallet. The English sahibs lost no time in taking the game up themselves, and by 1871 it was being played back home in England, under the name ‘polo’.
- pool




- pool: Pool of water [OE] and pool ‘collective amount’ [17] are distinct words in English. The former comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *pōl-, source also of German pfuhl and Dutch poel. The latter was borrowed from French poule ‘hen’, a descendant of Latin pullus ‘young chicken’ (source also of English pony, poultry, and pullet).
There was a French game called jeu de la poule, the ‘hen game’, involving throwing things at a hen – which you won as a prize if you hit it. Hence poule came to be used figuratively for ‘target’, and also for ‘that which is at stake in a game’ – source of the original meaning of English pool, ‘stake’. This evolved via ‘stake made up of players’ contributions’ to ‘collective amount’ and ‘collective resource’. Pool the snooker-like game is the same word; the game was originally played for a collective stake.
=> foal, pony, poultry, pullet - psalm




- psalm: [OE] The Greek verb psállein originally meant ‘pluck’, but it was extended figuratively to ‘pluck harpstrings’, and hence ‘sing to the accompaniment of the harp’. From it was derived the noun psalmós ‘harp-song’, which was used in the Greek Septuagint to render Hebrew mizmōr ‘song (of the sort sung to the harp by David)’. It passed into Old English via late Latin psalmus. Another derivative of Greek psállein was psaltérion ‘stringed instrument played by plucking’, which has given English psalter [OE] and psaltery [13].
- raffle




- raffle: [14] Raffle was originally the name of a game played with three dice; the modern application to a ‘prize draw’ did not emerge until the 18th century. The word was borrowed from Old French raffle ‘act of snatching’, but where this came from is not known.
- sneeze




- sneeze: [15] The Old English word for ‘sneeze’ was fnēsan, a distant relative of Greek pneuma ‘breath’ (source of English pneumatic). This survived into Middle English as fnese. The letters f and s were very similar in medieval script, so it could have played a part in the late 15th-century emergence of sneeze. Fnese had largely died out by the early 15th century, and it could well be that when printing got into full swing in the 1490s, with many old manuscript texts being reissued in printed form, printers unfamiliar with the old word fnese assumed it had the much more common initial consonant cluster sn-.
Another factor in the equation is the now obsolete verb neeze ‘sneeze’. This was borrowed in the 14th century from Old Norse hnósja, a descendant of the Indo-European base *ksneu-, which also produced German niesen, Dutch niezen, Swedish nysa, Danish nyse, and Russian chikhat’ ‘sneeze’. It bridged the gap between fnese and sneeze, and the new sneeze no doubt struck people as a more expressive alternative to the old neeze. (Both fnese and neeze go back ultimately to an imitation of the sound of breathing, blowing, or sneezing.)
=> pneumatic - soccer




- soccer: [19] Soccer was coined from Association football, a term introduced around 1870 for football played according to the rules of the Football Association (as opposed to Rugby football). The suffix -er was commonly used as a more-or-less meaningless addition to nouns in British public-school and university slang of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (footer ‘football’ was formed in the same way). Originally, in the 1890s, socker vied with soccer as the word’s spelling.
- standard




- standard: Standard ‘flag, banner’ [12] denotes etymologically something that is ‘extended’ or unfurled. The word comes from Anglo-Norman estaundart ‘flag displayed on a battlefield so that troops can rally to it’. This was a derivative of Old French estendre ‘extend’ (first cousin of English extend). The sense ‘criterion, norm’, which emerged in the 15th century, is probably a metaphorical application of the notion of the ‘royal standard’ or banner as being the point from which authoritative commands (as of standards of weight and measurement) are issued. Standard ‘upright object, such as a tree’ [13] is probably an alteration of stander.
=> extend; stand - acid (n.)




