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advantage [advantage 词源字典]: advantage: [14] Advantage comes from Old French avantage, which was based on avant ‘before’; the notion behind its formation was of being ahead of others, and hence in a superior position. As with advance, the intrusive -dbecame established in the 16th century, on the analogy of words genuinely containing the Latin prefix ad-. The reduced form vantage actually predates advantage in English, having entered the language via Anglo-Norman in the 13th century.
[advantage etymology, advantage origin, 英语词源]
adventure: adventure: [13] Adventure derives ultimately from a Latin verb meaning ‘arrive’. It originally meant ‘what comes or happens by chance’, hence ‘luck’, but it took a rather pessimistic downturn via ‘risk, danger’ to (in the 14th century) ‘hazardous undertaking’. Its Latin source was advenīre, formed from the prefix adand venīre ‘come’. Its past participle stem, advent-, produced English advent [12] and adventitious [17], but it was its future participle, adventura ‘about to arrive’, which produced adventure.

In the Romance languages in which it subsequently developed (Italian avventura, Spanish aventura, and French aventure, the source of Middle English aventure) the d disappeared, but it was revived in 15th – 16thcentury French in imitation of Latin. The reduced form venture first appears in the 15th century.
=> adventitious, avent, venture
alms: alms: [OE] The word alms has become much reduced in its passage through time from its ultimate Greek source, eleēmosúnē ‘pity, alms’. This was borrowed into post-classical (Christian) Latin as eleēmosyna, which subsequently became simplified in Vulgar Latin to *alimosina (source of the word for ‘alms’ in many Romance languages, such as French aumône and Italian limosina).

At this stage Germanic borrowed it, and in due course dispersed it (German almosen, Dutch aalmoes). It entered Old English as ælmesse, which became reduced in Middle English to almes and finally by the 17th century to alms (which because of its -s had come to be regarded as a plural noun). The original Greek eleēmosúnē is itself a derivative, of the adjective eleémōn ‘compassionate’, which in turn came from the noun éleos ‘pity’.

From medieval Latin eleēmosyna was derived the adjective eleēmosynarius (borrowed into English in the 17th century as the almost unpronounceable eleemosynary ‘giving alms’). Used as a noun, this passed into Old French as a(u)lmonier, and eventually, in the 13th century, became English aumoner ‘giver of alms’. The modern sense of almoner as a hospital social worker did not develop until the end of the 19th century.
=> almoner, eleemosynary
answer: answer: [OE] Etymologically, the word answer contains the notion of making a sworn statement rebutting a charge. It comes from a prehistoric West and North Germanic compound *andswarō; the first element of this was the prefix *and- ‘against’, related to German ent- ‘away, un-’ and to Greek anti-, source of English anti-; and the second element came from the same source as English swear.

In Old English, the Germanic compound became andswaru (noun) and andswarian (verb) ‘reply’, which by the 14th century had been reduced to answer. The synonymous respond has a similar semantic history: Latin respondēre meant ‘make a solemn promise in return’, hence ‘reply’. And, as another element in the jigsaw, Swedish ansvar means ‘responsibility’ – a sense echoed by English answerable.
=> swear
aside: aside: [14] Aside is a reduced form of the Middle English phrase on syde, literally ‘on side’, meaning ‘to one side’.
=> side
away: away: [OE] Away was formed in the late Old English period by conflating the phrase on weg, literally ‘on way’, that is, ‘on one’s way, departing’. This soon became reduced to aweg, hence away.
=> way
best: best: [OE] Best and better, the anomalous superlative and comparative of good, go back to a prehistoric Germanic base *bat-, which is related to the archaic English boot ‘remedy’ (as in to boot) and meant generally ‘advantage, improvement’. Its comparative and superlative were *batizon and *batistaz, which came into Old English as respectively betera and betest (gradually reduced via betst to best). The term best man originated in Scotland; it has gradually replaced the earlier bride(s)man and groomsman.
=> better, boot
between: between: [OE] The second syllable of between is related to two and twin; the word as a whole seems to represent an original phrase meaning something like ‘by two each’. Old English betwēonum reflects a Germanic *twēon, reduced from an earlier *twikhnai; this represents the base *twīkh- (from which we get two) plus an -n suffix with apparently some sort of distributive function. The related betwixt comes ultimately from Germanic *twa ‘two’ and the element *-isk- ‘-ish’.
=> twin, two
bliss: bliss: [OE] Despite its formal and semantic similarity, bliss has no connection with bless. It comes ultimately from Germanic *blīthiz ‘gentle, kind’, which is the source of English blithe ‘happy’ [OE]. The addition of the noun suffix *-tjō produced the derivative *blīthsjō, which entered Old English as blīths ‘happiness’, later reduced to bliss.
=> blithe
boy: boy: [13] The etymology of boy has long been problematical, but the now most generally accepted view is that it is probably a reduced form of an unrecorded Anglo-Norman *abuie or *embuie ‘fettered’, from the Old French verb embuier ‘fetter’. This came from Vulgar Latin *imboiāre, a compound verb based on Latin boiae ‘leather collar, fetter’, which was adapted from Greek boeiai doraí ‘ox-hides’ (hence ‘oxleather thongs’), from bous ‘ox’ (related to English bovine and cow).

