英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

alms [alms 词源字典]: 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[alms etymology, alms origin, 英语词源]
asset: asset: [16] Originally, to have assets was simply to have ‘enough’ – as in French assez. The Anglo-Norman legal phrase aver asetz signified ‘have enough money to meet one’s debts’, and eventually asetz, later assets, passed from the general meaning ‘enough’ to the particular ‘financial resources’ (the final -s caused it to be regarded as a plural noun, but the analogical singular asset does not appear until the 19th century).

Anglo-Norman asetz itself goes back via Old French asez to Vulgar Latin *assatis, formed from the Latin phrase ad satis ‘to enough’ (satis is the source of English satisfy and satiate, and is related to sad).
=> sad, satiate, satisfy
buffalo: buffalo: [16] English probably acquired buffalo from Portuguese bufalo, originally naming the ‘water buffalo’, Bubalis bubalis, a large oxlike animal of Asia and Africa, and subsequently extended to the ‘Cape buffalo’ of South Africa, Syncerus caffer. The Portuguese word came from late Latin bufalus, an alteration of Latin bubalus, which was borrowed from Greek boúbalos. The Greek word, which seems to have named a type of African gazelle, may have been formed from bous ‘ox’. The application of the word to the North American bison, which is still regarded as ‘incorrect’, dates from the late 18th century.
=> buff
bugger: bugger: [16] The Bulgarians, belonging from the early Christian era to the Eastern Orthodox Church, were regarded by Western Europeans as heretics. Thus it was that the Latin word Bulgarus came to be applied generically to any heretic, and eventually specifically to the Albigenses, a Catharistic sect in southern France in the 11th to 13th centuries. It passed via Old French bougre and Middle Dutch bugger into English, acquiring along the way bigoted associations of heresy with anal intercourse. The weakened use of the word as a general term of abuse dates from the early 18th century.
busby: busby: [18] Busby originally meant ‘large bushy wig’, and so may be related to buzz wig, a term with similar meaning current during the 19th century (and perhaps the inspiration for Sergeant Buzfuz, the lawyer in Dickens’s Pickwick Papers). The application to the full-dress fur hat worn by hussars in the British army dates from the early 19th century, but its extension to the Guards’ bearskin (still regarded as a solecism in some quarters) seems to have been a 20thcentury development.
cannibal: cannibal: [16] Cannibal was originally a proper name, applied by the Spaniards to the Carib people of the West Indies (whom they regarded as eaters of human flesh). It is a variant, originally used by Christopher Columbus, of Caribes, which comes from Carib, a word of Carib origin in the Arawakan language of northern South America and the Caribbean. It is related to the Caribs’ name for themselves, Galibi, literally ‘strong men’.
caterpillar: caterpillar: [15] Etymologically, a caterpillar is a ‘hairy cat’. The word comes ultimately from late Latin *catta pilōsa: catta is the source of English cat, while pilōsus ‘hairy’ is a derivative of Latin pilus ‘hair’, from which English gets pile of a carpet. In Old French *catta pilōsa became chatepelose, which passed into English as catyrpel.

The present-day form arose in the 16th century, probably from association with the now obsolete piller ‘plunderer’ (related to English pillage) – caterpillars being regarded, of course, as plunderers of leaves. The notion that caterpillars resemble small furry mammals is also reflected in such names as pussmoth and woolly bear.
=> cat, pile
cavalcade: cavalcade: [16] Originally, a cavalcade was simply a ride on horseback, often for the purpose of attack: in James I’s Counterblast to tobacco 1604, for example, we find ‘to make some sudden cavalcade upon your enemies’. By the 17th century this had developed to ‘procession on horseback’, and it was not long after that that the present-day, more general ‘procession’ emerged.

