英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

accolade [accolade 词源字典]: accolade: [17] Accolade goes back to an assumed Vulgar Latin verb *accollāre, meaning ‘put one’s arms round someone’s neck’ (collum is Latin for ‘neck’, and is the source of English collar). It put in its first recorded appearance in the Provençal noun acolada, which was borrowed into French as accolade and thence made its way into English. A memory of the original literal meaning is preserved in the use of accolade to refer to the ceremonial striking of a sword on a new knight’s shoulders; the main current sense ‘congratulatory expression of approval’ is a later development.
=> collar[accolade etymology, accolade origin, 英语词源]
accuse: accuse: [13] Accuse comes via Old French acuser from the Latin verb accūsāre, which was based on the noun causa ‘cause’ – but cause in the sense not of ‘something that produces a result’, but of ‘legal action’ (a meaning preserved in English cause list, for instance). Hence accūsāre was to ‘call someone to account for their actions’.

The grammatical term accusative [15] (denoting the case of the object of a verb in Latin and other languages) is derived ultimately from accūsāre, but it arose originally owing to a mistranslation. The Greek term for this case was ptósis aitiātiké ‘case denoting causation’ – a reasonable description of the function of the accusative. Unfortunately the Greek verb aitiásthai also meant ‘accuse’, and it was this sense that Latin grammarians chose to render when adopting the term.
=> cause, excuse
ache: ache: [OE] Of the noun ache and the verb ache, the verb came first. In Old English it was acan. From it was formed the noun, æce or ece. For many centuries, the distinction between the two was preserved in their pronunciation: in the verb, the ch was pronounced as it is now, with a /k/ sound, but the noun was pronounced similarly to the letter H, with a /ch/ sound.

It was not until the early 19th century that the noun came regularly to be pronounced the same way as the verb. It is not clear what the ultimate origins of ache are, but related forms do exist in other Germanic languages (Low German āken, for instance, and Middle Dutch akel), and it has been conjectured that there may be some connection with the Old High German exclamation (of pain) ah.
ado: ado: [14] In origin, ado (like affair) means literally ‘to do’. This use of the preposition at (ado = at do) is a direct borrowing from Old Norse, where it was used before the infinitive of verbs, where English would use to. Ado persisted in this literal sense in northern English dialects, where Old Norse influence was strong, well into the 19th century, but by the late 16th century it was already a noun with the connotations of ‘activity’ or ‘fuss’ which have preserved it (alongside the indigenous to-do) in modern English.
=> do
aesthetic: aesthetic: [18] In strict etymological terms, aesthetic relates to perception via the senses. It comes ultimately from the Greek verb aísthesthai ‘perceive’ (which is related to Latin audīre ‘hear’), and this meaning is preserved in anaesthetic, literally ‘without feeling’. The derived adjective aisthētikós reached Western Europe via modern Latin aesthēticus, and was first used (in its Germanized form ästhetisch) in the writings of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).

Here, it retained its original sense, ‘perceptual’, but its use by A T Baumgarten as the title (Æsthetica) of a work on the theory of beauty in art (1750) soon led to its adoption in its now generally accepted meaning.
=> audible, audition
age: age: [13] Age has undergone considerable transmutations and abbreviations since its beginnings in Latin. Its immediate source in English is Old French aage, which was the product of a hypothetical Vulgar Latin form *aetāticum (the t is preserved in Provençal atge). This was based on Latin aetāt- (stem of aetās), which was a shortening of aevitās, which in turn came from aevum ‘lifetime’.

This entered English in more recognizable form in medieval, primeval, etc; it is related to Greek aión ‘age’, from which English gets aeon [17], and it can be traced back to the same root that produced (via Old Norse eí) the now archaic adverb ay(e) ‘ever’ (as in ‘will aye endure’).
=> aeon, aye
along: along: [OE] The a- in along is related to the prefix anti-, and the original notion contained in the word is of ‘extending a long way in the opposite direction’. This was the force of Old English andlang, a compound formed from and- ‘against, facing’ (whose original source was Greek anti- ‘against’) and lang ‘long’. The meaning gradually changed via simply ‘extending a long way’, through ‘continuous’ and ‘the whole length of something’ to ‘lengthwise’.

