英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

attract [attract 词源字典]: attract: [15] Etymologically, attract means literally ‘pull something towards one’. It comes from attract-, the past participial stem of the Latin verb attrahere, a compound formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and the verb trahere ‘pull’. It was quite a late formation, of around the mid 15th century, coined on the model of other English verbs, such as abstract and contract, deriving ultimately from Latin trahere.
=> abstract, contract, retract, subtract[attract etymology, attract origin, 英语词源]
bracket: bracket: [16] The word bracket appears to have come from medieval French braguette, which meant ‘codpiece’, a resemblance evidently having been perceived between the codpiece of a pair of men’s breeches and the ‘projecting architectural support’ which was the original meaning of bracket in English. Before the word even arrived in English, it had quite an eventful career.

The French word was a diminutive form of brague, which in the plural meant ‘breeches’. It was borrowed from Old Provençal braga, which got it from Latin brāca; Latin in turn acquired it from Gaulish brāca, but the Gaulish word seems ultimately to have been of Germanic origin, and to be related to English breeches.
=> breeches
broom: broom: [OE] Broom was originally the name of the yellow-flowered bush; its application to the long-handled brush did not come about until the 15th century (the underlying notion is of a brush made from broom twigs tied to a handle). The plant-name occurs throughout the Germanic languages, but it is applied to quite a wide range of plants: Old High German brāmma, for instance, is a ‘wild rose’; Old Saxon hiopbrāmio is a ‘hawthorn bush’; and English bramble probably comes from the same source.
=> bramble
convalesce: convalesce: [15] Latin valēre meant ‘be strong or healthy’ (from it English gets valiant, valid, valour, and value). Derived from it was valēscere ‘grow strong’, which, with the addition of the intensive prefix com- produced convalēscere, source of English convalesce. It was quite a commonly used word in Scottish English from earliest times, but does not seem to have established itself south of the border until the 19th century.
=> valiant, valid, valour, value
conversation: conversation: [14] Latin convertere meant ‘turn round, transform’. It was a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix com- and vertere ‘turn’ (source of English verse, version, and vertigo). It has spawned a variety of English words, its most direct descendant being convert [13]. Its past participle conversus produced the noun converse ‘opposite’ [16], but this should not be confused with the verb converse ‘talk’ [14], which came via quite a different route.

Latin vertere had a specialized form, vertāre, denoting repeated action. From it came versārī ‘live, occupy oneself’, which, with the addition of the com- prefix, produced conversārī ‘live, dwell, associate or communicate with others’. This passed via Old French converser into English, but at first both it and its derivative conversation were limited semantically to the notion of ‘dwelling’ and ‘social life’; the specific modern sense ‘talk’ was not brought into play until the late 16th century.
=> convert, verse, version
crowd: 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.
dream: dream: [13] Old English had a word drēam, which meant ‘joy, merrymaking, music’, but it is not at all clear that this is the same word as modern English dream (the recorded Old English words for ‘dream’ were swefn and mǣting). Semantically, the two are quite a long way apart, and on balance it seems more likely that Old English had a homonym *drēam ‘dream’, which has not survived in the written records, and which was perhaps subsequently reinforced by Old Norse draumr.

Both these and the related German traum and Dutch droom have been traced back to an Indo-European base denoting ‘deception’, represented also in Sanskrit druh- ‘seek to harm’ and Avestan (a dialect of Old Iranian) druz- ‘lie, deceive’.
harbinger: harbinger: [12] Originally, a harbinger was simply someone who provided ‘harbour’ – that is, ‘shelter, lodging’. The word began life as a derivative of Old French herberge ‘lodging’, a borrowing from heriberga, the Old Saxon equivalent of Old English herebeorg (whence modern English harbour). English acquired it as herbergere, and the n did not put in an appearance until the 15th century (it was quite a common phenomenon, seen also in messenger and passenger).

As for its meaning, it developed in the 14th century to ‘someone sent on ahead to arrange for lodging for an army, an official royal party, etc’, and from this came the present-day figurative sense ‘forerunner’.
=> harbour
hereditary: hereditary: [16] Latin hērēs ‘heir’ (a relative of Greek khéra ‘widow’ and Sanskrit hā- ‘leave, lose’) has been quite a prolific source of English words. For one thing there is heir [13] itself, acquired via Old French heir. And then there are all the derivatives of the Latin stem form hērēd-, including hereditament [15], hereditary, heredity [16], and, via the late Latin verb hērēditāre, heritage [13] and inherit [14].
=> heredity, heritage, inherit
incident: incident: [15] An incident is literally that which ‘befalls’. In common with accident and occident, and a wide range of other English words, from cadaver to occasion, it comes ultimately from Latin cadere ‘fall’. This was combined with the prefix in- ‘on’ to produce incidere ‘fall on’, hence ‘befall, happen to’. Its present participial stem incident- passed into English either directly or via French.