The word comes via French cavalcade from Italian cavalcata, a derivative of the verb cavalcare ‘ride on horseback’. This in turn came from Vulgar Latin *caballicāre, which was based on Latin caballus ‘horse’ (source also of English cavalier and French cheval ‘horse’). In the 20th century, -cade has come to be regarded as a suffix in its own right, meaning ‘procession, show’, and producing such forms as motorcade, aquacade, and even camelcade.
=> cavalier
chintz: chintz: [17] Chintz is originally an Indian word. English borrowed it from Hindi chīnt, and at first used it unaltered: Samuel Pepys, for instance, writing in his diary for 5 September 1663, notes ‘Bought my wife a chint, that is, a painted Indian calico, for to line her new study’. However, since in commercial use the plural form, chints, was so much commoner than the singular, it eventually came to be regarded as a singular itself, and the s-less form dropped out of the language.

In the 18th century, for some unexplained reason (perhaps on the analogy of such words as quartz) chints began to be spelled chintz. The Hindi word itself was originally an adjective, which came from Sanskrit chitra ‘many-coloured, bright’ (ultimate source of English chit ‘small piece of paper containing some sort of official notification’ [18]).
=> chit
chlorine: chlorine: [19] Chlorine is a greenish-yellow gas, and was named for its colour. The term was coined by the British chemist Sir Humphry Davy in 1810, from the Greek khlōrós ‘greenishyellow’. Of other words containing this element, chlorophyll [19] too was based on the notion of colour (in reference to the green colouring matter of leaves: the Greek elements literally mean ‘green leaf’), but chloroform [19], originally French, is a secondary formation based ultimately on chlorine (since it was originally regarded as a trichloride of formyl).
=> yellow
condign: condign: [15] From its virtually exclusive modern use in the phrase condign punishment, condign has come to be regarded frequently as meaning ‘severe’, but etymologically it signifies ‘fully deserved’. It comes via Old French condigne from Latin condignus, a compound adjective formed from the intensive prefix comand dignus ‘worthy’ (source of English dainty, deign, dignity, disdain, and indignant, and related to decent). The collocation with punishment arises from the frequent use of the phrase in Tudor acts of parliament.
=> dainty, decent, deign, dignity, disdain, indignant
crease: crease: [15] Crease and crest are ultimately the same word. The ridges produced by creasing cloth were regarded as similar to ridges or crests, and so the word crease (often creast in late Middle English) came to be applied to them. The loss of the final -t may have been due to the mistaken analysis of creast or crest as the past form of a verb.
=> crest
currant: currant: [14] Etymologically, currants are grapes from ‘Corinth’. In the Middle Ages Corinth, in Greece, exported small dried grapes of particularly high quality, which became known in Old French as raisins de Corinthe ‘grapes of Corinth’. This phrase passed via Anglo-Norman raisins de corauntz into Middle English as raisins of coraunce. By the 16th century, coraunce had come to be regarded as a plural form, and a new singular was coined from it – at first coren, and then in the 17th century currant.

In the late 16th century, too, the name was transferred to fruit such as the blackcurrant and redcurrant, under the mistaken impression that the ‘dried-grape’ currant was made from them.
effigy: effigy: [16] Effigy comes ultimately from the Latin verb effingere ‘form, portray’. This was a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and fingere ‘make, shape’ (source of English faint, feign, fiction, figment, and related to English dairy and dough). It formed the basis of the noun effigiēs ‘representation, likeness, portrait’, which was borrowed into English in the 16th century as effigies: ‘If that you were the good Sir Rowland’s son, as you have whisper’d faithfully you were, and as mine eye doth his effigies witness most truly limn’d and living in your face, be truly welcome hither’, Shakespeare, As you like it 1600.

By the 18th century, however, this had come to be regarded as a plural form, and so a new singular, effigy, was created.
=> dairy, dough, faint, fiction, figment
good: good: [OE] Good is such a general, all-embracing word for anything regarded in a positive light that it perhaps comes as something of a surprise that it is not an ancient primary term distributed throughout the Indo-European languages. It is a strictly Germanic word (German has gut, Dutch goed, and Swedish and Danish god), and it goes back to prehistoric Germanic *gath- ‘bring together’ (source of English gather and together); the progression of senses appears to be ‘brought together, united’, ‘fitting, suitable’, ‘pleasing’, and ‘good’. See also BEST.
=> gather, together
grovel: grovel: [16] Old and Middle English had a suffix -ling, used for making adverbs denoting direction or condition. Few survive, and of those that do, most have had their -ling changed to the more logical-sounding -long (headlong and sidelong, for instance, used to be headling and sideling; darkling still hangs on – just – unchanged).