At the same time the and- prefix was gradually losing its identity: by the 10th century the forms anlong and onlong were becoming established, and the 14th century saw the beginnings of modern English along. But there is another along entirely, nowadays dialectal. Used in the phrase along of ‘with’ (as in ‘Come along o’me!’), it derives from Old English gelong ‘pertaining, dependent’.

This was a compound formed from the prefix ge-, suggesting suitability, and long, of which the notions of ‘pertaining’ and ‘appropriateness’ are preserved in modern English belong.
=> long
archetype: archetype: [17] Archetype comes, via Latin archetypum, from Greek arkhétupon, a nominal use of the adjective arkhétupos, literally ‘firstmoulded’, from túpos ‘mould, model, type’. The Greek prefix arkhe- was based on the noun arkhos ‘chief, ruler’, a derivative of the verb arkhein ‘begin, rule’ (see ARCHIVES). It first entered our language (via Latin archi-) in the Old English period, as arce- (archbishop was an early compound formed with it); and it was reborrowed in the Middle English period from Old French arche-.

Its use has gradually extended from ‘highest in status’ and ‘first of its kind’ to ‘the ultimate – and usually the worst – of its kind’, as in archcraitor. Its negative connotations lie behind its eventual development, in the 17th century, into an independent adjective, first as ‘cunning, crafty’, later as ‘saucy, mischievous’. The same Greek root has provided English with the suffixes -arch and -archy (as in monarch, oligarchy); but here the original meaning of ‘ruling’ has been preserved much more stably.
=> archaic, archives
attempt: attempt: [14] Attempting is etymologically related to tempting. The Latin verb attemptāre was formed with the prefix ad- from temptāre, which meant ‘try’ as well as ‘tempt’ (the semantic connection is preserved in modern English try, with the contrasting senses ‘attempt’ and ‘put to the test’). The Latin form passed into Old French as atenter (hence modern French attenter), but was later latinized back to attempter, the form in which English acquired it.
=> tempt
bachelor: bachelor: [13] The ultimate origins of bachelor are obscure, but by the time it first turned up, in Old French bacheler (from a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *baccalāris), it meant ‘squire’ or ‘young knight in the service of an older knight’. This was the sense it had when borrowed into English, and it is preserved, in fossilized form, in knight bachelor. Subsequent semantic development was via ‘university graduate’ to, in the late 14th century, ‘unmarried man’.

A resemblance to Old Irish bachlach ‘shepherd, peasant’ (a derivative of Old Irish bachall ‘staff’, from Latin baculum, source of English bacillus and related to English bacteria) has led some to speculate that the two may be connected. English baccalaureate [17] comes via French baccalauréat or medieval Latin baccalaureātus from medieval Latin baccalaureus ‘bachelor’, which was an alteration of an earlier baccalārius, perhaps owing to an association with the ‘laurels’ awarded for academic success (Latin bacca lauri meant literally ‘laurel berry’).
bath: bath: [OE] Bath is a word widely dispersed among the Germanic languages (German has bad, as does Swedish). Like the others, Old English bæth goes back to a hypothetical Germanic *batham, which perhaps derives from the base *ba- (on the suffix -th see BIRTH). If this is so, it would be an indication (backed up by other derivatives of the same base, such as bake, and cognate words such as Latin fovēre ‘heat’, source of English foment) that the original notion contained in the word was of ‘heat’ rather than ‘washing’.

