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again [again 词源字典]: again: [OE] The underlying etymological sense of again is ‘in a direct line with, facing’, hence ‘opposite’ and ‘in the opposite direction, back’ (its original meaning in Old English). It comes from a probable Germanic *gagin ‘straight’, which was the source of many compounds formed with on or in in various Germanic languages, such as Old Saxon angegin and Old Norse íg gegn.

The Old English form was ongēan, which would have produced ayen in modern English; however, Norse-influenced forms with a hard g had spread over the whole country from northern areas by the 16th century. The meaning ‘once more, anew’ did not develop until the late 14th century. From Old English times until the late 16th century a prefix-less form gain was used in forming compounds.

It carried a range of meanings, from ‘against’ to ‘in return’, but today survives only in gainsay. The notion of ‘opposition’ is carried through in against, which was formed in the 12th century from again and what was originally the genitive suffix -es, as in always and nowadays. The parasitic -t first appeared in the 14th century.
[again etymology, again origin, 英语词源]
agoraphobia: agoraphobia: [19] Agoraphobia – fear of open spaces or, more generally, of simply being out of doors – is first referred to in an 1873 issue of the Journal of Mental Science; this attributes the term to Dr C Westphal, and gives his definition of it as ‘the fear of squares or open places’. This would be literally true, since the first element in the word represents Greek agorá ‘open space, typically a market place, used for public assemblies’ (the most celebrated in the ancient world was the Agora in Athens, rivalled only by the Forum in Rome).

The word agorá came from ageirein ‘assemble’, which is related to Latin grex ‘flock’, the source of English gregarious. Agoraphobia was not the first of the -phobias. That honour goes to hydrophobia in the mid 16th century. But that was an isolated example, and the surge of compounds based on Greek phóbos ‘fear’ really starts in the 19th century.

At first it was used for symptoms of physical illness (photophobia ‘abnormal sensitivity to light’ 1799), for aversions to other nationalities (Gallophobia 1803; the synonymous Francophobia does not appear until 1887), and for facetious formations (dustophobia, Robert Southey, 1824), and the range of specialized psychological terms familiar today does not begin to appear until the last quarter of the century (CLAUSTROPHOBIA 1879, acrophobia ‘fear of heights’ from Greek akros ‘topmost’ – see ACROBAT – 1892).
=> aggregate, allegory, gregarious, segregate
air: air: [13] Modern English air is a blend of three strands of meaning from, ultimately, two completely separate sources. In the sense of the gas we breathe it goes back via Old French air and Latin āēr to Greek áēr ‘air’ (whence the aero-compounds of English; see AEROPLANE). Related words in Greek were áērni ‘I blow’ and aúrā ‘breeze’ (from which English acquired aura in the 18th century), and cognates in other Indo-European languages include Latin ventus ‘wind’, English wind, and nirvana ‘extinction of existence’, which in Sanskrit meant literally ‘blown out’.

In the 16th century a completely new set of meanings of air arrived in English: ‘appearance’ or ‘demeanour’. The first known instance comes in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, IV, i: ‘The quality and air of our attempt brooks no division’ (1596). This air was borrowed from French, where it probably represents an earlier, Old French, aire ‘nature, quality’, whose original literal meaning ‘place of origin’ (reflected in another derivative, eyrie) takes it back to Latin ager ‘place, field’, source of English agriculture and related to acre. (The final syllable of English debonair [13] came from Old French aire, incidentally; the phrase de bon aire meant ‘of good disposition’.) The final strand in modern English air comes via the Italian descendant of Latin āēr, aria.

This had absorbed the ‘nature, quality’ meanings of Old French aire, and developed them further to ‘melody’ (perhaps on the model of German weise, which means both ‘way, manner’ and ‘tune’ – its English cognate wise, as in ‘in no wise’, meant ‘song’ from the 11th to the 13th centuries). It seems likely that English air in the sense ‘tune’ is a direct translation of the Italian.