Among them was grovelling, an adverb meaning ‘face downwards’ based on the phrase on grufe ‘on the face or stomach’, which in turn was a partial translation of Old Norse á grúfu, literally ‘on proneness’ (grúfu may be related to English creep). It was not long before grovelling came to be regarded as a present participle, and the new verb grovel was coined from it.
=> creep
hermetic: hermetic: [17] Hermetic means literally ‘of Hermes’. Not Hermes the messenger of the Greek gods, though, but an Egyptian priest of the time of Moses, who in the Middle Ages was regarded as identical with the versatile Hermes in his capacity of patron of science and invention, and who was thus named Hermes Trismegistus ‘Hermes the thrice greatest’. This shadowy figure was the supposed author of various works on alchemy and magic, and so the term hermetic came to be roughly synonymous with alchemical.

One of the inventions credited to Hermes Trismegistus was a magic seal to make containers airtight, and by the 1660s we find hermetic being used for ‘airtight’.
left: left: [13] The Old English word for ‘left’ was winestra. Etymologically this meant ‘friendlier’ (it is related to Swedish vän ‘friend’), and its euphemistic application to ‘left’ is a reminder that historically the left-hand side of the body has been superstitiously regarded as of ill omen. To call it ‘friendly’ (a usage which survives in Swedish vänster and Danish venstre ‘left’) was an attempt to placate the evil forces of the left. (Latin sinister ‘left’ is similarly fraught with negative connotations.

It too had euphemistic origins – it came from a source meaning ‘more useful’ – and it developed the figurative senses ‘unfavourable’, ‘injurious’, etc, taken over and extended by English in sinister [15].) An ancestor of left existed in Old English – left or *lyft. But it meant ‘weak’ or ‘foolish’, and it was not until the 13th century that it came to be used as the partner of right.

Its ultimate origins are not known.
magic: magic: [14] Greek mágos, a word of Persian origin, meant ‘sorcerer’ (Latin borrowed it as magus, whose plural magi is used in English for the three ‘Wise Men’ who visited the infant Christ). From mágos was derived the adjective magikós. Its use in the phrase magiké tékhnē ‘sorcerer’s art’ led eventually to magiké itself being regarded as a noun, and it passed into English via late Latin magica and Old French magique.
=> magi
money: money: [13] An epithet used in ancient Rome for the goddess Juno was Monēta (derived by some etymologists in the past from the Latin verb monēre ‘advise, warn’, although this is now regarded as rather dubious). The name was also applied to her temple in Rome, which contained a mint. And so in due course monēta came to mean ‘mint’ (a sense retained in English mint, which goes back via a circuitous route to monēta), then ‘stamp for coining’, and finally ‘coin’ – the meaning transmitted via Old French moneie to English money.
=> mint
nostalgia: nostalgia: [18] Etymologically, nostalgia is pain connected with returning home – in other words, homesickness. It is a modern coinage, based ultimately on Greek nostos ‘homecoming’ and algos ‘pain, grief’ (as in analgesic [19] and neuralgia (see NEURAL)). At first it was used as the name of what was regarded virtually as a form of mental illness (the earliest known record of it is in the journal kept by the botanist and explorer Joseph Banks on Captain Cook’s round-the-world voyage, in which he noted (1770) that most of the ship’s company were ‘now pretty far gone with the longing for home which the Physicians have gone so far as to esteem a disease under the name of Nostalgia’).

The milder present-day connotations of wistful longing for a past time emerged in the early 20th century.
operate: operate: [17] Operate belongs to a small family of English words that trace their history back to Latin opus ‘work’, which may be related to Sanskrit ápas ‘work’, Old English afol ‘power’, and Latin ops ‘wealth’ (source of English copious, copy, and opulent [17]). Its most direct English descendant is of course opus [18] itself, which was originally adopted in the phrase magnum opus ‘great work’. Opera [17] goes back to the Latin plural, which came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun meaning ‘that which is produced by work’.