This is preserved in the steam bath and the Turkish bath. The original verbal derivative was bathe, which goes back to Germanic *bathōn (another derivative of which, Old Norse batha, had a reflexive form bathask, which probably lies behind English bask); use of bath as a verb dates from the 15th century.
=> bask, bathe
beam: beam: [OE] In Old English times the word bēam (like modern German baum) meant ‘tree’ – a signification preserved in tree-names such as hornbeam and whitebeam. But already before the year 1000 the extended meanings we are familiar with today – ‘piece of timber’ and ‘ray of light’ – had started to develop. Related forms in other Germanic languages (which include, as well as German baum, Dutch boom, from which English gets boom ‘spar’ [16]) suggest a West Germanic ancestor *bauma, but beyond that all is obscure.
=> boom
bend: bend: [OE] English band, bind, bond, and bundle are closely allied: all go back to a prehistoric Germanic base *band-. The relationship in meaning was, in the case of bend, more obvious in Old English times, when bendan meant ‘tie up’ as well as ‘curve’ (a sense preserved in the modern English noun bend ‘knot’, as in carrick bend).

The rather strange-seeming meaning development appears to have come about as follows: bend in the sense ‘tie, constrain’ was used for the pulling of bow-strings, with reference to the strain or tension thereby applied to the bow; the natural consequence of this was of course that the bow curved, and hence (although not until the late 13th century) bend came to be used for ‘curve’.
=> band, bind, bond, bundle
bloat: bloat: [13] Bloat has a confused and uncertain history. It seems first to have appeared on the scene in the 13th century as an adjective, blout, meaning ‘soft, flabby’, a probable borrowing from Old Norse blautr ‘soft from being cooked with liquid’. This occurs only once, and does not resurface until the early 17th century, in Hamlet as it happens, as blowt: ‘Let the blowt king tempt you again to bed’.

This appears to be the same word as turns up slightly later in the century as bloat, its meaning showing signs of changing from ‘flabby’ to ‘puffed up’. Then in the 1660s we encounter bloated ‘puffed up, swollen’, which paved the way for the verb bloat, first recorded in the 1670s. It is not clear whether bloater [19] comes from the same source. Its linguistic ancestor is the bloat herring [16], which may perhaps have been given its name on the grounds that herrings preserved by light smoking are plumper than those fully dried.
bowel: bowel: [13] Bowel comes via Old French buel or bouel from Latin botellus ‘small intestine, sausage’, a diminutive form of botulus ‘sausage’. The term botulism ‘food poisoning’ was coined on the basis that the toxin responsible for it was originally found in sausages and other preserved meats.
=> botulism
box: box: English has two distinct words box. The ‘receptacle’ [OE] probably comes from late Latin buxis, a variant of Latin pyxis (whence English pyx ‘container for Communion bread’ [14]). This was borrowed from Greek puxís, which originally meant not simply ‘box’, but specifically ‘box made of wood’; for it was a derivative of Greek púxos, which via Latin buxus has given English box the tree [OE]. Box ‘fight with the fists’ first appeared in English as a noun, meaning ‘blow’ [14], now preserved mainly in ‘a box round the ears’.

Its ancestry is uncertain: it may be related to Middle Dutch bōke and Danish bask ‘blow’, or it could simply be an obscure metaphorical extension of box ‘receptacle’.
=> pyx
camera: camera: [18] Latin camera originally meant ‘vaulted room’ (a sense preserved in the Radcliffe Camera, an 18th-century building housing part of Oxford University library, which has a vaulted roof). It came from Greek kamárā ‘vault, arch’, which is ultimately related to English chimney. In due course the meaning ‘vaulted room’ became weakened to simply ‘room’, which reached English, via Old French chambre, as chamber, and is preserved in the legal Latin phrase in camera ‘privately, in judge’s chambers’.