The apparently implausible semantic connection is elucidated by the early meaning of boy in English, which was ‘male servant’; according to this view, a boy was etymologically someone kept in leather fetters, and hence a ‘slave’ or ‘servant’. The current main sense, ‘young male’, developed in the 14th century.
=> cow
cheat: cheat: [14] Cheat is a reduced form of escheat, a legal term for the reversion of property to the state on the death of the owner without heirs. This came from Old French escheoite, a derivative of the past participle of the verb escheoir ‘befall by chance, happen, devolve’, from Vulgar Latin *excadēre ‘fall away’, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and Latin cadere ‘fall’ (source of a wide range of English words from case ‘circumstance’ to occasion).

The semantic steps leading to the modern English sense of cheat seem to be ‘confiscate’; ‘deprive of something dishonestly’; ‘deceive’.
=> cadence, case, escheat, occasion, occident
check: check: There are two distinct words check in English, although by very involved pathways they are related. Check ‘verify’ [14] is originally a chess term meaning ‘threaten the king’. It comes from Old French eschequier, a derivative of the noun eschec (source also of English chess), which goes back via Vulgar Latin *scaccus and Arabic shāh to Persian shāh ‘king’ (whence also, of course, English shah). (Checkmate [14] comes via Old French eschec mat from Persian shāh māt ‘the king is left helpless’; the second element turns up again in mat or matt ‘lustreless’.) From the very specific chess sense there developed more general applications such as ‘attack’, ‘arrest’, ‘stop’, ‘restrict’, and ‘verify’.

Among these in the 18th century was ‘token used as a counterfoil for verifying something, such as an amount’. As check this survives mainly in American English (as in ‘hat-check’), but in the specific financial sense of ‘written money order’ it was transformed in British English into cheque, perhaps under the influence of exchequer. Check ‘pattern of squares’ [14] is probably short for chequer, which in turn is a reduced form of exchequer, a word derived ultimately from Vulgar Latin *scaccus ‘check’.
=> cheque, chess, exchequer
cloy: cloy: [14] Cloy originally meant ‘fasten with a nail’. It is a reduced form of the long obsolete acloy, which came from Anglo-Norman acloyer. This was a variant of Old French encloyer, a descendant of the Vulgar Latin compound verb inclāvāre, based on Latin clāvus ‘nail’ (source of Latin claudere ‘shut’, from which English gets close).
=> close
cockle: cockle: [14] The cockle is related etymologically to another mollusc, the conch: they both began life in Greek kónkhē – which meant ‘mussel’ as well as ‘conch’. From this was formed the diminutive konkhúlion ‘small variety of conch’ – hence ‘cockle’. The Greek word subsequently became reduced to kokhúlion, whose plural passed into medieval Latin as *cochilia.

