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]
anorak: anorak: [20] This was originally a word in the Inuit language of Greenland: annoraaq. It came into English in the 1920s, by way of Danish. At first it was used only to refer to the sort of garments worn by Eskimos, but by the 1930s it was being applied to a waterproof hooded coat made in imitation of these. In Britain, such jackets came to be associated with the sort of socially inept obsessives who stereotypically pursue such hobbies as train-spotting and computer-gaming, and by the early 1980s the term ‘anorak’ was being contemptuously applied to them.
baby: baby: [14] Like mama and papa, baby and the contemporaneous babe are probably imitative of the burbling noises made by an infant that has not yet learned to talk. In Old English, the term for what we would now call a ‘baby’ was child, and it seems only to have been from about the 11th century that child began to extend its range to the slightly more mature age which it now covers. Then when the word baby came into the language, it was used synonymously with this developed sense of child, and only gradually came to refer to infants not yet capable of speech or walking.
bramble: bramble: [OE] Bramble has several cognates in other Germanic languages, but as with many plant-names it does not always refer to the same plant. Old High German brāmma, for instance, is a ‘wild rose’; Old Saxon hiopbrāmio is a ‘hawthorn bush’; and then there is English broom. All come from a prehistoric Germanic *brāemoz ‘thorny bush’. In the case of bramble, Old English originally had brēmel, but the medial -b- had developed before the end of the Old English period. The bird-name brambling [16] is probably derived from it.
=> broom
cancan: cancan: [19] The English word was borrowed from French, where it originally, in the 16th century, meant ‘noise, uproar’. Its ultimate source is unknown, although it has traditionally been associated with Latin quanquam ‘although’, taken to be the prelude to a noisy scholastic argument. Its application to the uproarious dance began in the 19th century, in French as well as English; however, its presentday association with high-kicking chorus girls (with, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘extravagant and indecent gestures’) seems to be a slightly later development, since the earliest examples of its use quoted by the OED apparently refer to men: ‘He usually compromises by dancing the Can-can’, A E Sweet, Texas Siftings 1882.
cardinal: cardinal: [12] The ultimate source of cardinal is Latin cardō ‘hinge’, and its underlying idea is that something of particular, or ‘cardinal’, importance is like the hinge on which all else depends. English first acquired it as a noun, direct from ecclesiastical Latin cardinālis (originally an adjective derived from cardō), which in the early church denoted simply a clergyman attached to a church, as a door is attached by hinges; it only gradually rose in dignity to refer to princes of the Roman Catholic church. The adjective reached English in the 13th century, via Old French cardinal or Latin cardinālis.
daffodil: daffodil: [16] Originally, this word was affodil, and referred to a plant of the lily family, the asphodel; it came from medieval Latin affodillus, and the reason for the change from asph- (or asf-, as it often was in medieval texts) to aff- is probably that the s in medieval manuscripts looked very like an f. The first evidence of its use to refer to a ‘daffodil’, rather than an ‘asphodel’, comes in the middle of the 16th century. It is not entirely clear where the initial d came from, but the likeliest explanation is that daffodil represents Dutch de affodil ‘the daffodil’ (the Dutch were then as now leading exponents of bulb cultivation).
diocese: diocese: [14] Etymologically, diocese means ‘administration’, and only gradually did the word become more concrete and specific, via ‘area administered, province’ to ‘ecclesiastical province’. It comes ultimately from Greek dioíkēsis, a derivative of dioikein ‘keep house’, hence ‘administer’; this was a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dia- and oikein ‘inhabit’, which in turn was a derivative of oikos ‘house’ (a distant relative of the -wich, -wick ending in some British place-names).