In the 17th century, an optical instrument was invented consisting of a small closed box with a lens fixed in one side which produced an image of external objects on the inside of the box. The same effect could be got in a small darkened room, and so the device was called a camera obscura ‘dark chamber’. When the new science of photography developed in the 19th century, using the basic principle of the camera obscura, camera was applied to the picture-forming box.
=> chamber, chimney
carry: carry: [14] For such a basic and common word, carry has a surprisingly brief history. It does not go back to some prehistoric Indo-European root, but was formed less than 1000 years ago in Anglo-Norman or Old Northern French, on the basis of carre or car (immediate source of English car). The verb carier thus meant literally ‘transport in a wheeled vehicle’. This sense was carried over into English, and though it has since largely given way to the more general ‘convey’, it is preserved in the derivative carriage, in such expressions as ‘carriage paid’.
=> car, carriage
catholic: catholic: [14] Etymologically, the Catholic Church is the universal church, comprising all Christians. For catholic comes ultimately from a Greek word, katholikós, meaning ‘relating to all, general’. It was a derivative of kathólou, a compound formed from katá ‘relating to’ and hólos ‘whole’ (source of English holism and holistic). It passed into English via Old French catholique or ecclesiastical Latin catholicus. Its original meaning is preserved today in such contexts as ‘catholic tastes’ – that is, ‘wideranging tastes’.
=> holistic
cheap: cheap: [16] The adjectival use of cheap in English is quite recent, but the word itself goes back a long way. Its ultimate source is the Latin noun caupō ‘tradesman’, which was borrowed into Germanic in prehistoric times. Among its descendants were German kaufen ‘buy’, Old English cēapian ‘trade’ (the possible source of chop, as in ‘chop and change’), and the Old English noun cēap ‘trade’.

In Middle English times this came to be used in such phrases as good chepe, meaning ‘good bargain’, and by the 16th century an adjectival sense ‘inexpensive’ had developed. The original sense ‘trade’ is preserved in the personal name Chapman, which until the 19th century was an ordinary noun meaning ‘trader’ (it is the source of chap ‘fellow’).
=> chap, chop
choir: choir: [13] Modern choirs merely sing, but far back in time they danced too. The word comes ultimately from Greek khorós, which in ancient Greek drama signified a group of singers and dancers who commented on the action of the play (the element of dance is preserved in choreography). In Latin, khorós became chorus – whence English chorus [16], choral, and probably also carol. The Latin form in turn developed to Old French quer, in which form it was borrowed into English; the spelling choir, modelled on Latin and the modern French form choeur, was introduced in the 17th century.
=> carol, choreography, chorus
clear: clear: [13] Clear comes via Old French cler from Latin clārus (source also of English claret and clarion [14]). It has been suggested that clārus is related to calāre ‘call out’ (whence English council). Latin derivatives that have come down to English are clārificāre, from which English gets clarify [14], and clāritās, whence English clarity [16]. The Middle English spelling of the adjective is preserved in clerestory ‘upper storey of a church’ [15] (so named from its being ‘bright’ or ‘lighted’ with numerous windows).
=> claim, claret, clarion, clarity, clerestory, declare, low
clerk: clerk: [11] Clerk and its relatives cleric and clergy owe their existence ultimately to a Biblical reference, in Deuteronomy xviii 2, to the Levites, members of an Israelite tribe whose men were assistants to the Temple priests: ‘Therefore shall they have no inheritance among their brethren: the Lord is their inheritance’. Greek for ‘inheritance’ is klēros, and so it came about that matters relating to the Christian ministry were denoted in late Greek by the derived adjective klērikós.

This passed into ecclesiastical Latin as clēricus, which was originally borrowed into late Old English as cleric or clerc, later reinforced by Old French clerc to give modern English clerk. Its presentday bureaucratic connotations, which emerged in the 16th century, go back to an earlier time when members of the clergy were virtually the only people who could read or write.

However, religious associations have of course been preserved in cleric [17], from ecclesiastical Latin clēricus, and clergy [13], a blend of Old French clergie (a derivative of clerc) and clerge (from the ecclestiastical Latin derivative clēricātus). The compound clergyman is 16th century.
=> cleric, clergy
client: client: [14] The original status of a client was rather lowly: he was someone who was at another’s beck and call, and dependent on them. The word comes from Latin cliēns, an alteration of an earlier cluēns, the present participle of the verb cluēre ‘listen, follow, obey’; hence someone who was cliēns was always listening out for another’s orders, unable to take independent action (in ancient Rome it meant specifically a plebeian under the protection of a nobleman).