Next in the chain was Old French coquille, source of the English word. The origin of the phrase cockles of one’s heart (first recorded in the mid 17th century) are not clear: some have claimed that the heart resembles a cockle shell, or more specifically that the fibres of the heart muscle spiral like the lines on a cockle shell, while others note a supposed resemblance of cockle to corculum, a Latin diminutive of cor ‘heart’, and others again point out that the scientific name for the cockle is Cardium, from Greek kardíā ‘heart’, but none of these explanations really carries conviction.
=> conch
coleslaw: coleslaw: [18] Cole is an ancient and now little used English word for plants of the cabbage family, such as cabbage or rape (it comes ultimately from Latin caulis ‘cabbage’, whose underlying meaning was ‘hollow stem’ – see CAULIFLOWER). It was used in the partial translation of Dutch koolsla when that word was borrowed into English in the late 18th century. Kool, Dutch for ‘cabbage’, became cole, but sla presented more of a problem (it represents a phonetically reduced form of salade ‘salad’), and it was rendered variously as -slaugh (now defunct) and -slaw. (Interestingly enough, the earliest record of the word we have, from America in the 1790s – it was presumably borrowed from Dutch settlers – is in the form cold slaw, indicating that even then in some quarters English cole was not a sufficiently familiar word to be used for Dutch kool. Coldslaw is still heard, nowadays as a folketymological alteration of coleslaw.)
=> cauliflower, cole, salad
comely: comely: [13] Old English had an adjective cymlic ‘beautiful’ (no relation at all to come), but this seems to have died out around the year 1000, and it is likely that comely, which first appears in the early 13th century, represents a reduced version of becomely, an adjective long since defunct of which there are a few records towards the end of the 12th century. This meant ‘suitable, becoming’ (it was formed, of course, from the verb become), an early meaning of comely; its other semantic strand, ‘beautiful’, is probably a memory of Old English cymlic.
=> become
cord: cord: [13] Cord ‘string’ and chord ‘straight line’ were originally the same word. They go back to Greek khordé ‘string’, which came into English via Latin chorda and Old French corde. In English it was originally written cord, a spelling which included the sense ‘string of a musical instrument’. But in the 16th century the spelling of this latter sense was remodelled to chord, on the basis of Latin chorda, and it has been retained for its semantic descendants ‘straight line joining two points on a curve’ and ‘straight line joining the front and rear edges of a wing’. (Chord ‘combination of musical notes’ [15] is no relation: it is a reduced version of accord, which comes via Old French acorder from Vulgar Latin *accordāre, a compound verb based on Latin cors ‘heart’, and ironically was originally spelled cord.) Related words include cordon [16], from the French diminutive form cordon, and cordite [19], so named from its often being shaped into cords resembling brown twine.
=> chord, cordite, cordon, yarn
dub: dub: English has two words dub. By far the older, ‘create a knight, name’ [11], was one of the first linguistic fruits of the Norman conquest, which was during the Middle English period to contribute such a vast number of French words to the English language. It came from Anglo- Norman duber, which was a reduced form of aduber, the Anglo-Norman version of Old French adober.

This meant ‘equip, repair, arrange’, but also specifically ‘equip with armour’, which led metaphorically to ‘confer the rank of knighthood on’. The sense ‘arrange’ has remained in use in various technical areas up to the present time, and its application to the dressing of leather with grease formed the basis of the noun dubbin ‘mixture of oil and tallow for softening and waterproofing leather’ [18]. Dub ‘insert soundtrack’ [20] is a shortened version of double.
=> dubbin; double
enough: enough: [OE] Enough is a widespread word in the Germanic languages. German has genug, Dutch genoeg, and Swedish and Danish the reduced forms nog and nok. All go back to a prehistoric Germanic *ganōgaz, a compound formed from the collective prefix *ga- and an Indo-European element *nak- whose underlying meaning is probably ‘reach, attain’ (it occurs in Sanskrit na and Latin naniscī, both of which have that sense).
epistle: epistle: [14] Epistle has never really caught on in English as a general term for a ‘letter’ – too highfalutin – but in fact from a semantic point of view its origins are quite simple. It comes ultimately from Greek epistolé, which meant ‘something sent to someone’. This was a derivative of epistéllein, a compound verb formed from the prefix epí- ‘to’ and stellein ‘send’ (as in apostle, literally ‘someone sent out’).