Its ecclesiastical meaning developed in Greek, and came to the fore as the word passed via Latin dioecēsis and late Latin diocēsis into Old French diocise (source of English diocese). In English that has always been the only living sense of the word, although it has been used in historical contexts to refer to provinces of the Roman empire.
distaff: distaff: [OE] The compound noun distaff ‘rod for holding flax, wool, etc in spinning’ was a late Old English formation from *dis ‘bunch of flax’ (a word which survives in bedizen [17], a derivative of the obsolete dizen, which originally meant ‘put flax on to a rod’ and hence ‘dress up in finery’) and staff. The now fairly archaic use of phrases such as distaff side to refer to ‘women’ comes from the traditional pigeonholing of spinning as a woman’s job.
=> bedizen
exchequer: exchequer: [13] Etymologically, an exchequer is something that has ‘checks’ or squares on it, and indeed the earliest use of the word in English was for ‘chessboard’. It came via Anglo- Norman escheker from medieval Latin scaccārium ‘chessboard’, a derivative of Vulgar Latin scaccus ‘check’ (source of English check ‘verify’). In the early Middle Ages the office of state, in both England and Normandy, which dealt with the collection and management of the royal revenue, used a table with a chequered cloth on it as a sort of rudimentary adding machine, counters being placed on various squares as an aid to calculation.

And by the 14th century it had become the custom to refer to this department, from its chessboard-like table cloth, as the exchequer (Robert Mannyng, for instance, in his Chronicle 1331, records that ‘to Berwick came the king’s exchequer, Sir Hugh of Cressyngham he was chancellor, Walter of Admundesham he was treasurer’). Exchequer was the source of chequer [13], which by further reduction produced check ‘pattern of squares’.
=> check, chess
gust: gust: [16] The underlying meaning of gust is ‘sudden rush or gush’, and related words refer to water or steam rather than wind. It was borrowed from Old Norse gustr ‘gust’, and the closely connected geysa ‘gush’ produced English geyser [18].
=> geyser
hockey: hockey: [19] The first known unequivocal reference to the game of hockey comes in William Holloway’s General Dictionary of Provincialisms 1838, where he calls it hawkey, and describes it as ‘a game played by several boys on each side with sticks, called hawkeybats, and a ball’ (the term came from West Sussex). It is not known for certain where the word originated, but it is generally assumed to be related in some way to hook, with reference to the hockey stick’s curved end. The Galway Statutes of 1527 refer to the ‘hurling of the little ball with hockie sticks or staves’, which may mean ‘curved sticks’.
=> hook
kangaroo: kangaroo: [18] The first English speakers to refer in writing to the kangaroo were Captain Cook and the botanist Joseph Banks, who both mentioned it in 1770 in the journals they kept of their visit to Australia (Banks, for instance, referred to killing ‘kangaru’). This was their interpretation of ganjurru, the name for a large black or grey type of kangaroo in the Guugu Yimidhirr language of New South Wales.

English quickly generalized the term to any sort of kangaroo, although it caused some confusion among speakers of other Australian Aboriginal languages, who were not familiar with it: speakers of the Baagandji language, for instance, used it to refer to the horse (which had just been introduced into Australia). There is no truth whatsoever in the story that the Aboriginal word was a reply to the English question ‘What’s that?’, and meant ‘I don’t understand’.

The element -roo was used in the 19th century to produce jackeroo, which denoted ‘a new immigrant in Australia’, and is first recorded as an independent abbreviation of kangaroo in the first decade of the 20th century. The term kangaroo court ‘unofficial court’, which dates from the 1850s, is an allusion to the court’s irregular proceedings, which supposedly resemble the jumps of a kangaroo.
lapwing: lapwing: [OE] The present-day form of the word lapwing is due to the notion that it describes the way the bird’s wings overlap in flight, but in fact although it did originally refer to the way the bird flies, it has no etymological connection with lap or wing. Its Old English form was hlēupwince, whose first element came from the ancestor of modern English leap, and whose second element went back to a base meaning ‘move from side to side’ that also produced English wink. So etymologically the lapwing is the ‘leapwink’, the bird that tumbles and jinks in flight – as indeed it does. Its alternative name peewit [13] describes its call.
limbo: limbo: English has two distinct and probably unrelated words limbo. By far the older is the theological limbo [14], referring originally to that condition in which the souls of the dead exist that are neither in heaven nor in hell. It comes from Latin limbus ‘border, edge’, which in the Middle Ages was used to refer to a region on the borders of, but not actually inside, hell.