The use of a word that literally means ‘fall’ to denote the concept of ‘happening’ is quite a common phenomenon. It occurs also in befall and chance, and operates in other languages than English; Welsh digwydd ‘happen’, for instance, is derived from cwyddo ‘fall’.
=> accident, cadence, case, occasion
mist: mist: [OE] Mist is a member of quite a widespread Indo-European family of ‘mist’-words. Dutch and Swedish share mist, and among the non- Germanic languages Greek has omíkhlē, Lithuanian and Latvia migla, Serbo-Croat màgla, Polish mgła, and Russian mgla, all meaning ‘mist’, besides Sanskrit mēghas ‘cloud’, which all point back to an Indo- European ancestor *migh-, *meigh-.
orchard: orchard: [OE] Etymologically, an orchard is probably simply a ‘plant-yard’. It appears to have been coined in the prehistoric Germanic period from *worti-, the ancestor of the now archaic English noun wort ‘plant, vegetable, herb’ (which is distantly related to root), and *gardaz, *gardon, forerunner of English yard and garden. Originally, as its derivation suggests, it was quite a broad term, covering vegetable gardens as well as enclosures for fruit trees, but by the 15th century it had more or less become restricted to the latter.
=> garden, yard
pilfer: pilfer: [14] Originally pilfering was quite a serious matter, roughly what would now be termed plundering, but gradually over the centuries is has become trivialized to ‘stealing small things’. It was to begin with only a noun in English (the verb did not arrive until the 16th century), but its ultimate source was the Anglo- Norman verb pelfrer ‘rob, plunder’. No one is too sure where that came from, although it may be related in some way to the now archaic pelf ‘money’ [14], which originally meant ‘spoils, booty’.
pizza: pizza: [20] Italian pizza is quite a broad term, signifying ‘cake’, ‘tart’ or ‘pie’ and encompassing dishes as diverse as a closed fruit pie and a flat bread-dough base with a topping. It is the latter, of course, that brought the word into English. At first, both the word and the foodstuff were unfamiliar enough for the tautologous name ‘pizza pie’ to be deemed necessary, but the fast-food revolution from the 1960s onwards has thoroughly naturalized pizza (US fast-food outlets have their own abbreviation, za).

The origin of the Italian word is uncertain. It has been linked with Vulgar Latin *picea, a derivative of Latin pyx ‘pitch’ (in which case it would be paralleled by Welsh bara pyglyd, literally ‘pitchy bread’, possibly a reference to its colour, from which English gets pikelet [18], the name of a type of tea-cake), but it could also be related to modern Greek pitta (source of English pitta [20]), which may be a descendant of classical Greek peptos ‘cooked’.
run: run: [14] Run is quite a widespread Germanic verb, represented also by German rennen and Swedish ränna. Its ultimate ancestry is not known, although links have been suggested with Sanskrit rnoti ‘he moves’ and Greek órnūmi ‘rouse’. The Old English verb was rinnan; run, which was originally a past form, did not begin to emerge as the infinitive until the early 14th century, and it was not common until the 16th century. Runnel ‘brook’ [OE] comes from the same Germanic source, and rennet may be related.
=> rennet, runnel
slim: slim: [17] Slim is now quite an upbeat word, but that is a comparatively new departure, for historically it has been neutral if not downright derogatory. It was borrowed from Dutch slim ‘small, inferior’, which went back via Middle Dutch slim ‘slanting, bad’ to a prehistoric Germanic *slimbaz ‘oblique, crooked’ (source also of German schlimm ‘bad’). It may be distantly related to Latvian slīps ‘crooked, steep’.
demarche (n.): 1650s, "walk, step," from French démarche (15c.) literally "gait, walk, bearing," from démarcher (12c.) "to march," from de- (see de-) + marcher (see march (v.)). Meaning "a diplomatic step" attested from 1670s. A word never quite anglicized.
few (adj.): Old English feawe (plural; contracted to fea) "not many, a small number; seldom, even a little," from Proto-Germanic *faw- (cognates: Old Saxon fa, Old Frisian fe, Old High German fao, Old Norse far, Danish faa).

This is from PIE root *pau- (1) "few, little" (cognates: Latin paucus "few, little," paullus "little," parvus "little, small," pauper "poor;" Greek pauros "few, little," pais (genitive paidos) "child;" Latin puer "child, boy," pullus "young animal;" Oscan puklu "child;" Sanskrit potah "a young animal," putrah "son;" Old English fola "young horse;" Old Norse fylja "young female horse;" Old Church Slavonic puta "bird;" Lithuanian putytis "young animal, young bird").

