英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

barge: barge: [13] Barge comes in the first instance from Old French barge, but speculation has pushed it further back to medieval Latin *barica, which would have derived from báris, a Greek word for an Egyptian boat. This hypothetical *barica would have been a by-form of late Latin barca, which came into English via Old French as barque, also spelled bark, ‘sailing vessel’ [15] (source of embark). The metaphorical use of the verb barge, ‘move clumsily or rudely’, is barely a hundred years old; it comes from the ponderous progress made by barges.
=> bark, barque, embark
satiate: satiate: [16] Like satisfy, satiate comes from Latin satis ‘enough’, a descendant of the same Indo-European base that produced English sad and sated. Satis formed the basis of a verb satiāre ‘give enough or too much’, which was originally taken over by English in the former of these senses, virtually the equivalent of satisfy, but since the 17th century this has been gradually pushed aside by the more opprobrious ‘give too much, surfeit’. From the same source come satiable [16] and satiety [16].
=> sad, sated, satisfy
sky: sky: [13] Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called the sky heofon ‘heaven’. Not until the early Middle English period did heaven begin to be pushed aside by sky, a borrowing from Old Norse ský ‘cloud’. This came ultimately from an Indo- European base meaning ‘cover’, which also produced Latin obscūrus, source of English obscure [14]. (For a while English continued to use sky for ‘cloud’ as well as for ‘sky’: the medieval Scots poet William Dunbar wrote, ‘When sable all the heaven arrays with misty vapours, clouds, and skies’.)
=> obscure
stoke: stoke: [17] Stoke is a back-formation from stoker [17], which was borrowed from Dutch stoker. This in turn was derived from the verb stoken ‘put fuel into a furnace’, a descendant of Middle Dutch stoken ‘push, poke’. And stoken came from a prehistoric Germanic base *stok-, a variant of *stik-, *stek- ‘pierce, prick’, from which English gets stick, stitch, etc. So the etymological meaning underlying stoke is of ‘thrusting’ fuel into a fire like a sharp instrument being pushed into something.
=> stick, stitch
truckle: truckle: [15] A truckle is a ‘small wooden wheel or caster’. The word was originally used for a ‘pulley’ (an application which has now largely died out), and it was borrowed from Anglo- Norman trocle. This in turn came via Latin trochlea ‘system of pulleys’ (source of English trochlea [17], an anatomical term for a ‘structure resembling a pulley’) from Greek trokhilíā ‘pulley, system of pulleys, roller, etc’. Trucklebed was a term applied to a sort of low bed on casters that could be pushed under a larger bed when not in use, and the notion of sleeping in the truckle-bed, ‘beneath’ someone in the higher main bed, led in the 17th century to the use of truckle as a verb meaning ‘be subservient’.
=> trochlea, truck
avant-garde (n.): (also avant garde, avantgarde); French, literally "advance guard" (see avant + guard (n.)). Used in English 15c.-18c. in a literal, military sense; borrowed again 1910 as an artistic term for "pioneers or innovators of a particular period." Also used around the same time in communist and anarchist publications. As an adjective, by 1925.
The avant-garde générale, avant-garde stratégique, or avant-garde d'armée is a strong force (one, two, or three army corps) pushed out a day's march to the front, immediately behind the cavalry screen. Its mission is, vigorously to engage the enemy wherever he is found, and, by binding him, to ensure liberty of action in time and space for the main army. ["Sadowa," Gen. Henri Bonnal, transl. C.F. Atkinson, 1907]
coney (n.): c. 1200, from Anglo-French conis, plural of conil "long-eared rabbit" (Lepus cunicula) from Latin cuniculus (source of Spanish conejo, Portuguese coelho, Italian coniglio), the small, Spanish variant of the Italian hare (Latin lepus), the word perhaps from Iberian Celtic (classical writers say it is Spanish).