It very often turned up in the ablative case, in the phrase in limbo, which is how English adopted it. The other limbo [20], denoting a West Indian dance that involves passing underneath a progressively lowered bar, probably comes from limber ‘flexible, supple’ [16], which in turn might be from limb or possibly from limber ‘detachable forward part of a gun-carriage’ [15] (although spellings of that with a b do not occur before the 17th century).

No one knows where that limber came from, although it might ultimately be Celtic. Alternatively, if the bar is viewed as a sort of boundary that the dancer must cross, the terpsichorean limbo could be related to the theological limbo.
mention: mention: [14] The etymological notion underlying mention is of ‘reminding’. For it comes via Old French from Latin mentiō, which originally meant ‘remembrance’ (it was a derivative of the Indo-European base *men-, which also produced English memory, remember, etc). It developed via ‘cause to remember something by speaking or writing of it’ (a sense still present in Middle English) to simply ‘refer to something’.
=> memory, mind, remember
orang-utan: orang-utan: [17] Malay ōrang ūtan means literally ‘wild man’. It probably originated as a term used by those who lived in open, more densely populated areas for the ‘uncivilized’ tribes who lived in the forest, but was taken by early European travellers to refer to the large red-haired ape that inhabits the same forests. The word may well have reached English via Dutch.
quote: quote: [14] Latin quot meant ‘how many’. From it was derived the adjective quotus ‘of what number’, whose feminine form quota was used in post-classical times as a noun, denoting literally ‘how great a part’ – whence English quota [17]. Quotus also formed the basis of the medieval Latin verb quotāre ‘number’, which was used specifically for the practice of marking sections of text in manuscripts with numbers, as reference points.

English took the verb over as quote, and by the 16th century was using it for ‘cite’ or ‘refer to’. The derived unquote is first recorded in a letter by e e cummings, dated 1935. Also based on quot was Latin quotiēns ‘how many times’, which has given English quotient [15]; and quotidian ‘daily’ [14] goes back ultimately to a Latin compound formed from quotus and diēs ‘day’.

But the archaic quoth [OE], despite a certain similarity in form and sense, is not related; it comes from cwæth, the past tense of Old English cwethan ‘say’.
=> quota, quotient
relate: relate: [16] Something that is related to something else is etymologically ‘carried back’ to it. The word is based on relātus, the past participle of Latin referre ‘carry back, refer to’ (source of English refer). (Lātus was not the original past participle of Latin ferre ‘carry’; it was drafted in from tollere ‘raise’, source of English extol and tolerate.) Derivatives in English include relation [14] and relative [14].
=> extol, tolerate
watch: watch: [OE] Ultimately, watch and wake are the same word. The two verbs share a common ancestor (prehistoric Germanic *wakōjan), and to begin with watch was used for ‘be awake’ (‘He sleepeth on the day and watcheth all the night’, John Lydgate, 1430). The notion of being ‘alert and vigilant’, of being ‘on the look-out’, is implicit in that of being ‘awake’ (indeed, vigil and vigilant are members of the same word family), but watch did not develop fully into ‘observe, look at closely’ until the 14th century.