English actually acquired the word for the first time during the Anglo-Saxon period, directly from Latin epistola, and it survived into the 16th century in the reduced form pistle. In the 14th century, however, it was reborrowed, via Old French, as epistle.
=> apostle
esteem: esteem: [15] Esteem and estimate [16] are fairly open about their relationship, but there is another, more heavily disguised member of the family: aim. All three come ultimately from Latin aestimāre. Estimate was a straightforward borrowing from the Latin past participle aestimātus, but esteem came via Old French estimer, and aim from the reduced Old French form esmer. Originally, esteem meant much the same as estimate does: ‘evaluate, assess’. But as early as the 16th century it had passed into ‘think highly of’ (a semantic development interestingly paralleled in the 20th century by rate).
=> aim, estimate
fountain: fountain: [15] Latin fons meant ‘spring of water’ (it was related to Sanskrit dhan- ‘run, flow’). The feminine form of its adjectival derivative, fontāna ‘of a spring’, came to be used in late Latin as a noun, also meaning ‘spring’, and this passed via Old French fontaine into English, still carrying its original sense ‘spring’ with it. This survives in the reduced form fount [16], which is usually used metaphorically for a ‘source’, but fountain itself has from the 16th century been mainly applied to an ‘artificial jet of water’.

Other descendants of Latin fontāna, incidentally, include Italian fontana, Romanian fîntîna, and Welsh ffynon. Fontanelle ‘space between infant’s skull bones’ [16] comes ultimately from Old French fontenelle, a diminutive form of fontaine. The underlying notion appears to be of an anatomical ‘hollow’, as if from which a spring of water would come.
=> fontanelle, fount
frantic: frantic: [14] Frantic comes via Old French frenetique and Latin phreneticus from late Greek phrenētikús, a derivative of phrenítis ‘delirium’. This in turn was based on Greek phrén ‘mind’ (source also of English phrenology ‘study of cranial bumps to determine intelligence, character, etc’ [19]). The Old French form split into two virtually distinct words once English got hold of it: in one, the French three-syllable form was preserved, and even partially remodelled on its Latin ancestor, to give what has become modern English phrenetic, while in the other it was reduced to frentik which, for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, subsequently became frantic.

The related noun frenzy [14] retains the original vowel.
=> frenzy, phrenology
game: game: There are two games in English. The noun game ‘pastime, sport’ [OE] used to be a fairly widespread word in the Germanic languages (Swedish and Danish still preserve it as gamman and gammen respectively) and may well go back to a prehistoric Germanic compound formed from the collective prefix *ga- and *mann- ‘person’ (source of English man), and denoting literally ‘people together, participating’.

Its Old English was gamen which, before it became reduced to game (a process which began in the 13th century but was not complete until the 16th century), bequeathed gammon (as in backgammon) and probably also gamble to modern English. Game ‘plucky’ [18] is probably an adjectival use of the same word. Game ‘lame’ [18], however, and its derivative gammy [19], are not related; they may come from archaic French gambi ‘crooked’.
=> gamble, man; gammy
hotel: hotel: [17] Ultimately, hotel and hospital are the same word, but they have diverged widely over the centuries. Both go back to medieval Latin hospitāle ‘place where guests are received, hospice’, but this developed in two different ways in Old French. One branch led with little change to English hospital, but a reduced form hostel also emerged (borrowed by English as hostel [13]).

Its modern French descendant is hôtel, from which English gets hotel (originally used in the sense ‘large residence’, as in the French hôtel de ville ‘town hall’, but since the 18th century increasingly restricted to its present-day sense). Other contributions made to English by Old French hostel are the derivatives hostelry [14] and ostler [13], originally (as hosteler) ‘someone who receives guests’ but since the 14th century used for someone who looks after horses at an inn.
=> hospital, host, hostel, hostelry, ostler
jade: jade: English has two words jade, of which by far the commoner nowadays is the name of the green stone [18]. Despite the mineral’s close association with China and Japan, the term has no Oriental connections. It is of Latin origin, and started life in fact as a description of the stone’s medical applications. Latin īlia denoted the ‘sides of the lower torso’, the ‘flanks’, the part of the body where the kidneys are situated (English gets iliac [16] from it).

In Vulgar Latin this became *iliata, which passed into Spanish as ijada. Now it was thought in former times that jade could cure pain in the renal area, so the Spanish called it piedra de ijada, literally ‘stone of the flanks’. In due course this was reduced to simply ijada, which passed into English via French. (Jade’s alternative name, nephrite [18], is based on the same idea; it comes from Greek nephrós ‘kidney’.) English’s other word jade [14] now survives really only in its derivative adjective jaded ‘tired, sated’ [16].