Italian gave it its musical sense, and passed it on to English. Operate itself came from the past-participial stem of the derived Latin verb operārī ‘work’. It was originally used in English for ‘produce an effect’, and the transitive sense, as in ‘operate a machine’, did not emerge until as recently as the mid-19th century, in American English. The surgical sense is first recorded in the derivative operation [16] at the end of the 16th century.

Other English descendants of opus include cooperate [17] and manoeuvre.
=> copious, copy, manoeuvre, opera, opulent
pea: pea: [17] Pea is the mirror-image of dice. Dice started off as the plural of die, but has become a singular form; the singular form of pea was originally pease, but it came to be regarded as plural, and so a new singular pea was created. The word was originally acquired in the Old English period from Latin pisa, which in turn got it from Greek píson. The old singular form survives in pease pudding. Relatives of the word include French pois, Italian pisello, and Welsh pysen.
plum: plum: [OE] Plum and prune ‘dried plum’ are ultimately the same word. Their common ancestor was Greek proumnon, a word which originated somewhere in Asia Minor. This was later contracted to prounon, and borrowed into Latin as prōnum. Its plural prōna came to be regarded in post-classical times as a singular, and this is where English gets prune from, but prōna was also borrowed into prehistoric Germanic, and many of its descendants here have had their r changed to l (the two are close together phonetically) – hence German pflaume, Swedish plommon, and English plum.
=> prune
quince: quince: [14] Etymologically, the quince is the ‘fruit from Khaniá’, a port on the northwest coast of Crete from which quinces were exported. In ancient times Khaniá was known as Cydonia (in Greek Kudónia), so the Greeks called the fruit mélon Kudónion ‘Cydonian apple’. Latin took the term over as cydōneum, later cotōneum, which passed into English via Old French cooin. The original English form of the word was quoyn, later quyn, but already by the early 14th century its plural quyns was coming to be regarded as a singular – whence modern English quince.
sash: sash: The sash you wear [16] and the sash that goes in a window [17] are distinct words. The former comes from Arabic shāsh ‘turban’, and that is exactly how English first acquired it: ‘All of them wear on their heads white shashes and turbans, the badge of their religion’, George Sandys, Travels 1615. But the Arabic word also denoted a strip of muslin or other material from which such turbans were constructed, and it is that application that led towards the end of the 17th century to the current sense of the English word.

The altered form sash appeared around the same time. Sash ‘window-frame’ was originally chassis, an early borrowing of French chassis ‘frame’ (it was acquired again in the sense ‘frame of a carriage’ in the 19th century). This evolved to shashes, and in due course came to be regarded as a plural form, so a new singular sash emerged. French chassis itself goes back ultimately to Latin capsa ‘box’, source of English capsule, case, etc.
=> capsule, case, chassis
skate: skate: English has two words skate. The older is the fish-name [14], which was borrowed from Old Norse skata. Skate used for gliding over ice [17] comes from an Old French word for ‘stilt’ – eschasse. Its northern dialect form was escase. This was borrowed into English in the 16th century as the now obsolete scatch ‘stilt’, and into Middle Dutch as schaetse, its meaning unaccountably changed to ‘skate’.

Its modern Dutch descendant schaats was borrowed into English as scates, which soon came to be regarded as a plural, and was ‘singularized’ to skate. Eschasse itself came from a Frankish *skakkja, a derivative of the verb *skakan ‘run fast’, which in turn was descended from prehistoric Germanic *skakan (source of English shake).
=> shake
spike: spike: English has two etymologically distinct words spike, although they are so similar in meaning that they are commonly regarded as one and the same. Spike ‘long sharp piece’ [13] was probably borrowed from Middle Dutch spīker. It has another relative in Swedish spik ‘nail’, and goes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic *speik-, *spaik- (source also of English spoke).