That sense is preserved in such English expressions as ‘client state’. The word’s more modern senses have developed through ‘person on whose behalf a lawyer acts’ in the 15th century to simply ‘customer’ in the 17th century.
coat: coat: [13] Coat seems originally to have signified a sort of short close-fitting cloth tunic with sleeves, worn by men. Over the centuries fashion has lengthened the garment, and its male exclusivity has disappeared (originally, as a woman’s garment a coat was a skirt, a sense preserved in petticoat). The word is of Germanic origin (it has been traced back to Frankish *kotta), but it reached English via Old French cote.
cohort: cohort: [15] Etymologically, cohort is an ‘enclosed yard’. It comes via Old French cohorte from Latin cohors, a compound noun formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and an element hortwhich also appears in Latin hortus ‘garden’ (source of English horticulture) and is related to English garden, yard, and the second element of orchard.

From the underlying sense of ‘enclosed place’ it came to be applied to a crowd of people in such a place, and then more specifically to an infantry company in the Roman army. Its meaning has spread figuratively in English to ‘band of associates or accomplices’, whose frequent use in the plural led to the misapprehension that a single cohort was an ‘associate’ or ‘accomplice’ – a usage which emerged in American English in the mid 20th century.

The original form of the Latin word is well preserved in cohort, but it has also reached us, more thickly disguised, as court.
=> court, garden, horticulture, orchard, yard
coin: coin: [14] Latin cuneus meant ‘wedge’ (from it we get cuneiform ‘wedge-shaped script’). It passed into Old French as coing or coin, where it developed a variety of new meanings. Primary amongst these was ‘corner-stone’ or ‘corner’, a sense preserved in English mainly in the now archaic spelling quoin. But also, since the die for stamping out money was often wedge-shaped, or operated in the manner of a wedge, it came to be referred to as a coin, and the term soon came to be transferred to the pieces of money themselves.
=> quoin
convenient: convenient: [14] Convenient comes from Latin conveniēns, the present participle of convenire ‘come together, be suitable, agree’, a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and venire ‘come’ (a distant relative of English come). Convenient reflects the more figurative of convenire’s meanings, as ultimately does covenant, but its original literal sense ‘assemble’ is preserved in convene [15], convention [15], convent, and coven.
=> convent, convention, coven, covenant, venue
corn: corn: [OE] The underlying sense of corn is of grinding down into small particles. The word comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *ger-, which meant ‘wear away’. From it was derived *grnóm ‘worn-down particle’, which in Latin produced grānum (source of English grain) and in prehistoric Germanic produced *kurnam, which developed into Old English corn.

Already in Germanic times the word had developed in meaning from simply ‘particle’ to ‘small seed’ and specifically ‘cereal grain’, but English corn was not of course applied to ‘maize’ before that plant came to Europe from America in the 16th century. The original sense ‘particle’ survives in corned beef, where corned refers to the grains of salt with which the meat is preserved.

The meaning ‘hackneyed or sentimental matter’ is a 20th-century development, based on the supposedly unsophisticated life of country areas. Kernel comes from an Old English diminutive form of corn. Corn ‘hardening of the skin’ [15] is a completely different word, coming via Anglo- Norman corn from Latin cornū ‘horn’.
=> grain; horn
council: council: [12] Etymologically, a council is a body that has been ‘called together’ or ‘summoned’. Latin concilium meant ‘assembly, meeting’; it was formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and calāre ‘call, summon’. It passed into English via Anglo-Norman cuncile. It has no direct etymological connection with counsel, but the two are so similar that their meanings have tended to merge at various points down the centuries. Latin concilium also formed the basis of the verb conciliāre, which originally meant ‘bring together, unite’. Its metaphorical sense ‘make more friendly, win over’ is preserved in English conciliate [16].
=> conciliate
count: count: There are two distinct words count in English. Count ‘enumerate’ [14] comes ultimately from Latin computāre ‘calculate’ (source of English compute). It came into English from Old French conter, which had, via the notion of ‘adding up and rendering an account’, developed the sense ‘tell a story’ (preserved in English in the derivatives account and recount).