It originally meant ‘worn-out horse’, and was later transferred metaphorically to ‘disreputable woman’. Its origins are not known.
=> iliac; jaded
lacrosse: lacrosse: [18] French la crosse means ‘the hooked stick’ (crosse was originally borrowed from a prehistoric Germanic *kruk-, from which English got crook and crutch). French speakers in Canada used the term jeu de la crosse ‘game of the hooked stick’ to name a game played by the native Americans with netted sticks, and in due course this became reduced and lexicalized to lacrosse.
=> crook, crutch
live: live: [OE] Modern English live represents a conflation of two Old English verbs, libban and lifian, both of which go back ultimately to the same prehistoric Germanic source, *lib- ‘remain, continue’. Variants of this produced leave ‘depart’ and life. The adjective live [16] is a reduced form of alive, which derived from life.
=> life
mad: mad: [13] The underlying etymological meaning of mad is ‘changed’. It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *moitó-, a past participial form based on *moi-, *mei-, ‘change’ (source also of Latin mūtāre ‘change’, from which English gets mutate). Prehistoric Germanic inherited it, adding the collective prefix *ga- to form *gamaithaz, which passed into Old English as gemād ‘insane’. From this was derived the verb gemǣdan ‘madden’, whose past participle gemǣded eventually became a new adjective gemǣdd. By the Middle English period this had become amadd, and the reduced prefix aeventually disappeared, leaving mad.
=> mutate
my: my: [12] My is simply a reduced form of mine, which used to be an adjective, but is now restricted almost entirely to pronoun use. At first it was used only before consonants (except h), but gradually from the 14th century it came to be used before all nouns, whatever their initial sound. The first record of its use as an exclamation (short, of course, for my goodness!, my word!, etc) comes from the early 18th century.
=> me, mine
no: no: English has three words no, which come from quite distinct sources (although they all, of course, contain the ancient negative particle ne). No the negative reply [OE] means etymologically ‘not ever, never’. It originated as a compound of ne and ā ‘ever’ (a relative of archaic modern English aye ‘ever’, whose own negative form is nay [12]) and the resulting nā became in the 13th century no.

The history of no ‘not’ [OE] (which is now used virtually only in the expression ‘whether or no’) is almost exactly parallel: it was formed from Old English ō ‘ever’, a variant of ā. The adjective no ‘not any’ [13] is a reduced form of none, its final n originally dispensed with before consonants.
=> aye, nay; none
none: none: [OE] Etymologically, none is simply ‘not one’. It was formed in the Old English period from the negative particle ne and ān, ancestor of modern English one. It was originally both a pronoun and an adjective, but in the latter role it has been replaced by its reduced form no.
=> one
office: office: [13] Office comes from a Latin source that originally meant ‘do work’. This was officium, a reduced form of an earlier *opificium, which was compounded from opus ‘work’ (source of English opera, operate, etc) and -ficium, a derivative of facere ‘do’ (source of English fact, faction, etc). That original literal sense has now disappeared from English (which got the word via Old French office), but it has left its mark in ‘position, post, job’ and ‘place where work is done’, both of which existed in Latin.

English has a small cluster of derivatives, including officer [14], official [14], officiate [17], and officious [16].
=> fact, factory, fashion, opera, operate
pidgin: pidgin: [19] A pidgin is a reduced form of language used for communication between speech communities which do not share the same native language. A characteristic of such languages is that words in the base language from which the pidgin evolved become altered. And this is how the word pidgin itself arose. It comes from pidgin English, an alteration of business English in the commercial pidgin used in Far Eastern ports in the mid-19th century.
=> business
pomegranate: pomegranate: [14] The pomegranate is etymologically the ‘many-seeded apple’. The word’s ultimate ancestor was Latin mālum grānātum (mālum gave English malic ‘of apples’ [18], and grānātus was derived from grānum ‘seed’, source of English grain). In Vulgar Latin this became reduced to simply *grānāta, which passed into Old French as grenate (source of English grenade, so named because early grenades looked like pomegranates).