Rabbit arose 14c. to mean the young of the species, but gradually pushed out the older word 19c., after British slang picked up coney as a punning synonym for cunny "cunt" (compare connyfogle "to deceive in order to win a woman's sexual favors"). The word was in the King James Bible [Prov. xxx:26, etc.], however, so it couldn't be entirely dropped, and the solution was to change the pronunciation of the original short vowel (rhyming with honey, money) to rhyme with boney. In the Old Testament, the word translates Hebrew shaphan "rock-badger." Rabbits not being native to northern Europe, there was no Germanic or Celtic word for them.
dependency: 1590s (adj.), 1610s (n.); see dependent + -cy. Originally also dependancy, on the French model, but the Latinate form gradually pushed this into disuse; see -ance. Meaning "territory subordinate to another nation" is recorded from 1680s.
hump (n.): 1680s (in hump-backed), from Dutch homp "lump," from Middle Low German hump "bump," from Proto-Germanic *hump-, from PIE *kemb- "to bend, turn, change, exchange." Replaced, or perhaps influenced by, crump, from Old English crump. A meaning attested from 1901 is "mound in a railway yard over which cars must be pushed," which may be behind the figurative sense of "critical point of an undertaking" (1914). Humpback whale is from 1725.
push (v.): early 14c., from Old French poulser (Modern French pousser), from Latin pulsare "to beat, strike, push," frequentative of pellere (past participle pulsus) "to push, drive, beat" (see pulse (n.1)). Meaning "promote" is from 1714; meaning "approach a certain age" is from 1937. For palatization of -s-, OED compares brush (n.1); quash. Related: Pushed; pushing.
"Pushing up the daisies now," said a soldier of his dead comrade. ["The American Florist," vol. XLVIII, No. 1504, March 31, 1917]
To push (someone) around is from 1923. To push (one's) luck is from 1754. To push the envelope in figurative sense is late 1980s. To push up daisies "be dead and buried" is from World War I.
smile (v.): c. 1300, perhaps from Middle Low German *smilen or a Scandinavian source (such as Danish smile "smile," Swedish smila "smile, smirk, simper, fawn"), from Proto-Germanic *smil-, extended form of PIE root *smei- "to laugh, smile" (cognates: Old English smerian "to laugh at, scorn," Old High German smieron "to smile," Latin mirus "wonderful," mirari "to wonder"). Related: Smiled; smiling.

Gradually pushed the usual Old English word, smearcian (modern smirk), into a specific, unpleasant sense. Of the eyes, from 1759. Figuratively, as indicating favor or encouragement, from c. 1400. Romance, Celtic, and Slavic languages tend to use a diminutive of the word for "laugh" to mean "smile" (such as Latin ridere "laugh;" subridere "smile"), perhaps literally "small laugh" or "low laugh."
step-: Old English steop-, with connotations of "loss," in combinations like steopcild "orphan," related to astiepan, bestiepan "to bereave, to deprive of parents or children," from Proto-Germanic *steupa- "bereft" (cognates: Old Frisian stiap-, Old Norse stjup-, Swedish styv-, Middle Low German stef-, Dutch stief-, Old High German stiof-, German stief-), literally "pushed out," from PIE *steup-, from root *(s)teu- (1) "to push, stick, knock," with derivatives referring to fragments (see steep (adj.)). Barnhart suggests the forms in -f- are by assimilation of the first sound in following words for "father."

Etymologically, a stepfather or stepmother is one who becomes father or mother to an orphan, but the notion of orphanage faded in 20c. and came to denote simply relation through marriage. For sense evolution, compare Latin privignus "stepson," related to privus "deprived." Compare orphan (n.).
straw (n.): Old English streaw (rare) "stems or stalks of certain species of grains," apparently literally "that which is scattered or strewn," related to streowian (see strew), from Proto-Germanic *strawam "that which is scattered" (cognates: Old Norse stra, Danish straa, Swedish strå, Old Saxon stro, Old Frisian stre, Old Dutch, Old High German stro, Dutch stroo, German Stroh "straw"), from PIE *stere- "to spread" (see structure (n.)). The notion perhaps is of dried grain stalks strewn on a floor as carpeting or bedding.

As a type of what is trifling or unimportant, attested from late 13c. Meaning "hollow tube through which a drink is sucked" is recorded from 1851. To draw straws as a means of deciding something is recorded from 1779 (the custom probably is older). As an adjective, "made of straw," mid-15c.; hence "false, sham." Straw poll is from 1932; earlier straw vote (1866). Straw hat first attested mid-15c. To clutch (or grasp or catch) at straws (1748) is what a drowning man proverbially would do. The last straw (1836 apart from the full phrase) is from the proverbial image: "it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back" (or, less often, the mare's, the horse's, or the elephant's), an image in use in English by 1755.
Let it not, however, be inferred that taxation cannot be pushed too far : it is, as the Oriental proverb says, the last straw that overloads the camel ; a small addition, if ill-timed, may overturn the whole. ["The Scots Magazine," April 1799]