英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

crowd [crowd 词源字典]: crowd: [OE] The notion underlying crowd is of ‘pushing’ or ‘pressing’ (a semantic element shared by throng and of course by the now obsolete use of press for ‘crowd’, and echoed in such current expressions as ‘there’s quite a crush in here’). The Old English verb crūdan meant simply ‘press’, and of its relatives Middle Dutch crūden meant ‘press, push’ and Middle High German kroten meant ‘oppress’. Old English also had a noun croda ‘crowd’, but this does not seem to be the direct ancestor of the modern English noun, which does not appear until as late as the 16th century, as a derivative of the verb.
[crowd etymology, crowd origin, 英语词源]
drive: drive: [OE] As far as is known, drive is an exclusively Germanic word. It and its relatives German treiben, Dutch drijven, Swedish driva, Danish drive, and Gothic dreiban point to a prehistoric Germanic ancestor *drīban. Its base also produced English drift and drove [OE]. The central modern sense of drive, ‘drive a car’, comes from the earlier notion of driving a horse, ox, etc by pushing it, whipping it, etc from behind, forcing it onwards, but in most other modern European languages the verb for ‘driving a vehicle’ denotes basically ‘leading’ or ‘guiding’ (French conduire, for example, or German lenken).
=> drift, drove
effrontery: effrontery: [18] The notion of ‘audacity’ or ‘impudence’ is often expressed in terms of ‘exposing or pushing forward the face’: a ‘barefaced lie’ or ‘putting on a bold front’, for instance. And effrontery is no exception. It comes ultimately from late Latin effrōns ‘barefaced, shameless’, a compound adjective formed from the prefix ex- ‘out of’ and frōns ‘forehead’ (source of English front).

This seems subsequently to have been reformulated along the lines of its original components, giving Vulgar Latin *exfrontātus, source of Old French esfronte. This in turn developed to French effronté, whose derived noun effronterie was acquired by English as effrontery.
=> front
jam: jam: [18] The verb jam, meaning ‘press tightly together’, first appears in the early 18th century (the earliest-known unequivocal example of its transitive use is in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe 1719: ‘The ship stuck fast, jaum’d in between two rocks’). It is not known where it came from, but it is generally assumed to be imitative or symbolic in some way of the effort of pushing.

Equally mysterious are the origins of jam the sweet substance spread on bread, which appeared around the same time. Contemporary etymologists were nonplussed (Nathan Bailey had a stab in the 1730s: ‘prob. of J’aime, i.e. I love it; as Children used to say in French formerly, when they liked any Thing’; but Dr Johnson in 1755 confessed ‘I know not whence derived’); and even today the best guess that can be made is that the word refers to the ‘jamming’ or crushing of fruit into jars.
switch: switch: [16] Switch originally denoted a ‘thin flexible twig’; it may have been borrowed from Middle Dutch swijch ‘bough, twig’. From the noun was derived the verb switch. This originally meant ‘beat with a switch’, but in the early 19th century the sense ‘bend or waggle to and fro like a flexible stick’ emerged, and this led on in the middle of the century via ‘divert’ to ‘turn off a train on to another track’ (the usage developed in American English, where the apparatus used for this is still known as a switch, as opposed to British English points).

By the end of the century this had broadened out to ‘connect or disconnect by pushing a contact to or fro’. The notion of ‘exchanging’ or ‘swopping’ did not emerge until as recently as the 1890s.
thimble: thimble: [OE] A thimble is etymologically a ‘thumb implement’. The word goes back to Old English thymel, a derivative of thūma ‘thumb’. In Old English (where it is recorded only once) it was used for a ‘finger-stall’. By the time it reappears in the 15th century we find it being applied to a ‘leather finger-protector used for pushing in a needle’, and it was extended to metal thimbles, introduced in the 17th century.
=> thumb
anacrusis (n.): "unstressed syllable at the beginning of a verse," 1833, Latinized from Greek anakrousis "a pushing back," of a ship, "backing water," from anakrouein "to push back, stop short, check," from ana- "back" (see ana-) + krouein "to strike," from PIE *kreue- (2) "to push, strike" (cognates: Russian krusit, Lithuanian krusu "to smash, shatter," Old Church Slavonic kruchu "piece, bit of food," Old English hreowian "feel pain or sorrow," Old Norse hryggja "make sad").
daisy (n.): Old English dægesege, from dæges eage "day's eye," because the petals open at dawn and close at dusk. (See day (n.) + eye (n.)). In Medieval Latin it was solis oculus "sun's eye." As a female proper name said to have been originally a pet form of Margaret (q.v.).

Daisy-cutter first attested 1791, originally of horses that trot with low steps; later of cricket (1889) and baseball hits that skim along the ground. Daisy-chain in the "group sex" sense is attested from 1941. Pushing up daisies "dead" is attested from 1918, but variants with the same meaning go back to 1842.
drive (v.): Old English drifan "to drive, force, hunt, pursue; rush against" (class I strong verb; past tense draf, past participle drifen), from Proto-Germanic *driban (cognates: Old Frisian driva, Old Saxon driban, Dutch drijven, Old High German triban, German treiben, Old Norse drifa, Gothic dreiban "to drive"), from PIE root *dhreibh- "to drive, push." Original sense of "pushing from behind," altered in Modern English by application to automobiles. Related: Driving.
MILLER: "The more you drive, the less intelligent you are." ["Repo Man," 1984]
go-ahead (adj.): by 1840, "pushing, driving," from verbal phrase go ahead; see go (v.) + ahead (adv.). Go ahead as a command or invitation to proceed is from 1831, American English.
hustle (n.): "pushing activity; activity in the interest of success," 1891, American English, from hustle (v.); earlier it meant "a shaking together" (1715). Sense of "illegal business activity" is by 1963, American English. As a name of a popular dance, by 1975.
impulsion (n.): early 15c., "driving, pushing, thrusting," from Old French impulsion (early 14c.), from Latin impulsionem (nominative impulsio) "external pressure," figuratively "incitement, instigation," noun of action from past participle stem of impellere (see impel).
inwit (n.): Middle English word meaning "conscience" (early 13c.), "reason, intellect" (c. 1300), from in (adv.) + wit (n.). Not related to Old English inwit, which meant "deceit." Joyce's use in "Ulysses" (1922), which echoes the 14c. work "Ayenbite of Inwyt," is perhaps the best-known example of the modern use of the word as a conscious archaism.
Þese ben also þy fyve inwyttys: Wyl, Resoun, Mynd, Ymaginacioun, and Thoght [Wyclif, c. 1380]

If ... such good old English words as inwit and wanhope should be rehabilitated (and they have been pushing up their heads for thirty years), we should gain a great deal. [Robert Bridges, 1922]
osmosis (n.): 1867, Latinized from osmose (1854), shortened from endosmosis (1830s), from endosmose "inward passage of a fluid through a porous septum" (1829), from French endo- "inward" + Greek osmos "a thrusting, a pushing," from stem of othein "to push, to thrust," from PIE *wedhe- "to push, strike" (cognates: Sanskrit vadhati "pushes, strikes, destroys," Avestan vadaya- "to repulse"). Figurative sense is from 1900. Related: Osmotic (1854, from earlier endosmotic).
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.
push-off (n.): "act of pushing off," 1902, from verbal phrase, from push (v.) + off (adv.).
putt (n.): c. 1300, "a putting, pushing, shoving, thrusting," special use and pronunciation of put (n.). Golfing sense is from 1743.