The sort of watch that tells the time is probably so called not because you look at it to see what the time is, but because originally it woke you up. The earliest records of the noun’s application to a timepiece (in the 15th century) refer to an ‘alarm clock’; it was not used for what we would today recognize as a ‘watch’ until the end of the 16th century.
=> vegetable, vigil, vigour, waft, wait, wake
always (adv.): mid-14c., compound of Old English phrase ealne weg "always, quite, perpetually," literally "all the way," with accusative of space or distance, though the oldest recorded usages refer to time; see all + way (n.). The adverbial genitive -s appeared early 13c. and is now the standard, though the variant alway survived into 1800s. OED speculates allway was originally of space or distance, "but already in the oldest Eng. transferred to an extent of time."
anachronism (n.): 1640s, "an error in computing time or finding dates," from Latin anachronismus, from Greek anakhronismos, from anakhronizein "refer to wrong time," from ana- "against" (see ana-) + khronos "time" (see chrono-). Meaning "something out of harmony with the present" first recorded 1816.
anarchic (adj.): 1755, "chaotic, without order or rule," from Greek anarkhos "without head or chief" (see anarchy) + -ic. Differentiated from anarchistic (1845) which tends to refer to the political philosophy of anarchism. An older word in this sense was anarchical (1590s). Anarchial is from 1710; Landor used anarchal (1824).
Anglo-Saxon: Old English Angli Saxones (plural), from Latin Anglo-Saxones, in which Anglo- is an adjective, thus literally "English Saxons," as opposed to those of the Continent (now called "Old Saxons"). Properly in reference to the Saxons of ancient Wessex, Essex, Middlesex, and Sussex.
I am a suthern man, I can not geste 'rum, ram, ruf' by letter. [Chaucer, "Parson's Prologue and Tale"]
After the Norman-French invasion of 1066, the peoples of the island were distinguished as English and French, but after a few generations all were English, and Latin-speaking scribes, who knew and cared little about Germanic history, began to use Anglo-Saxones to refer to the pre-1066 inhabitants and their descendants. When interest in Old English writing revived c. 1586, the word was extended to the language we now call Old English. It has been used rhetorically for "English" in an ethnological sense from 1832, and revisioned as Angle + Saxon.
aspic (n.): "savory meat jelly," 1789, from French aspic "jelly" (18c.), literally "asp," from Old French aspe (see asp) + ending from basilisc "basilisk" (the two creatures sometimes were confused with one another). The foodstuff said to be so called from its coldness (froid comme un aspic is said by Littré to be a proverbial phrase), or the colors in the gelatin, or the shape of the mold. It also was a French word for "lavendar spike" and might refer to this as a seasoning element.
baseball (n.): in the modern sense, 1845, American English, from base (n.) + ball (n.1). Earlier references, such as in Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey," refer to the game of "rounders," of which baseball is a more elaborate variety. Legendarily invented 1839 by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, N.Y. Base was used for "start or finish line of a race" from 1690s; and the sense of "safe spot" found in modern children's game of tag can be traced to 14c. (the sense in baseball is from 1868).
blow job (n.): also blowjob, 1961, from blow + job. Exactly which blow is meant is the subject of some debate; the word might have begun as a euphemism for suck (thus from blow (v.1)), or it might refer to the explosive climax of an orgasm (thus blow (v.2)). Unlike much sex slang, its date of origin probably is pretty close to the date it first is attested in print: as recently as the early 1950s, military pilots could innocently talk of their jet planes as blow jobs according to the "Thesaurus of American Slang." Compare blow (v.1).
blue moon (n.): 1821 as a specific term in the sense "very rarely," perhaps suggesting something that, in fact, never happens (compare at the Greek calends, and the native in the reign of Queen Dick and Saint Geoffrey's Day "Never, there being no saint of that name," reported in Grose (1788)); suggested earliest in this couplet from 1528:
Yf they say the mone is blewe,
We must beleve that it is true.
Though this might refer to calendrical calculations by the Church. Thus the general "rareness" sense of the term is difficult to disentangle from the specific calendrical one (commonly misinterpreted as "second full moon in a calendar month," but actually a quarterly calculation). In either case, the sense of blue here is obscure. Literal blue moons do sometimes occur under extreme atmospheric conditions.
brain (n.): Old English brægen "brain," from Proto-Germanic *bragnam (cognates: Middle Low German bregen, Old Frisian and Dutch brein), from PIE root *mregh-m(n)o- "skull, brain" (cognates: Greek brekhmos "front part of the skull, top of the head"). But Liberman writes that brain "has no established cognates outside West Germanic ..." and is not connected to the Greek word. More probably, he writes, its etymon is PIE *bhragno "something broken."

The custom of using the plural to refer to the substance (literal or figurative), as opposed to the organ, dates from 16c. Figurative sense of "intellectual power" is from late 14c.; meaning "a clever person" is first recorded 1914. Brain teaser is from 1923. Brain stem first recorded 1879, from German. Brain drain is attested from 1963. An Old English word for "head" was brægnloca, which might be translated as "brain locker." In Middle English, brainsick (Old English brægenseoc) meant "mad, addled."
bread (n.): Old English bread "bit, crumb, morsel; bread," cognate with Old Norse brauð, Danish brød, Old Frisian brad, Middle Dutch brot, Dutch brood, German Brot. According to one theory [Watkins, etc.] from Proto-Germanic *brautham, which would be from the root of brew (v.) and refer to the leavening.