Before long pome ‘apple’ was added to the term, giving pome grenate – whence English pomegranate. Pome came from Latin pōmum ‘apple, fruit’, which also gave English pomade [16] (an ointment so called because the original version was apple-scented), pomander [15] (etymologically an ‘apple of amber’), pommel [14] (etymologically a ‘little fruit’), and pomology [19].
=> garnet, grain, grenade, pomade, pomander, pommel
priest: priest: [OE] Priest goes back ultimately to the Greek noun presbúteros, which meant literally ‘elder’ (it was formed from the comparative of the adjective présbus ‘old’). It was used in the Greek translation of the New Testament for ‘elder of the church, priest’. It was borrowed into Latin as presbyter (source of English presbyterian [17]). This subsequently became reduced to *prēster (as in Prester John), which was taken over by Old English as prēost, ancestor of modern English priest.
=> presbyterian
rummage: rummage: [16] Rummage is etymologically ‘roomage’. It originally denoted the ‘stowage of cargo in a ship’s hold’. It came from Anglo- Norman *rumage, a reduced form of Old French arrumage. This was derived from the verb arrumer ‘stow in a hold’, which itself was based on run ‘ship’s hold’. And this in turn was borrowed from Middle Dutch ruim ‘space’, a relative of English room. The verb rummage, derived from the noun, was also used for ‘search a ship’s hold’, which is where the modern notion of ‘rummaging around’ comes from.
=> room
separate: separate: [15] Etymologically, separate means ‘arrange apart’. It comes from the past participle of Latin sēparāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix sē- ‘apart’ and parāre ‘arrange (in advance), furnish, make ready’ (source also of English prepare). Sever is essentially the same word as separate, in reduced form.
=> prepare, sever
sherry: sherry: [16] Various sorts of dryish or sweetened white wine known as sack (etymologically ‘dry wine’) were imported into England in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many came from Spain, and the sort made around Xerez (now Jerez) in southern Spain was called in English (in an approximation to the Spanish pronunciation of Xerez) sherris sack. Before the end of the 16th century this had been reduced to sherry, which in due course came to be applied to the fortified Spanish wine that now goes by that name.
sir: sir: [13] In common with many other European terms of address for men (such as monsieur and señor), sir goes back ultimately to Latin senior ‘older’ (source also of English senior). This was reduced in Vulgar Latin to *seior, which found its way into Old French as *sieire, later sire. English borrowed this as sire [13], which in weakly-stressed positions (prefixed to names, for instance) became sir.

Other titles based on senior that have found their way into English include French monsieur [15] (literally ‘my sire’), together with its plural messieurs [17], abbreviated to messrs [18]; French seigneur [16]; Spanish señor [17]; and Italian signor [16]. Surly [16] is an alteration of an earlier sirly ‘lordly’, a derivative of sir.

The meaning ‘grumpy’ evolved via an intermediate ‘haughty’.
=> senator, senior, sire, surly
slave: slave: [13] The word slave commemorates the fate of the Slavic people in the past, reduced by conquest to a state of slavery. For ultimately slave and Slav are one and the same. The earliest record we have of the ethnic name is as Slavic Sloveninu, a word of unknown origin borrowed by Byzantine Greek as Sklábos and passed on to medieval Latin as Sclavus. It was this that was turned into a generic term sclavus ‘slave’, which passed into English via Old French esclave.
vamp: vamp: English has two distinct words vamp. The now dated slang term for a ‘seductive woman’ [20] is short for vampire. The other vamp, ‘extemporize on the piano’, was originally a noun meaning the ‘part of a stocking that covers the foot and ankle’ [13]. It was borrowed from Anglo-Norman *vaumpé, a reduced form of Old French avantpié. This was a compound noun formed from avant ‘in front’ and pié ‘foot’. From it in the 16th century was derived a verb vamp, meaning ‘provide a stocking with a new vamp’, and this evolved semantically via ‘patch up, repair’ to, in the 18th century, ‘extemporize’.
=> vampire; foot, pedal
wanton: wanton: [13] Someone who is wanton is etymologically ‘lacking in proper upbringing or discipline’. The word was formed from the Middle English prefix wan- ‘un-’ (a reduced form of the adjective wane ‘lacking’, which is related to the modern English verb wane) and towen, a descendant of Old English togen, the past participle of tēon ‘pull’, hence ‘bring up, train, discipline’.
=> wane
a- (1): in native (derived from Old English) words, it most commonly represents Old English an "on" (see a (2)), as in alive, asleep, abroad, afoot, etc., forming adjectives and adverbs from nouns; but it also can be Middle English of, as in anew, abreast (1590s); or a reduced form of Old English past participle prefix ge-, as in aware; or the Old English intensive a-, as in arise, awake, ashame, marking a verb as momentary, a single event. In words from Romanic languages, often it represents Latin ad- "to, at."
[I]t naturally happened that all these a- prefixes were at length confusedly lumped together in idea, and the resultant a- looked upon as vaguely intensive, rhetorical, euphonic, or even archaic, and wholly otiose. [OED]
ab-: word-forming element meaning "away, from, from off, down;" from Latin ab-, ab "off, away from," cognate with Greek apo "away from, from," Sanskrit apa "away from," Gothic af, Old English of, from PIE root *apo- (see apo-). Reduced to a- before -m-, -p-, or -v-; sometimes abs- before -c- or -t-.
ace (n.): c. 1300, "one at dice," from Old French as "one at dice," from Latin as "a unit, one, a whole, unity;" also the name of a small Roman coin ("originally one pound of copper; reduced by depreciation to half an ounce" [Lewis]), perhaps originally Etruscan and related to Greek eis "one" (from PIE *sem- "one, as one"), or directly from the Greek word.