The spick of spick and span [17] is a variant of spike. The expression is an elaboration of an earlier span-new ‘brand-new’, which was borrowed from Old Norse spánnýr ‘as new as a new chip of wood’ (spánn ‘chip’ is related to English spoon, which originally meant ‘chip’). The spick was added in imitation of Dutch spiksplinter nieuw ‘spike-splinter new’. Spike ‘ear of corn, arrangement of flowers on a stalk similar to this’ [14] was borrowed from Latin spīca, a close relative of spīna ‘thorn’ (source of English spine). Spīca is also ultimately responsible for English spigot [14], perhaps via the diminutive spiculum; and it forms the first syllable of spikenard [14], the name of a sort of ancient aromatic ointment or of the plant that probably produced it.
=> spick; spigot, spine, spoke
tawdry: tawdry: [17] Anna, Anglo-Saxon king of East Anglia, had a daughter called Etheldrida, who became queen of Northumbria (she died in 679). She had an inordinate fondness in her youth for fine lace neckerchiefs, and when she was later afflicted by a fatal tumour of the neck, she regarded it as divine retribution for her former extravagance. After her death she was canonized and made patron saint of Ely.

In the Middle Ages fairs were held in her memory, known as ‘St Audrey’s fairs’ (Audry is a conflated version of Etheldrida), at which lace neckties were sold. These were termed Seynt Audries lace, a name eventually eroded to tawdrie lace. They were often made from cheap gaudy material, and so by the end of the 17th century tawdry was being used generally for ‘cheap and gaudy’.
tilt: tilt: [14] Tilt originally meant ‘fall over’; the sense ‘slant’ is not recorded before the 16th century. The word is probably descended from an unrecorded Old English *tyltan, whose ultimate source would have been the prehistoric Germanic adjective *taltaz ‘unsteady’ (ancestor also of Swedish tulta ‘totter’). Tilt ‘joust’ (first recorded in the 16th century) has traditionally been regarded as the same word, based presumably on the notion of making one’s opponent ‘fall over’, but this is not certain.
trunk: trunk: [15] Trunk came via Old French tronc from Latin truncus (source also of English trench and truncate). This denoted ‘something with its protruding parts torn off’, hence ‘something regarded separately from its protruding parts’ – the stem of a tree without its branches, or a body without its limbs. The application of the English word to an ‘elephant’s proboscis’, which dates from the 16th century, apparently arose from some confusion with trump ‘trumpet’.
=> trench, truncate
utopia: utopia: [16] Utopia means etymologically ‘noplace’. It was coined by the English statesman and scholar Sir Thomas More from Greek ou ‘not’ and tópos ‘place’ (source of English topic). He used it as the name of an imaginary island whose inhabitants had organized their society along the lines of what he regarded as a theoretically ideal commonwealth, which he described in his book Utopia 1516. The word was first used as a more general term for an ‘ideal place’ in the early 17th century.
=> topic
walnut: walnut: [OE] A walnut is etymologically a ‘foreign nut’. Its name alludes to the fact that the nut was regarded by the Germanic peoples as an exotic import from southern Europe, land of Romans and Celts (their own native nut was the hazel). Prehistoric Germanic *walkhaz originally meant ‘Celtic’ (it was borrowed from Latin Volcae, the name of a Celtic people), but it soon broadened out to include anyone or anything foreign (including the Romans) within its scope.