The derivative counter [14] began life as medieval Latin computātōrium ‘place of accounts’, and entered English via Anglo- Norman counteour. Its modern sense ‘surface for transactions in a shop’ does not seem to have become firmly established until the early 19th century, although it was applied to similar objects in banks from the late 17th century. The noble title count [16] comes via Old French conte from Latin comes, which originally meant ‘companion, attendant’ (it was a compound noun, formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and īre ‘go’, and so its underlying etymological meaning is ‘one who goes with another’).

In the Roman empire it was used for the governor of a province, and in Anglo- Norman it was used to translate English earl. It has never been used as an English title, but the feminine form countess was adopted for the wife of an earl in the 12th century (and viscount was borrowed from Anglo-Norman viscounte in the 14th century). The Latin derivative comitātus was originally a collective noun denoting a ‘group of companions’, but with the development of meaning in comes it came to mean first ‘office of a governor’ and latterly ‘area controlled by a governor’.

In England, this area was the ‘shire’, and so county [14], acquired via Anglo-Norman counte, came to be a synonym for ‘shire’. Another descendant of Latin comes is concomitant [17], from the present participle of late Latin concomitārī.
=> account, compute, putative, recount; concomitant, county
crayfish: crayfish: [14] The crayfish is related etymologically as well as biologically to the crab. The Old High German word for ‘crab’ was krebiz (source of modern German krebs). This was borrowed into Old French as crevice (modern French has preserved the variant form écrevisse), and transmitted to Middle English as crevis. Association of the final syllable with fish led by the 16th century to its transformation to crayfish (a variant Middle English form cravis became crawfish).
=> crab, crawfish
crazy: crazy: [16] Crazy originally meant literally ‘cracked’ (a sense preserved in the related crazed). This soon came to be extended metaphorically to ‘frail, ill’ (as in Shakespeare’s ‘some better place, fitter for sickness and crazy age’, 1 Henry VI), and thence to ‘mentally unbalanced’. It was derived from the verb craze [14], which was probably borrowed from an unrecorded Old Norse verb *krasa ‘shatter’ (likely source, too, of French écraser ‘crush, smash’).
cure: cure: [13] The Latin noun cūra ‘care’ has fathered a wide range of English words. On their introduction to English, via Old French, both the noun and the verb cure denoted ‘looking after’, but it was not long before the specific sense ‘medical care’ led to ‘successful medical care’ – that is, ‘healing’ (the Latin verb cūrāre could mean ‘cure’ too, but this sense seems not to have survived into Old French).

The notion of ‘looking after’ now scarcely survives in cure itself, but it is preserved in the derived nouns curate [14] (and its French version curé [17]), who looks after souls, and curator [14]. The Latin adjective cūriōsus originally meant ‘careful’, a sense preserved through Old French curios into English curious [14] but defunct since the 18th century.

The secondary sense ‘inquisitive’ developed in Latin, but it was not until the word reached Old French that the meaning ‘interesting’ emerged. Curio [19] is an abbreviation of curiosity [14], probably modelled on Italian nouns of the same form. Curette [18] and its derivative curettage [19] were both formed from the French verb curer, in the sense ‘clean’.

Other English descendants of Latin cūra include scour, secure, and sinecure.
=> curate, curious, scour, secure, sinecure
damage: damage: [14] Damage comes from Latin damnum ‘loss, damage’ (source of English damn). It passed into Old French as dam, from which was formed the derivative damage. English borrowed and has preserved the Old French form, but in modern French it has become dommage. Besides damn, another English relative is indemnity [15], ultimately from Latin indemnis ‘undamaged’.
=> damn, indemnity
danger: danger: [13] Etymologically, danger is a parallel formation to dominion. It comes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *domniārium ‘power or sway of a lord, dominion, jurisdiction’, a derivative of Latin dominus ‘lord, master’. English acquired the word via Old French dangier and Anglo- Norman daunger, retaining the word’s original sense until the 17th century (‘You stand within his [Shylock’s] danger, do you not?’ says Portia to Antonio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice).