In English, it meant the side of the die with only one mark before it meant the playing card with one pip (1530s). Because this was the lowest roll at dice, ace was used metaphorically in Middle English for "bad luck" or "something of no value;" but as the ace is often the highest playing card, the extended senses based on "excellence, good quality" arose 18c. as card-playing became popular. Ace in the hole in the figurative sense of "concealed advantage" is attested from 1904, from crooked stud poker deals.

Meaning "outstanding pilot" dates from 1917 (technically, in World War I aviators' jargon, one who has brought down 10 enemy planes, though originally in reference to 5 shot down), from French l'ace (1915), which, according to Bruce Robertson (ed.) "Air Aces of the 1914-1918 War" was used in prewar French sporting publications for "top of the deck" boxers, cyclists, etc. Sports meaning of "point scored" (1819) led to that of "unreturnable serve" (1889).
ad-: word-forming element expressing direction toward or in addition to, from Latin ad "to, toward" in space or time; "with regard to, in relation to," as a prefix, sometimes merely emphatic, from PIE *ad- "to, near, at" (cognate with Old English æt; see at). Simplified to a- before sc-, sp- and st-; modified to ac- before many consonants and then re-spelled af-, ag-, al-, etc., in conformity with the following consonant (as in affection, aggression). In Old French, reduced to a- in all cases (an evolution already underway in Merovingian Latin), but written forms in French were refashioned after Latin in 14c. and English did likewise 15c. in words it had picked up from Old French. In many cases pronunciation followed the shift.
annihilate (v.): 1520s, from an obsolete adjective meaning "reduced to nothing" (late 14c.), originally the past participle of a verb, anihil, from Old French annichiler (14c.), from Late Latin annihilare "to reduce to nothing," from Latin ad- "to" (see ad-) + nihil "nothing" (see nil). Related: Annihilated; annihilating.
bellows (n.): c. 1200, belwes, "a bellows," literally "bags," plural of belu, belw, northern form of beli, from late Old English belg "bag, purse, leathern bottle" (see belly (n.)). Reduced from blæstbælg, literally "blowing bag." Used exclusively in plural since 15c., probably due to the two handles or halves.
best (adj.): Old English beste, reduced by assimilation of -t- from earlier Old English betst "best, first, in the best manner," originally superlative of bot "remedy, reparation," the root word now only surviving in to boot (see boot (n.2)), though its comparative, better, and superlative, best, have been transferred to good (and in some cases well). From Proto-Germanic root *bat-, with comparative *batizon and superlative *batistaz (cognates: Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Middle Dutch best, Old High German bezzist, German best, Old Norse beztr, Gothic batists).
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

[Burns]
Best-seller as short for "best-selling book" is from 1902, apparently originally in the publishing trade; best friend was in Chaucer (late 14c.). Best girl is first attested 1881, American English; best man is 1814, originally Scottish, replacing groomsman. To be able to do something with the best of them is recorded by 1748.