But OED argues at some length for the basic sense being not "cooked food" but "piece of food," and the Old English word deriving from a Proto-Germanic *braudsmon- "fragments, bits" (cognate with Old High German brosma "crumb," Old English breotan "to break in pieces") and being related to the root of break (v.). It cites Slovenian kruh "bread," literally "a piece."

Either way, by c. 1200 it had replaced the usual Old English word for "bread," which was hlaf (see loaf (n.)). Slang meaning "money" dates from 1940s, but compare breadwinner. Bread-and-butter in the figurative sense of "basic needs" is from 1732. Bread and circuses (1914) is from Latin, in reference to food and entertainment provided by governments to keep the populace happy. "Duas tantum res anxius optat, Panem et circenses" [Juvenal, Sat. x.80].
cantaloupe (n.): also cantaloup, 1739, from French, from Italian, from Cantalupo, name of a former Papal summer estate near Rome, where the melons first were grown in Europe after their introduction (supposedly from Armenia). The place name seems to be "singing wolf" and might refer to a spot where wolves gathered, but this might be folk etymology.
charter school: older uses refer to schools in Ireland begun 1733 by the Charter Society to provide Protestant education to poor Catholic children. Modern use in U.S. began c. 1988, as an alternative to state-run public education.
clever (adj.): 1580s, "handy, dexterous," apparently from East Anglian dialectal cliver "expert at seizing," perhaps from East Frisian klüfer "skillful," or Norwegian dialectic klover "ready, skillful," and perhaps influenced by Old English clifer "claw, hand" (early usages seem to refer to dexterity). Or perhaps akin to Old Norse kleyfr "easy to split" and from a root related to cleave "to split." Extension to intellect is first recorded 1704.
This is a low word, scarcely ever used but in burlesque or conversation; and applied to any thing a man likes, without a settled meaning. [Johnson, 1755]
The meaning has narrowed since, but clever also often in old use and dialect meant "well-shaped, attractive-looking" and in 19c. American English sometimes "good-natured, agreeable." Related: Cleverly; cleverness.
cold feet (n.): 1893, American English; the presumed Italian original (avegh minga frecc i pee) is a Lombard proverb meaning "to have no money," but some of the earliest English usages refer to gamblers, so a connection is possible.
comic (adj.): late 14c., "of comedy in the dramatic sense," from Latin comicus "of comedy, represented in comedy, in comic style," from Greek komikos "of or pertaining to comedy," from komos (see comedy). Meaning "intentionally funny" first recorded 1791, and comedic (1630s) has since picked up the older sense of the word.
Speaking of the masters of the comedic spirit (if I call it, as he does, the Comic Spirit, this darkened generation will suppose me to refer to the animal spirits of tomfools and merryandrews) .... [G.B. Shaw, 1897]
Something that is comic has comedy as its aim or origin; something is comical if the effect is comedy, whether intended or not.
concern (v.): early 15c., "perceive, distinguish," also "refer to, relate to," from Middle French concerner, from Medieval Latin concernere "concern, touch, belong to," figurative use of Late Latin concernere "to sift, mix, as in a sieve," from Latin com- "with" (see com-) + cernere "to sift," hence "perceive, comprehend" (see crisis). Apparently the sense of the prefix shifted to intensive in Medieval Latin. Meaning "worry" is 17c. Related: Concerned; concerning. Letter opening to whom it may concern attested by 1740.
crescent (n.): late 14c., "crescent-shaped ornament," from Anglo-French cressaunt, from Old French creissant "crescent of the moon" (12c., Modern French croissant), from Latin crescentum (nominative crescens), present participle of crescere "come forth, spring up, grow, thrive, swell, increase in numbers or strength," from PIE root *ker- (3) "to grow" (cognates: Latin Ceres, goddess of agriculture, creare "to bring forth, create, produce;" Greek kouros "boy," kore "girl;" Armenian serem "bring forth," serim "be born").