Here again, Shakespeare got in with it first – in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, i: ‘Your tongue’s sweet air more tunable than lark to shepherd’s ear’ (1590). (Aria itself became an English word in the 18th century.)
=> acre, aeroplane, agriculture, aria, aura, eyrie, malaria, wind
bald: bald: [14] In Middle English times, bald was ballede, which suggests that it may have been a compound formed in Old English with the suffix -ede ‘characterized by, having’. It has been conjectured that the first element in the compound was Old English *ball-, meaning ‘white patch’ or ‘blaze’ on an animal’s head; this may be supported by isolated examples of the use of the adjective to mean (of a horse) ‘whitefaced’ from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and by the obsolete dialectal ball meaning both ‘white patch on the head’ and ‘white-faced horse’.

This would have produced the Old English adjective *bællede or *beallede, which, from ‘having a white blaze’, progressed naturally in meaning to ‘hairless’. The compounds piebald [16] and skewbald [17] are both based on bald: piebald means ‘having black and white patches like a magpie’, while skewbald may be based on Middle English skew ‘(cloudy) skies’ or on Old French escu ‘shield’.
=> piebald, skewbald
beech: beech: [OE] Like many other tree-names, beech goes back a long way into the past, and is not always what it seems. Among early relatives Latin fāgus meant ‘beech’ (whence the tree’s modern scientific name), but Greek phāgós, for example, referred to an ‘edible oak’. Both come from a hypothetical Indo-European *bhagos, which may be related to Greek phagein ‘eat’ (which enters into a number of English compounds, such as phagocyte [19], literally ‘eating-cell’, geophagy [19], ‘earth-eating’, and sarcophagus).

If this is so, the name may signify etymologically ‘edible tree’, with reference to its nuts, ‘beech mast’. The Old English word bēce’s immediate source was Germanic *bōkjōn, but this was a derivative; the main form bōkō produced words for ‘beech’ in other Germanic languages, such as German buche and Dutch beuk, and it survives in English as the first element of buckwheat [16], so named from its three-sided seeds which look like beech nuts.

It is thought that book may come ultimately from bōk- ‘beech’, on the grounds that early runic inscriptions were carved on beechwood tablets.
=> book, buckwheat, phagocyte, sarcophagus
bequeath: bequeath: [OE] Etymologically, what you bequeath is what you ‘say’ you will leave someone in your will. The word comes from Old English becwethan, a derivative of cwethan ‘say’, whose past tense cwæth gives us quoth (it is no relation to quote, by the way). The original sense ‘say, utter’ died out in the 13th century, leaving the legal sense of ‘transferring by will’ (first recorded in 1066).

The noun derivative of Old English cwethan in compounds was -cwiss. Hence we can assume there was an Old English noun *becwiss, although none is recorded. The first we hear of it is at the beginning of the 14th century, when it had unaccountably had a t added to it, producing what we now know as bequest.
=> bequest, quoth
broth: broth: [OE] Broth comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhreu- or *bhru- ‘heat, boil’, which also produced brew and fervent. Etymologically, therefore, it means ‘liquid in which something has been boiled’. The notion of ‘heating’ has now disappeared, but it seems to have survived into the modern English period, as is shown by such compounds as snow-broth ‘melted snow’, first recorded at the end of the 16th century.

The Germanic form *brotham was borrowed into Vulgar Latin as *brodo, which came via Old French broez into 13th-century English as broys or browes. This survives in Scottish English as brose ‘type of porridge’, as in Atholl brose.
=> brew, fervent, imbrue
caddy: caddy: [18] Caddy comes ultimately from Malay katī, which was a measure of weight equal to about 0.6 kilos or 1½ pounds: it was thus originally ‘container which holds one caddy of tea’. English acquired the word in the 16th century as catty, and it is not altogether clear where the -dd- spelling came from. It has no connection with the golfer’s caddie (see CADET).
car: car: [14] Car seems first to have been used as an independent term for a road vehicle powered by an internal-combustion engine in 1896, in the publication Farman’s Auto-Cars (the compounds autocar and motorcar are a year earlier). But the word is of course of far longer standing as a general term for a wheeled conveyance. It comes ultimately from an unrecorded Celtic *karros, via Latin carrus ‘two-wheeled wagon’, Vulgar Latin *carra, and Anglo-Norman carre or car; it is probably linked with current and course, giving an underlying meaning ‘move swiftly’.