But things had been happening to its meaning in Old French, particularly in the phrase estre en dangier ‘be in danger’. The notions of being in someone’s danger (that is, ‘in his power, at his mercy’) and of being in danger of something (that is, ‘liable to something unpleasant, such as loss or punishment’ – a sense preserved in the 1611 translation of the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment’, Matthew 5:22) led directly to the sense ‘peril’, acquired by English in the 14th century.
=> dame, dome, dominate, dominion, dungeon
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).
deaf: deaf: [OE] Ultimately, deaf and dumb come from the same source, and moreover they are related to a Greek word for ‘blind’. The common denominator ‘sensory or mental impairment’ goes back to an Indo-European base *dheubh-, which denoted ‘confusion, stupefaction, dizziness’. It produced Greek tuphlós ‘blind’; English dumb; and a prehistoric Germanic adjective *daubaz ‘dull, stupefied, slow’.

Many of the modern descendants of *daubaz retain this general sense – Danish doven means ‘lazy’ – but English has specialized it to ‘dull in hearing’. Duffer may ultimately be derived from Old Norse daufr ‘deaf’ in which the sense ‘dull, stupid’ is preserved.
=> duffer, dumb
direct: direct: [14] English acquired direct from dīrectus, the past participle of Latin dīrigere ‘arrange in distinct lines’, hence ‘straighten, guide’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and regere ‘guide, rule’ (source of English regent, region, etc). The first recorded use of the verb in English was ‘write something and send it to a particular person’, a sense now preserved more specifically in the related address. (Also ultimately from Latin dīrigere is dirigible ‘steerable airship’ [19], a borrowing from French dirigeable; this was a derivative of diriger, the French descendant of dīrigere.)
=> address, dirigible, dress, regent, region
ditch: ditch: [OE] Like its close relative dyke [13], ditch probably comes ultimately from a long-lost language once spoken on the shores of the Baltic. Its source-word seems to have represented an all-embracing notion of ‘excavation’, including not just the hole dug but also the mound formed from the excavated earth (which perhaps supports the suggestion that dig belongs to the same word-family). This dichotomy of sense is preserved in dyke, whose original meaning, from Old Norse dík, was ‘ditch’, but which came in the 15th century to denote ‘embankment’ (probably under the influence of Middle Dutch dijc ‘dam’).
=> dig, dyke
doom: doom: [OE] Doom derives ultimately from *dō-, the Germanic base from which the verb do comes. This originally meant ‘put, place’, and so Germanic *dōmaz signified literally ‘that which is put’. By the time it reached Old English as dōm a more concrete sense ‘law, decree, judgment’ had developed (this lies behind the compound doomsday ‘day of judgment’ [OE], whose early Middle English spelling has been preserved in Domesday book). The modern sense ‘(evil) fate’ first appeared in the 14th century.
=> deem, do
dote: dote: [13] English may have borrowed dote from Middle Dutch doten ‘be silly’, but its ultimate origins are not known. To begin with it meant ‘be silly’ in English too (a sense now mainly preserved in its various derivatives), and ‘show excessive fondness’ did not develop until the 15th century. Related forms include dotage [14], where the notion of ‘simple-mindedness due to senility’ (implicit in the verb from earliest times) has passed to simply ‘senility’; dotterel [15], the name of a sort of plover, supposedly so called because it was foolish enough to allow itself to get caught; and dotty [19], an alteration of Scottish English dottle ‘fool’, which was a derivative of dote.
=> dotage, dotterel, dotty
drab: drab: [16] Drab is a variant of the now obsolete form drap, which was borrowed from Old French drap ‘cloth’ (source also of English drape, draper, and trappings). It was originally a noun meaning ‘cloth’ in English too, but the beginnings of its transition to the modern English adjective meaning ‘faded and dull’ can be seen in the 17th century.