Applied in Latin to the waxing moon, luna crescens, but subsequently in Latin mistaken to refer to the shape, not the stage. The original Latin sense is preserved in crescendo. A badge or emblem of the Turkish sultans (probably chosen for its suggestion of "increase"); figurative sense of "Muslim political power" is from 1580s, but modern writers often falsely associate it with the Saracens of the Crusades or the Moors of Spain. Horns of the waxing moon are on the viewer's left side; those of the waning moon are on his right.
cunt (n.): "female intercrural foramen," or, as some 18c. writers refer to it, "the monosyllable," Middle English cunte "female genitalia," by early 14c. (in Hendyng's "Proverbs" -- ʒeve þi cunte to cunni[n]g, And crave affetir wedding), akin to Old Norse kunta, Old Frisian, Middle Dutch, and Middle Low German kunte, from Proto-Germanic *kunton, which is of uncertain origin. Some suggest a link with Latin cuneus "wedge," others to PIE root *geu- "hollow place," still others to PIE *gwen-, root of queen and Greek gyne "woman."

The form is similar to Latin cunnus "female pudenda" (also, vulgarly, "a woman"), which is likewise of disputed origin, perhaps literally "gash, slit," from PIE *sker- (1) "to cut," or literally "sheath," from PIE *kut-no-, from root *(s)keu- "to conceal, hide."
Hec vulva: a cunt. Hic cunnus: idem est. [from Londesborough Illustrated Nominale, c. 1500, in "Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies," eds. Wright and Wülcker, vol. 1, 1884]
First known reference in English apparently is in a compound, Oxford street name Gropecuntlane cited from c. 1230 (and attested through late 14c.) in "Place-Names of Oxfordshire" (Gelling & Stenton, 1953), presumably a haunt of prostitutes. Used in medical writing c. 1400, but avoided in public speech since 15c.; considered obscene since 17c.

in Middle English also conte, counte, and sometimes queinte, queynte (for this, see q). Chaucer used quaint and queynte in "Canterbury Tales" (late 14c.), and Andrew Marvell might be punning on quaint in "To His Coy Mistress" (1650).
"What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone? Is it for ye wolde haue my queynte allone?" [Wife of Bath's Tale]
Under "MONOSYLLABLE" Farmer lists 552 synonyms from English slang and literature before launching into another 5 pages of them in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. [A sampling: Botany Bay, chum, coffee-shop, cookie, End of the Sentimental Journey, fancy bit, Fumbler's Hall, funniment, goatmilker, heaven, hell, Itching Jenny, jelly-bag, Low Countries, nature's tufted treasure, parenthesis, penwiper, prick-skinner, seminary, tickle-toby, undeniable, wonderful lamp, and aphrodisaical tennis court, and, in a separate listing, Naggie. Dutch cognate de kont means "a bottom, an arse," but Dutch also has attractive poetic slang ways of expressing this part, such as liefdesgrot, literally "cave of love," and vleesroos "rose of flesh."