English words derived at some point or other from the same source include career, carriage, carry, charge, and chariot.
=> career, caricature, carriage, carry, charge, chariot, course, current
chip: chip: [OE] Old English cipp meant ‘share-beam of a plough’ (a sense paralleled in related forms in other Germanic languages, such as Dutch kip ‘plough-beam’ and Old Norse keppr ‘stick’). This seems a far cry from the modern use of chip, for which there is no evidence before the 14th century, and in fact our noun chip may be a new formation based on the verb chip, which goes back to Old English -cippian ‘cut’ (found only in compounds).

Here again, though, the record is incomplete; for the post-Old English verb does not turn up until the late 15th century, and then in the very specialized sense ‘cut the crust off bread’. The more general meaning ‘cut’ appears in the 17th century, but the modern ‘break off a small fragment’ is as late as the 18th century. All in all, a picture confused by lack of evidence. But probably the basic etymological sense that underlies all later usage is ‘cut off’ or ‘piece cut off’ (the early noun senses representing ‘branch or bough cut off a tree’). ‘Small piece of fried potato’ dates from the 1860s. (Old French borrowed the word as chipe, and a variant of this, chiffe ‘rag’, is the ultimate source of English chiffon [18].)
=> chiffon
chrome: chrome: [19] Compounds formed from the element chromium are brilliantly coloured green, red, and yellow. Hence, when it was first described by the French chemist Vauquelin in 1797, he named it chrome, after Greek khrōma ‘colour’. This was soon latinized to chromium, and chrome was henceforth used for chromium pigments or chromium plating. The Greek adjective derived from khrōma was khrōmatikós, which as well as referring to colour, denoted the gradations of notes in a musical scale; and it was in this musical sense that it was first borrowed into English in the 17th century.
conserve: conserve: [14] Latin servāre meant ‘keep, preserve’ (it was not related to servus ‘slave’, source of English serve and servant). Among the compounds formed from it were praeservāre ‘guard in advance’ and, using the intensive prefix com-, conservāre. This passed into English via Old French conserver. Amongst its derivatives are conservation [14], conservative [14] (first used in the modern political sense by J Wilson Croker in 1830), and conservatory [16] (whose French original, conservatoire, was reborrowed in the 18th century in the sense ‘musical academy’).
=> observe, preserve, reserve
coster: coster: [19] Coster is short for costermonger, a term dating from the 16th century. Since the 19th century, and perhaps before, it has been a general term in Britain, and particularly in London, for a street trader with a barrow or stall, but further back in time it meant ‘fruiterer’, and originally, more specifically still, a ‘seller of apples’. The first element, coster, was an alteration of costard, a word of Anglo-Norman origin for a type of large apple.