Always plural in Old English, according to OED "on the analogy of the adverbial fela," meaning "many." Phrase few and far between attested from 1660s. Unusual ironic use in quite a few "many" (1854), earlier a good few (1803).
There is likewise another dialectical use of the word few among them [i.e. "the Northern Counties"], seemingly tending to its total overthrow; for they are bold enough to say--"a good few," meaning a good many. [Samuel Pegge, "Anecdotes of the English Language," London, 1803]
flip (v.): 1590s "to fillip, to toss with the thumb," imitative, or perhaps a thinned form of flap, or else a contraction of fillip (q.v.), which also is held to be imitative. Meaning "toss as though with the thumb" is from 1610s. Meaning "to flip a coin" (to decide something) is by 1879. Sense of "get excited" is first recorded 1950; flip (one's) lid "lose one's head, go wild" is from 1949, American English; variant flip (one's) wig attested by 1952, but the image turns up earlier in popular record reviews ["Talking Boogie. Not quite as wig-flipping as reverse side--but a wig-flipper" Billboard, Sept. 17, 1949]. Related: Flipped. Flipping (adj.) as euphemism for fucking is British slang first recorded 1911 in D.H. Lawrence. Flip side (of a gramophone record) is by 1949.
gamer (n.): mid-15c., "an athlete" (mid-13c. as a surname, Johannes le Gamer), agent noun from game (v.). Meaning "one devoted to playing video or computer games" is attested by 1981 (by 1975 in reference to players of Dungeons & Dragons). Gamester is attested from 1580s but also sometimes meant "prostitute" (compare old slang The Game "sexual intercourse" (by 1930s), probably from the first game ever played "copulation"). From 1550s as "a gambler." Gamesman is from 1947.
Quite a few of the gamers we've encountered during our monthly strolls down "Arcade Alley" suffer the same chronic frustration: finding enough opponents to slake their thirst for endless hours of play. ["Video" magazine, May 1981]
katzenjammer (n.): 1849, "a hangover," American English colloquial, from German katzen, comb. form of katze "cat" (see cat (n.)) + jammer "distress, wailing" (see yammer). Hence, "any unpleasant reaction" (1897).
Pleasure can intoxicate, passion can inebriate, success can make you quite as drunk as champagne. The waking from these several stages of delights will bring the same result--Katzenjammer. In English you would call it reaction; but whole pages of English cannot express the sick, empty, weary, vacant feeling which is so concisely contained within these four German syllables. ["Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine," August 1884]
Katzenjammer Kids "spectacularly naughty children" is from title of comic strip first drawn by German-born U.S. comic strip artist Rudolph Dirks (1877-1968) in 1897 for the "New York Journal." It was temporarily de-Germanized during World War I:
"THE SHENANIGAN KIDS" is the new American name for the original "Katzenjammer Kids." Although the original name and idea were pure Holland Dutch, some people may have had the mistaken impression that they were of Germanic origin, and hence the change. It is the same splendid comic as in the past. [International Feature Service advertisement in "Editor & Publisher," July 6, 1918]
marzipan (n.): 1901 (in modern use; earlier march payne, late 15c., from French or Dutch), from German Marzipan, from Italian marzapane "candy box," from Medieval Latin matapanus "small box," earlier, "coin bearing image of seated Christ" (altered in Italian by folk etymology as though from Latin Marci panis "bread of Mark"), of uncertain origin. One suggestion is that this is from Arabic mawthaban "king who sits still." Nobody seems to quite accept this, but nobody has a better idea. The Medieval Latin word also is the source of Spanish marzapan, French massepain.
orgy (n.): 1560s, orgies (plural) "secret rites in the worship of certain Greek and Roman gods," especially Dionysus, from Middle French orgies (c. 1500, from Latin orgia), and directly from Greek orgia (plural) "secret rites," especially those of Bacchus, from PIE root *werg- "to do" (see organ). The singular, orgy, was first used in English 1660s for the extended sense of "any licentious revelry." OED says of the ancient rites that they were "celebrated with extravagant dancing, singing, drinking, etc.," which gives "etc." quite a workout.
Pig Latin (n.): childish deformed language (there are many different versions), by 1889 (hog Latin in same sense by 1807).
The animals play quite an important part in the naming [of children's languages], as the hog, dog, fly, goose, pigeon, pig, all give names, with Mr. Hog leading. Among the names the Latins take the lead, and Hog Latin leads the list, being accredited as naming nearly as many languages as all the other names combined. Besides Hog Latin, there is Dog Latin, Pig Latin, Goose Latin, and Bum Latin. Then there is Greekish and Peddlers' French and Pigeon English. ... Very few can give any reason for the naming of the languages. In fact, no one can fully say where the great majority of names came from, for in most cases in the naming the following pretty well expresses the difficulty: "It was born before I was. I can't tell how young I was when I first heard of it." ["The Secret Language of Children," in "The North Western Monthly," October 1897]
salesmanship (n.): 1853, from salesman + -ship.
The modern system of salesmanship has become so much like persecution reduced to a science, that it is quite a luxury to be allowed the use of your own discretion, without being dragooned, by a shopkeeper's deputy, into looking at what you do not care to see, or buying what you would not have. A man in his sane mind, with the usual organs of speech, has a right to be treated as if he knows what he wants, and is able to ask for it. ["The Literary World," Feb. 26, 1853]
suck (v.): Old English sucan "to suck," from a Germanic root of imitative origin (cognates: Old Saxon, Old High German sugan, Old Norse suga, Danish suge, Swedish suga, Middle Dutch sughen, Dutch zuigen, German saugen "to suck"), possibly from the same source as Latin sugere "to suck," succus "juice, sap;" Old Irish sugim, Welsh sugno "to suck;" see sup (v.2). As a noun from c. 1300.