Alternative form cunny is attested from c. 1720 but is certainly much earlier and forced a change in the pronunciation of coney (q.v.), but it was good for a pun while coney was still the common word for "rabbit": "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.' " [Philip Massinger: "The Virgin-Martyr," Act I, Scene 1, 1622]
dandelion (n.): early 15c., earlier dent-de-lioun (late 14c.), from Middle French dent de lion, literally "lion's tooth" (from its toothed leaves), translation of Medieval Latin dens leonis. Other folk names, like tell-time refer to the custom of telling the time by blowing the white seed (the number of puffs required to blow them all off supposedly being the number of the hour), or to the plant's more authentic diuretic qualities, preserved in Middle English piss-a-bed and French pissenlit.
daredevil (n.): 1794, "recklessly daring person," from dare (v.) + devil (n.). The devil might refer to the person, or the sense might be "one who dares the devil" (compare scarecrow, pickpocket, cutthroat, also fear-babe a 16c. word for "something that frightens children"). As an adjective, from 1832.
destruct (v.): "to destroy," 1958, probably a back-formation from destruction in the jargon of U.S. aerospace and defense workers to refer to deliberate destruction of a missile in flight by a friendly agent; popularized 1966 in form self-destruct in the voice-over at the beginning of popular TV spy drama "Mission Impossible." OED records an isolated use of destruct from 17c., in this case probably from Latin destruct-, past participle stem of destruere.
Douglas: family name (late 12c.), later masc. personal name, from Gaelic Dubh glas "the dark water," name of a place in Lanarkshire. As a given name, in the top 40 for boys born in U.S. from 1942 to 1971. Douglas fir named for David Douglas (1798-1834), Scottish botanist who first recorded it in Pacific Northwest, 1825. Douglas scheme, Douglas plan, Douglassite, etc. refer to "social credit" economic model put forth by British engineer Maj. Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952).
fawn (v.): Old English fægnian "rejoice, be glad, exult, applaud," from fægen "glad" (see fain); used in Middle English to refer to expressions of delight, especially a dog wagging its tail (early 13c.), hence "court favor, grovel, act slavishly" (early 14c.). Related: Fawned; fawning.
filibuster (n.): 1580s, flibutor "pirate," especially, in history, "West Indian buccaneer of the 17th century" (mainly French, Dutch, and English adventurers), probably ultimately from Dutch vrijbueter (now vrijbuiter) "freebooter," a word which was used of pirates in the West Indies in Spanish (filibustero) and French (flibustier, earlier fribustier) forms. See freebooter.

According to Century Dictionary, the spread of the word is owing to a Dutch work ("De Americaensche Zee-Roovers," 1678) "written by a bucaneer named John Oexmelin, otherwise Exquemelin or Esquemeling, and translated into French and Spanish, and subsequently into English (1684)." Spanish inserted the -i- in the first syllable; French is responsible for the -s-, inserted but not originally pronounced, "a common fact in 17th century F[rench], after the analogy of words in which an original s was retained in spelling, though it had become silent in pronunciation" [Century Dictionary].

In American English, from 1851 in reference to lawless military adventurers from the U.S. who tried to overthrow Central American governments. The major expeditions were those of Narciso Lopez of New Orleans against Cuba (1850-51) and by William Walker of California against the Mexican state of Sonora (1853-54) and against Nicaragua (1855-58).
FILIBUSTERING is a term lately imported from the Spanish, yet destined, it would seem, to occupy an important place in our vocabulary. In its etymological import it is nearly synonymous with piracy. It is commonly employed, however, to denote an idea peculiar to the modern progress, and which may be defined as the right and practice of private war, or the claim of individuals to engage in foreign hostilities aside from, and even in opposition to the government with which they are in political membership. ["Harper's New Monthly Magazine," January 1853]
The noun in the legislative sense is not in Bartlett (1859) and seems not to have been in use in U.S. legislative writing before 1865 (filibustering in this sense is from 1861). Probably the extension in sense is because obstructionist legislators "pirated" debate or overthrew the usual order of authority. Originally of the senator who led it; the maneuver itself so called by 1893. Not technically restricted to U.S. Senate, but that's where the strategy works best. [The 1853 use of filibustering by U.S. Rep. Albert G. Brown of Mississippi reported in the "Congressional Globe" and cited in the OED does not refer to legislative obstruction, merely to national policy toward Cuba.]
fylfot (n.): supposedly a native name for the swastika (used as a decorative device), but only attested in a single, damaged c. 1500 manuscript, and in that it might rather refer to any sort of device used to fill the bottom (foot) of a design. "[I]t is even possible that it may have been a mere nonce-word" [OED].
gentile (n.): "one who is not a Jew," c. 1400; earlier "one who is not a Christian, a pagan" (late 14c.), from Late Latin noun use of Latin gentilis "of the same family or clan, of or belonging to a Roman gens," from gens (genitive gentis) "race, clan" (see genus, and compare gentle).

The Latin adjective also meant "of or belonging to the same nation," hence, as a noun, gentiles (plural) might mean "men of family; persons belonging to the same family; fellow countrymen, kinsmen," but also "foreigners, barbarians" (as opposed to Romans), those bound only by the Jus Gentium, the "law of nations," defined as "the law that natural reason establishes among all mankind and is followed by all peoples alike."