This was derived from coste ‘rib’ (a descendant of Latin costa, source of English coast), and the costard was apparently so called because of its prominent ‘ribs’. (Monger ‘dealer’ [OE], now used in English only in compounds, comes from a prehistoric Germanic *manggōjan, a borrowing from Latin mangō ‘dealer’.)
=> coast
detergent: detergent: [17] A detergent is literally something that ‘wipes away’. The word comes from dētergent-, the present participial stem of Latin dētergēre, a compound verb formed from dē- ‘away’ and tergēre ‘wipe’ (its past participle produced English terse). English detergent originally meant simply ‘cleansing agent’ (used particularly in a medical or surgical context); the specific application to a cleanser made from synthetic chemical compounds (as opposed to soap, which is made from fats and lye) is a 20thcentury development.
=> terse
ether: ether: [17] Greek aithér denoted the ‘upper atmosphere’, and by extension the ‘substance that permeated the cosmos’, from which the stars and planets were made. It was a derivative of the verb aíthein ‘ignite, blaze, shine’, a relative of Latin aestās ‘summer’, from which English gets aestivate [17]. It passed into English via Latin aethēr, and to begin with was used in its original Greek senses. Its application to the liquid with anaesthetic properties dates from the mid 18th century, the use of its first syllable in the names of organic compounds in the bicarbon series (such as ethyl and ethane) from the mid 19th century.
=> aestivate, ethyl
fir: fir: [14] As with many Indo-European tree-names, fir is a widespread term, but it does not mean the same thing wherever it occurs. Its prehistoric Indo-European ancestor was *perkos, which in Latin became quercus, the name for the ‘oak’. Nor was the application confined to southern Europe, for Swiss German has a related ferch ‘oak wood’. But by and large, the Germanic languages took the term over and applied it to the ‘pine’: German föhre, Swedish fura, and Danish fyr all mean ‘pine’.

So also did Old English furh (known only in the compound furhwudu ‘pinewood’), but this appears to have died out. It was replaced semantically by pine, but formally by Middle English firre, a borrowing from the Old Norse form fyri- (also known only in compounds). This was used as a name not for the ‘pine’, but for the ‘fir’ (which in Old English times had been called sæppe or gyr).
fowl: fowl: [OE] Fowl was the main term for ‘bird’ in the Old English period, but in Middle English it was gradually replaced by bird. (It remains in use in compounds, such as wildfowl and waterfowl, and is sometimes still applied to ‘chickens’.) It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *foglaz or *fuglaz, which also produced the still very much current German and Dutch vogel, Swedish fåagel, and Danish fugl, all signifying ‘bird’, and which may have been a derivative of the same source (*fleug-) as gave English fly – in which case fowl would mean literally ‘flying creature’.
=> fly
gynaecology: gynaecology: [19] The Greek word for ‘woman’ was guné. It has relatives in several modern Indo-European languages, including Swedish kvinna, Danish kvinde, Irish Gaelic bean, Welsh benyw, Czech zhena, Russian zhenshchina, Persian zan (whence ultimately English zenana ‘harem’ [18]), and the now obsolete English quean [OE], and goes back to Indo-European *gwen-.

The resumption of the study of Greek in the 16th century led to increasing adoption of compounds involving guné into English. The earliest recorded ones are gyneconome ‘member of a board of Athenian magistrates whose job was to ensure that women behaved properly’ [16] and gynocracy ‘rule by women’ [17]. Gynaecology is a comparative latecomer, not appearing before the 1840s.
=> queen, zenana
herd: herd: [OE] Herd is part of a widespread Indo- European family of words denoting ‘group’ (others include Sanskrit çárdhas ‘troop, multitude’ and Welsh cordd ‘tribe, family’). It goes back to an Indo-European *kherdhā-, whose Germanic descendant *kherthō produced German herde, Swedish and Danish hjord, and English herd. Herd ‘herdsman’, now found only in compounds such as shepherd and goatherd, is a different word, albeit derived from the same Germanic source. Its Germanic relatives are German hirte, Swedish herde, and Danish hyrde.
holy: holy: [OE] Holy originated as a derivative of the prehistoric Germanic adjective which produced modern English whole, and so its etymological meaning is perhaps ‘unimpaired, inviolate’. This ancestral form was *khailagaz, which diversified into German and Dutch heilig, Swedish helig, and Danish hellig as well as English holy. Hallow is essentially the same word, and compounds with holy as a now hidden component include hollyhock [13] as well as holiday.
=> hallow, holiday
incline: incline: [13] Latin -clīnāre (a relative of English lean, but itself only ever recorded in compounds) meant ‘bend, lean’. Add to this the prefix in- and you had inclīnāre ‘lean towards’. This was originally borrowed into English via Old French encliner as encline – a form which survived until the 17th century, when the latinized incline began to take over. The metaphorical use of the word to indicate a person’s disposition or preference dates back to Roman times.
=> lean
instead: instead: [13] Instead is the English end of a chain of loan translations that goes back to Latin in locō (in loan translations, the individual components of a foreign word or expression are translated into their equivalents in the borrowing language, and then reassembled). The Latin phrase meant literally ‘in place (of)’, and this was translated into Old French as en lieu de.