Meaning "do fellatio" is first recorded 1928. Slang sense of "be contemptible" first attested 1971 (the underlying notion is of fellatio). Related: Sucked; sucking. Suck eggs is from 1906. Suck hind tit "be inferior" is American English slang first recorded 1940.
The old, old saying that the runt pig always sucks the hind teat is not so far wrong, as it quite approximates the condition that exists. ["The Chester White Journal," April 1921]
wait (v.): c. 1200, "to watch with hostile intent, lie in wait for, plot against," from Anglo-French and Old North French waitier "to watch" (Old French gaitier "defend, watch out, be on one's guard; lie in wait for;" Modern French guetter), from Frankish *wahton or another Germanic source, from Proto-Germanic *waht- (cognates: Dutch wacht "a watching," Old High German wahten, German wachten "to watch, to guard;" Old High German wahhon "to watch, be awake," Old English wacian "to be awake;" see wake (v.)). General sense of "remain in some place" is from late 14c.; that of "to see to it that something occurs" is late 14c. Meaning "to stand by in attendance on" is late 14c.; specific sense of "serve as an attendant at a table" is from 1560s. Related: Waited; waiting.

To wait (something) out "endure a period of waiting" is recorded from 1849. Waiting room is attested from 1680s. Waiting list is recorded from 1841; the verb wait-list "to put (someone) on a waiting list" is recorded from 1960. Waiting game is recorded from 1835, originally in horse-racing.
When speed, not stoutness, is the best of a horse, quite a contrary system is practised. With such a horse, the jockey plays a waiting game; that is, he carefully nurses him through the race, so as not to distress him by overpacing him; as the finish approaches, he creeps up to his horses by degrees, but does not quit them to go in front till he sees that the pace has made them "safe," -- when he lets loose and wins. [James Christie Whyte, "History of the British Turf," London, 1840]
weasel (v.): "to deprive (a word or phrase) of its meaning," 1900, from weasel (n.); so used because the weasel sucks out the contents of eggs, leaving the shell intact. Both this and weasel-word are first attested in "The Stained-Glass Political Platform," a short story by Stewart Chaplin, first printed in "Century Magazine," June 1900:
"Why, weasel words are words that suck all the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks an egg and leaves the shell. If you heft the egg afterward it's as light as a feather, and not very filling when you're hungry; but a basketful of them would make quite a show, and would bamboozle the unwary."
They were picked up at once in American political slang. The sense of "extricate oneself (from a difficult place) like a weasel" is first recorded 1925; that of "to evade and equivocate" is from 1956. Related: Weasled; weasling.
whitey (n.): "'white' person, person of European descent," 1828, also whity, from white (adj.) + -y (2) and -y (3). Earlier as an adjective, and Whitey-brown was a 19c. descriptive color name, used to describe, among other things, mulatto skin.
Negro troops doing provost duty in Norfolk; keeping the white people in order. On a visit to Norfolk one can see white Southerners, arrested for sundry misdemeanors, working on the public streets, under negro guards. ... It is quite a change to see, in Norfolk, negroes forcing white men to work, at the point of the bayonet; calling out to them: "No loaf'n dar!" "Move quicker, Sah!" "Hurry up dar, Old Whitey!" and similar orders. Tables turned! [diary of Lieut. S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire Volunteer regiment, U.S. Army, Jan. 25, 1864; diary published 1888 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.]