The Latin word then was used in the Vulgate to translate Greek ethnikos (see ethnic), from ta ethne "the nations," which translated Hebrew ha goyim "the (non-Jewish) nations" (see goy). Hence in Late Latin, after the Christianization of Rome, gentilis also could mean "pagans, heathens," as opposed to Christians. Based on Scripture, gentile also was used by Mormons (1847) and Shakers (1857) to refer to those not of their profession.
German (n.): "a native of Germany," 1520s, from Latin Germanus (adjective and noun, plural Germani), first attested in writings of Julius Caesar, who used Germani to designate a group of tribes in northeastern Gaul, of unknown origin. Probably originally the name of an individual tribe, but Gaulish (Celtic) origins have been proposed, from words perhaps originally meaning "noisy" (compare Old Irish garim "to shout") or "neighbor" (compare Old Irish gair "neighbor"). Middle English had Germayns (plural, late 14c.), but only in the sense "ancient Teuton, member of the Germanic tribes." The earlier English word was Almain (early 14c.; see Alemanni) or Dutch.
Þe empere passede from þe Grees to þe Frenschemen and to þe Germans, þat beeþ Almayns. [John of Trevisa, translation of Higdon's Polychronicon, 1387]
Their name for themselves, die Deutschen (see Dutch), dates from 12c. Roman writers also used Teutoni as a German tribal name, and writers in Latin after about 875 commonly refer to the German language as teutonicus (see Teutonic). Meaning "the German language" in English is from 1748. High German (1823 in English) and Low German as a division of dialects is geographical: High German (from 16c. established as the literary language) was the German spoken in the upland regions in southern Germany, Low German (often including Dutch, Frisian, Flemish), also called Plattdeutsch was spoken in the regions near the North Sea. In the U.S. German also was used of descendants of settlers from Germany.
Gettysburg: town in south-central Pennsylvania, U.S., 1800 (earlier it was Gettys-town), founded 1780s by Gen. James Gettys and named for him. Civil War battle there was fought July 1-3, 1863. The Gettysburg Address was given Nov. 19, 1863, and was being called that by 1865, though before President Lincoln's assassination the term tended to refer to Edward Everett's full oration that preceded Lincoln's short speech.
giant (n.): c. 1300, "fabulous man-like creature of enormous size," from Old French geant, earlier jaiant "giant, ogre" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *gagantem (nominative gagas), from Latin gigas "a giant," from Greek Gigas (usually in plural, Gigantes), one of a race of divine but savage and monstrous beings (personifying destructive natural forces), sons of Gaia and Uranus, eventually destroyed by the gods. The word is of unknown origin, probably from a pre-Greek language. Derivation from gegenes "earth-born" is considered untenable.
In þat tyme wer here non hauntes Of no men bot of geauntes. [Wace's Chronicle, c. 1330]
It replaced Old English ent, eoten, also gigant (from Latin). The Greek word was used in Septuagint to refer to men of great size and strength, hence the expanded use in modern languages; in English of very tall and unusually large persons from 1550s; of persons who have any quality in extraordinary degree from 1530s. As a class of stars, from 1912. As an adjective from early 15c. Giant-killer is from 1726.
grass widow (n.): 1520s, the earliest recorded sense is "mistress;" the allusion to grass is not clear, but it commonly was believed to refer to casual bedding (compare bastard and German Strohwitwe, literally "straw-widow," and compare the expression give (a woman) a grass gown "roll her playfully on the grass" (1580s), also euphemistic for the loss of virginity). Revived late 18c. as "one that pretends to have been married, but never was, yet has children;" in early 19c. use it could mean "married woman whose husband is absent" (and often presumed, but not certainly known to be, dead), also often applied to a divorced or discarded wife or an unmarried woman who has had a child. Both euphemistic and suggestive.
[G]rasse wydowes ... be yet as seuerall as a barbours chayre and neuer take but one at onys. [More, 1528]

GRASS WIDOW, s. a forsaken fair one, whose nuptials, not celebrated in a church, were consummated, in all pastoral simplicity, on the green turf. [Rev. Robert Forby, "Vocabulary of East Anglia," London, 1830]