Middle English rendered the French expression in turn as in stead of or in the stead of (stead ‘place’, now obsolete except in certain fixed compounds and expressions, comes ultimately from the same Indo-European source as stand, station, etc). It began to be written as one word towards the end of the 16th century.
=> stand, station, statue, stead
lad: lad: [13] Lad originally meant ‘male of low status or social rank’, and hence ‘male servant’, but by the 14th century its progression to the presentday ‘young male’ was well under way. It is not known where it came from, but there seems to be a strong likelihood of a Scandinavian origin (Norwegian has -ladd in compounds referring to ‘(male) persons’).
metre: metre: [14] Greek métron meant ‘measure’: it came ultimately from the Indo-European base *me- ‘measure’, which also produced English measure, immense, etc. English originally acquired it, via Latin metrum and Old French metre, in the sense ‘measured rhythmic pattern of verse’. Then at the end of the 18th century French mètre was designated as the standard measure of length in the new metric system, and English reborrowed it as metre. Meter ‘measuring device’ [19] is probably a nominalization of the element -meter, occurring in such compounds as galvanometer [19], gasometer [18], and pedometer [18], which itself went back via French -mètre or modern Latin -metrum to Greek métron.
=> commensurate, immense, measure, mete
neuter: neuter: [14] From a formal point of view, Latin neuter is virtually identical to English neither. Both originated as compounds formed from a negative particle and an element meaning ‘which of two’. In the case of neuter these were ne and uter, which in combination denoted etymologically ‘neither one thing nor the other’. The specialized application to grammatical gender soon emerged, and it was in this sense that neuter was first adopted into English. The derivative neutral [16] goes back to Latin neutrālis.
new: new: [OE] New goes back a long way – to Indo- European *newos, in fact. This also produced Greek néos ‘new’ (source of English neophyte and a range of other neo- compounds), Latin novus ‘new’ (ancestor of French nouveau, Italian nuovo, and Spanish nuevo, and source of English novel, novice, etc), Welsh newydd ‘new’, Lithuanian naujas ‘new’, and Russian novyj. Its prehistoric Germanic descendant was *neujaz, which has fanned out into German neu, Dutch nieuw, Swedish and Danish ny, and English new. The use of the plural noun news for ‘information’ dates from the 15th century.
=> neon, novel, novice
orthodox: orthodox: [16] Greek orthós meant ‘straight, correct’ (it enters into numerous English compounds, including orthography ‘correct spelling’ [15] and orthopaedic [19]). Greek dóxa meant ‘opinion’; it was derived from the verb dokein ‘think’. Put them together and you got orthódoxos ‘having the right opinion’, which passed into English via ecclesiastical Latin orthodoxus.
peacock: peacock: [14] The original English name of the ‘peacock’ in the Anglo-Saxon period was pēa. This was borrowed from Latin pāvō, a word which appears to have been related to Greek taós ‘peacock’, and which also gave French paon, Italian pavone, and Spanish pavo ‘peacock’. The Old English word is presumed to have survived into Middle English, as *pe, although no record of it survives, and in the 14th century it was formed into the compounds peacock and peahen to distinguish the sexes. The non-sex-specific peafowl is a 19th-century coinage.
philosophy: philosophy: [14] Greek phílos (a word of uncertain origin) meant ‘loving’. It has entered into an enormous range of English compounds, including philander [17] (adopted from a Greek word meaning ‘loving men’), philanthropy [17], philately, and philology [17], not to mention all the terms suffixed with -phil or -phile, such as Anglophile [19] and paedophile [20]. Philosophy itself means etymologically ‘loving wisdom’. It comes via Old French filosofie and Latin philosophia from Greek philosophíā, whose second element was a derivative of sophós ‘wise’ (source of English sophisticate).
=> sophisticate
plastic: plastic: [16] Plastic is etymologically a ‘mouldable’ substance. The word comes via French plastique and Latin plasticus from Greek plastikós ‘fit for moulding’, a derivative of the verb plássein ‘mould’ (source also of English plasma [18] and plaster). Up until the 20th century its main use in English was as an adjective, meaning ‘pliable’. The first record of its use for a ‘synthetic material made from organic compounds’ comes from 1909. The trade-name Plasticine was coined from it in the 1890s.
=> plasma, plaster
pox: pox: [16] Pox originated as an alternation of pocks, the plural of pock [OE]. This originally denoted a ‘pustule’, and later the ‘scar left by such a pustule, pock-mark’. Pox used to be a common term for ‘syphilis’, but today it is mainly found in compounds such as chickenpox [18] (possibly a reference to the comparative mildness of the disease) and smallpox [16] (so called to distinguish it from the great pox, syphilis).
=> pock, pocket
protozoa: protozoa: [19] Greek prótos meant ‘first’ (like English first and Latin prīmus ‘first’ it goes back ultimately to Indo-European *pro ‘before, in front’). It forms the basis of a wide range of English words, both original Greek compounds and post-classical formations, among them protagonist [17] (etymologically the ‘first or leading actor’), protein, protocol, proton [20], protoplasm [19], and prototype [17]. Protozoa itself was coined in modern Latin by the zoologist Goldfuss in 1818 from proto- and Greek zóia ‘animals’ (source of English zoo), the notion being that the protozoa are the simplest or most primitive forms of life.
=> zoo
quarter: quarter: [13] Quarter is one of a large family of English words that go back ultimately to Latin quattuor ‘four’ and its relatives. Direct descendants of quattuor itself are actually fairly few – among them quatrain [16] and quatrefoil [15] (both via Old French). But its ordinal form quārtus ‘fourth’ has been most prolific: English is indebted to it for quart [14], quarter (via the Latin derivative quartārius ‘fourth part’), quartet [18], and quarto [16].