The word came to be used particularly for natural undyed cloth, of a dull yellowish-brown colour, and hence for the colour itself (an application best preserved in the olive-drab colour of American service uniforms). The figurative development to ‘dull and faded’ is a comparatively recent one, first recorded a little over a hundred years ago.
=> drape, trappings
drake: drake: English has two words drake, but the older, ‘dragon’ [OE] (which comes via prehistoric West Germanic *drako from Latin dracō, source of English dragon), has now more or less disappeared from general use (it is still employed for a sort of fishing fly). Drake ‘male duck’ [13] probably goes back to (another) prehistoric West Germanic *drako, preserved also in the second element of German enterich ‘male duck’.
=> dragon
dusk: dusk: [OE] In Anglo-Saxon times, dusk was an adjective meaning ‘dark in colour’ (a sense preserved today in the derived adjective dusky [16]). Its modern noun use ‘twilight’ is not recorded until as recently as the early 17th century. The Old English form of the word was dox, which was descended from the same ultimate Indo-European ancestor as Latin fuscus ‘dark’ (source of English obfuscate [16]).
=> dun, obfuscale
ejaculate: ejaculate: [16] Etymologically, ejaculate means ‘dart out’. It comes from Latin ejaculārī, a compound verb formed ultimately from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and jaculum ‘dart, javelin’. This in turn was a derivative of jacere ‘throw’ (which itself combined with ex- to form ejicere, source of English eject [15]). The word’s original sense ‘throw out suddenly’ survived (or perhaps has revived) for a time in English, but essentially it has been for its metaphorical uses (‘emit semen’ and ‘exclaim’) that it has been preserved.
=> eject, jesses, jet, object, reject, subject
emotion: emotion: [16] The semantic notion underlying emotion – of applying ‘physical movement’ metaphorically to ‘strong feeling’ – is an ancient one: Latin used the phrase mōtus animā, literally ‘movement of the spirit’, in this sense. Emotion itself is a post-classical Latin formation; it comes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *exmovēre, literally ‘move out’, hence ‘excite’, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and movēre ‘move’ (source of English move).

In French this became émouvoir, and English borrowed its derived noun émotion, but at first used it only in the literal sense ‘moving, agitation’ (‘The waters continuing in the caverns … caused the emotion or earthquake’, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society 1758) and the metaphorically extended ‘political agitation or disturbance’ (a sense now preserved only in émeute [19], another derivative of French émouvoir).

It was not until the late 17th century that the sense ‘strong feeling’ really came to the fore. The back-formation emote is a 20th-century phenomenon, of US origin.
=> émeute, move
exact: exact: [15] The adjective exact ‘precise’ and the verb exact ‘demand with severity’ have undergone considerable semantic divergence over the centuries, but they both go back to the same source, the Latin verb exigere (from which English also got essay, examine, exigent [15], and exiguous [17]). This, a compound of the prefix ex- ‘out’ and agere ‘lead, drive’ (source of English act and agent), meant originally ‘drive out’, but in due course it developed the metaphorical senses ‘demand’ (preserved in the English verb), ‘weigh accurately’, and ‘bring to completion or perfection’.

These last two were taken up adjectivally in the Latin past participle exactus, from which English gets exact.
=> act, agent, essay, examine
excuse: excuse: [13] Etymologically, excuse means ‘free of accusation’. It comes via Old French from Latin excūsāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex-, denoting removal, and causa ‘cause’ – but ‘cause’ in the sense not of something that produces a result, but of ‘legal action, accusation’ (a meaning preserved in English ‘cause list’, for example) Originally, the s of both the noun and the verb was pronounced /z/; the /s/ of the modern English noun arose by analogy with such nouns as use and abuse.
=> accuse, cause
experience: experience: [14] Experience, experiment [14], and expert [14] all come from the same source, Latin experīrī. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and a prehistoric base *per- denoting ‘attempt, trial’ (found also in English empirical, peril, pirate, and repertory), and meant ‘try, test’. The original meaning is best preserved in experiment, but in fact experience too meant at first ‘putting to the test’ in English.

From this developed the notion of ‘actually observing phenomena in order to gain knowledge of them’, which in turn led to the more subjective ‘condition of having undergone or been affected by a particular event’. The sense ‘knowledge or skill gained from such observation or from undergoing such events’ did not, however, emerge until the late 15th century. Expert was originally only an adjective, meaning ‘having experience of something’, or ‘trained by such experience’; its use as a noun only developed in the 19th century.
=> empirical, experiment, expert, peril, pirate, repertory