- 1690s, from acid (adj.). Slang meaning "LSD-25" first recorded 1966 (see LSD).
When I was on acid I would see things that looked like beams of light, and I would hear things that sounded an awful lot like car horns. [Mitch Hedberg, 1968-2005, U.S. stand-up comic]
Acid rock (type played by or listen to by people using LSD) is also from 1966; acid house dance music style is 1988, probably from acid in the hallucinogenic sense + house "dance club DJ music style." - affected (adj.)




- past participle adjective from affect (v.2); 1530s in the now-obsolete sense "favorably disposed" (preserved in disaffected); meaning "artificially displayed" is recorded from 1580s.
- badminton (n.)




- 1874, from Badminton House, name of Gloucestershire estate of the Duke of Beaufort, where the game first was played in England, mid-19c., having been picked up by British officers from Indian poona. The place name is Old English Badimyncgtun (972), "estate of (a man called) Baduhelm."
- balloon (n.)




- 1570s, "a game played with a large inflated leather ball," from Italian pallone "large ball," from palla "ball," from a Germanic source akin to Langobardic palla (from Proto-Germanic *ball-, from PIE *bhel- (2) "to blow, swell;" see bole) + -one, suffix indicating great size.
Perhaps also borrowed in part from French ballon (16c.), altered (after balle) from Italian pallone. It also meant the ball itself (1590s), which was batted back and forth by means of large wooden paddles strapped to the forearms. In 17c., it also meant "a type of fireworks housed in a pasteboard ball" (1630s) and "round ball used as an architectural ornament" (1650s). Acquired modern meaning after Montgolfier brothers' flights, 1783. As a child's toy, it is attested from 1848; as "outline containing words in a comic engraving" it dates from 1844. Also see -oon. - bandy (v.)




- 1570s, "to strike back and forth," from Middle French bander, from root of band (n.2). The sense apparently evolved from "join together to oppose," to opposition itself, to "exchanging blows," then metaphorically, to volleying in tennis. Bandy (n.) was a 17c. Irish game, precursor of field hockey, played with a curved stick (also called a bandy), hence bandy-legged (1680s).
- bargain (n.)




- mid-14c., "business transaction or agreement," also "that which is acquired by bargaining," from Old French bargaine, from bargaignier (see bargain (v.)). Meaning "article priced for special sale" is from 1899. A bargain basement (1899) originally was a basement floor in a store where bargains were displayed.
- barre




- 1876, in reference to chords played on a guitar, etc., from French, literally "bar" (see bar (n.1)).
- birdie (n.)




- "little bird," 1792, from bird (n.1) + -ie. As golf slang for "a hole played one under par," by 1908, perhaps from bird (n.) in American English slang sense of "exceptionally clever or accomplished person or thing" (1839).
- bitter end (n.)




- In lexicons of sea language going back to 1759, the bitter end is the part of a cable which is round about the bits (two great timbers used to belay cables) when the ship is at anchor.
Bitter end of the Cable, the End which is wound about the Bitts. ["The News-Readers Pocket-Book: Or, a Military Dictionary," London, 1759]
See bit (n.1). So, when a cable is played out to the bitter end, there is no more left to play. The term began to be used c. 1835 in non-nautical use and with probable influence of bitter (adj.). - Black Hand (n.)




- Italian immigrant secret society in U.S., 1904; earlier a Spanish anarchist society, both from the warning mark they displayed to potential victims.
- bogart (v.)




- 1969, "to keep a joint in your mouth," dangling from the lip like Humphrey Bogart's cigarette in the old movies, instead of passing it on. First attested in "Easy Rider." The word was also used 1960s with notions of "get something by intimidation, be a tough guy" (again with reference to the actor and the characters he typically played). In old drinking slang, Captain Cork was "a man slow in passing the bottle."
- bowls (n.)




- game played with balls, mid-15c. (implied in bowlyn), from gerund of bowl "wooden ball" (early 15c.), from Old French bole (13c., Modern French boule) "ball," ultimately from Latin bulla "bubble, knob, round thing" (see bull (n.2)).
Noon apprentice ... [shall] play ... at the Tenys, Closshe, Dise, Cardes, Bowles nor any other unlawfull game. [Act 11, Henry VII, 1495]