In compounds quattuor assumed the form quadr-, which has given English quadrangle [15] (and its abbreviation quad [19]), quadrant [14], quadratic [17], quadrille [18], quadruped [17], quadruplet [18] (also abbreviated to quad [19]), quarantine, quarrel ‘arrow’, not to mention the more heavily disguised cadre [19], carfax [14] (which means etymologically ‘four-forked’), squad, and square.

And the derivative quater ‘four times’ has contributed carillon [18] (etymologically a peal of ‘four’ bells), quaternary [15], and quire of paper [15] (etymologically a set of ‘four’ sheets of paper).
=> cadre, carfax, carillon, quad, quarrel, quarry, quire, squad, square
shepherd: shepherd: [OE] Shepherd is of course a compound of sheep and herd – but not herd ‘group of animals’. This is a different herd, meaning ‘herdsman’, which now survives only in compounds (cowherd and goatherd are other examples). It comes from the same Germanic source as herd ‘group of animals’.
=> herd, sheep
slang: slang: [18] Slang is a mystery word. It first appeared in underworld argot of the mid-18th century. It had a range of meanings – ‘cant’, ‘nonsense’, ‘line of business’, and, as a verb, ‘defraud’. Most of these have died out, but ‘cant’ is the lineal ancestor of the word’s modern meaning. It is not clear where it came from, although the use of the verb slang for ‘abuse’, and the expression slanging match ‘abusive argument’, suggest some connection with Norwegian dialect sleng- ‘offensive language’ (found only in compounds).
stone: stone: [OE] Stone is a general Germanic word, with relatives in German stein, Dutch steen, and Swedish and Danish sten. These all go back to a prehistoric *stainaz, which was derived from a base denoting ‘stiffness’ or ‘solidity’ (source also of Greek stía ‘pebble’ and stéar ‘stiff, fat’, Sanskrit styā- ‘stiffen’, and Serbo-Croat stijena ‘rock’). The use of the English term for a measure of weight, equal to fourteen pounds, dates from the 14th century.
stop: stop: [14] ‘Close an opening, plug’ is the original meaning of stop. It comes via Old English *stoppian (recorded only in compounds) from a prehistoric Germanic *stoppōn ‘plug up’ (source also of English stuff). The sense ‘halt’ emerged in Middle English from the notion of ‘preventing a flow by blocking a hole’.
=> stuff
sty: sty: English has two distinct words sty. The ‘pig enclosure’ [OE] is not recorded for certain as an independent word before the 13th century, but it occurs in compounds in Old English, and it is probably the same word as Old English stig ‘hall’ (source of English steward). It goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic *stijam. The sty on one’s eye [17] denotes etymologically a ‘swelling’.

It comes from the now defunct styany ‘sty’. This was misinterpreted as ‘sty-oneye’, but in fact it was a compound formed from Middle English styan ‘swelling’ (a descendant of the present participle of Old English stīgan ‘rise’, which is related to modern English stair and stirrup) and eye.
=> steward; eye, stair, stirrup
television: television: [20] Television means etymologically ‘far vision’. Its first element, tele-, comes from Greek téle ‘far off’, a descendant of the same base as télos ‘end’ (source of English talisman and teleology). Other English compounds formed from it include telegraph [18], telegram [19], telepathy [19] (etymologically ‘far feeling’, coined by the psychologist Frederic Myers in 1882), telephone [19], telescope [17] (a word of Italian origin), and telex [20] (a blend of teleprinter and exchange). Television itself was coined in French, and was borrowed into English in 1907.

Of its abbreviations, telly dates from about 1940, TV from 1948.
=> talisman, teleology
tit: tit: English has three separate words tit. The oldest, ‘breast’ [OE], belongs to a West Germanic family of terms for ‘breast’ or ‘nipple’ that also includes German zitze and Dutch tit: it presumably originated in imitation of a baby’s sucking sounds. From Germanic it was borrowed into the Romance languages, giving Italian tetta, Spanish teta, Romanian tata, and French tette.

The Old French ancestor of this, tete, gave English teat [13], which gradually replaced tit as the ‘polite’ term. (Titillate [17] may be ultimately related). Tit the bird [18] is short for titmouse [14]. This in turn was formed from an earlier and now defunct tit, used in compounds denoting ‘small things’ and probably borrowed from a Scandinavian language, and Middle English mose ‘titmouse’, which came from a prehistoric Germanic *maisōn (source also of German meise and Dutch mees ‘tit’).

And the tit [16] of tit for tat (which produced British rhyming slang titfer ‘hat’ [20]) originally denoted a ‘light blow, tap’, and was presumably of onomatopoeic origin. (The tit- of titbit [17], incidentally, is probably a different word. It was originally tid- – as it still is in American English – and it may go back ultimately to Old English tiddre ‘frail’.)
=> teat, titillate; titmouse
walrus: walrus: [17] Etymologically, a walrus is probably a ‘whale-horse’. The word seems to have been borrowed from Dutch walrus, which was an inversion of a presumed prehistoric Germanic compound represented by Old English horschwæl and Old Norse hrosshvalr. (The inversion may have been due to the influence of Dutch walvisch ‘whale’ – literally ‘whale-fish’ – but it could also owe something to French influence, since French noun compounds of this sort are often in the reverse order to corresponding Germanic ones.) The element wal- is clearly the same word as whale, and -rus is generally assumed to be horse.

It has, however, been suggested that the horsc- of the Old English term was an alteration of morsa, a name for the walrus of Lappish origin which is also the source of French morse ‘walrus’.
=> horse, whale
wise: wise: English has two distinct words wise, but they come from the same ultimate source: the Indo-European base *woid-, *weid-, *wid-. This denoted ‘see’, and hence ‘know’, and it also produced English idea, vision, and wit. From it was formed the past participial adjective *wīttos, which passed into prehistoric Germanic as *wīsaz ‘knowing things, learned’.

And this has since evolved into German weise, Dutch wijs, Swedish and Danish vis, and English wise. Wisdom [OE] and wizard are derivatives. Meanwhile, another derivative of the same prehistoric base was the Germanic noun *wīsōn, *wīsō, whose original meaning ‘appearance’ (going back to the ancestral ‘see’ of the base) had developed via ‘for, shape’ and ‘kind, sort’ to ‘way, manner’.

This produced German weise, Dutch wijze, Swedish and Danish vis (used largely in compounds and phrases), and English wise (similarly nowadays restricted mainly to compounds, such as likewise and otherwise). Guise is ultimately the same word, filtered through Old French.
=> guise, idea, vision, wit, wizard
work: work: [OE] Work is at the centre of a small family of English words that go back ultimately to Indo- European *werg-, *worg- ‘do, work’ (other members include energy, organ, and orgy). From this base was formed the noun *wergon, which passed into prehistoric Germanic as *werkam, and evolved from there into German and Dutch werk, Swedish verk, and English work. Wright ‘craftsman’ [OE] (which now survives only in compounds) comes from the same source (with the transposition of r and the vowel), as does wrought, originally the past participle of the verb work.
=> energy, organ, orgy, wright, wrought
aceto-: before vowels acet-, word-forming element from comb. form of acetic and generally indicating compounds from or related to acetic acid.
acquisition (n.): late 14c., "act of obtaining," from Old French acquisicion (13c.) or directly from Latin acquisitionem (nominative acquisitio), noun of action from past participle stem of acquirere "get in addition, accumulate," from ad- "extra" (see ad-) + quaerere "to seek to obtain" (see query (v.)). Meaning "thing obtained" is from late 15c. The vowel change of -ae- to -i- in Latin is due to a Latin phonetic rule involving unaccented syllables in compounds.
afar (adv.): contraction of Middle English of feor (late 12c.), on ferr (c. 1300), from Old English feor "far" (see far); the a- (1) in compounds representing both of and on (which in this use meant the same thing). Spelled afer in 14c.
alcohol (n.): 1540s (early 15c. as alcofol), "fine powder produced by sublimation," from Medieval Latin alcohol "powdered ore of antimony," from Arabic al-kuhul "kohl," the fine metallic powder used to darken the eyelids, from kahala "to stain, paint." The al- is the Arabic definite article, "the."

"Powdered cosmetic" was the earliest sense in English; definition broadened 1670s to "any sublimated substance, the pure spirit of anything," including liquids. Modern sense of "intoxicating ingredient in strong liquor" is first recorded 1753, short for alcohol of wine, which was extended to "the intoxicating element in fermented liquors." In organic chemistry, the word was extended 1850 to the class of compounds of the same type as this.
alkaloid (n.): 1831, from alkali (q.v.) + -oid. "A general term applied to basic compounds of vegetable origin, bitter in taste, and having powerful effects on the animal system" [Flood]. As an adjective by 1859.
alone (adj., adv.): c. 1300 contraction of all ane, from Old English all ana "unaccompanied, all by oneself," from all "all, wholly" (see all) + an "one" (see one). Similar compounds are found in German (allein) and Dutch (alleen).
amid (prep.): late 14c., from amidde (c. 1200), from Old English on middan "in the middle," from dative singular of midde "mid, middle" (see middle); the phrase evidently was felt as "in (the) middle" and thus followed by a genitive case, and if this had endured we would follow it today with of. (See amidst for further evolution along this line).

The same applies to equivalents in Latin (in medio) and Greek (en meso), both originally adjective phrases which evolved to take the genitive case. But in later Old English on middan also was treated as a preposition and followed by dative. Used in compounds from early 13c. (such as amidships, attested from 1690s and retaining the genitive, as the compounds usually did in early Middle English, suggesting this one is considerably older than the written record of it.)