Its original Celtic connotations survive, however, in Welsh and Walloon (the name of a people of Gaulish origin), both of which go back to *walkhaz. English shares the formation walnut with its Germanic neighbours – German walnuss, Dutch walnoot, Swedish valnöt, and Danish valnød.
=> walloon, welsh
wheatear: wheatear: [16] The wheatear is etymologically the ‘white-arsed’ bird. The word is a backformation from an earlier wheatears, a singular form which came to be regarded as plural. And wheatears in turn was an alteration (due no doubt to confusion with wheat) of *whiteeres, a compound formed from white and arse. Like the parallel French term culblanc, it alludes to the white feathers on the bird’s rump.
=> arse, white
aggregate (n.): "number of persons, things, etc., regarded as a unit," early 15c., from noun use of Latin adjective aggregatum, neuter of aggregatus (see aggregate (adj.)).
al Qaida: also Al-Qaeda; name of a loosely structured jihadist movement founded c. 1989 by Osama bin Laden; from Arabic, literally "the base." A common Arabic term among Muslim radicals from the wider Islamic world who came to Afghanistan in 1980s and fought alongside local rebels against the Soviets, and who regarded themselves and their struggle not merely in Afghan terms but as the "base" or foundation of a wider jihad and revival in Islam. Used by Bin Laden's mentor, Abdallah Azzam (1941-1989), who referred to the "vanguard" which "constitutes the strong foundation [al-qaida al-sulbah] for the expected society." In U.S., the term first turns up in a CIA report in 1996.
Every Muslim, from the moment they realise the distinction in their hearts, hates Americans, hates Jews, and hates Christians. This is a part of our belief and our religion. For as long as I can remember, I have felt tormented and at war, and have felt hatred and animosity for Americans. [Osama bin Laden, interview aired on Al-Jazeera, December 1998]
Andrew: masc. proper name, from Old French Andreu (Modern French André), from Latin Andreas, from Greek Andreas, from andreios "manly," from aner (genitive andros) "man" (see anthropo-). Andrew Millar (1590s) for some forgotten reason became English naval slang for "government authority," and especially "the Royal Navy." St. Andrew (feast day Nov. 30) has long been regarded as patron saint of Scotland. The Andrew's cross (c. 1400) supposedly resembles the one St. Andrew was crucified on.
armpit (n.): mid-14c., from arm (n.1) + pit (n.1). Arm-hole (early 14c.) was used in this sense but was obsolete by 18c. Colloquial armpit of the nation for any locale regarded as ugly and disgusting was in use by 1965.
artery (n.): late 14c., from Anglo-French arterie, Old French artaire (13c.; Modern French artère), and directly from Latin arteria, from Greek arteria "windpipe," also "an artery," as distinct from a vein; related to aeirein "to raise" (see aorta).

They were regarded by the ancients as air ducts because the arteries do not contain blood after death; medieval writers took them for the channels of the "vital spirits," and 16c. senses of artery in English include "trachea, windpipe." The word is used in reference to artery-like systems of major rivers from 1805; of railways from 1850.
Asian (n.): late 14c., "inhabitant of Asia (Minor)," from Latin Asianus (adjective and noun, "belonging to the province of Asia;" "an inhabitant of Asia"), from Greek Asianos, from Asia (see Asia). Ousted Asiatic as the preferred term in Britain c. 1950.
The term "Asiatic" has come to be regarded with disfavour by those to whom it is applied, and they feel entitled to be brought into line with usage in regard to Europeans, Americans and Australians. ["Times Literary Supplement," Feb. 6, 1953]
As an adjective in English, by 1690s.
asparagus (n.): late 14c., aspergy; late Old English sparage, from Latin asparagus (in Medieval Latin often sparagus), from Greek asparagos, which is of uncertain origin; probably from PIE root *sp(h)er(e)g- "to spring up" (though perhaps not originally a Greek word).

In Middle English, asperages sometimes was regarded as a plural, with false singular aspergy. By 16c. the word had been anglicized as far as sperach, sperage. It was respelled by c. 1600 to conform with classical Latin, but in 17c. the folk-etymologized variant sparrowgrass took hold, persisting into 19c., during which time asparagus had "an air of stiffness and pedantry" [John Walker, "Critical Pronouncing Dictionary," 1791]. Known in Old English as eorðnafela.
ass (n.2): slang for "backside," first attested 1860 in nautical slang, in popular use from 1930; chiefly U.S.; from dialectal variant pronunciation of arse (q.v.). The loss of -r- before -s- attested in several other words (such as burst/bust, curse/cuss, horse/hoss, barse/bass, garsh/gash). Indirect evidence of the change from arse to ass can be traced to 1785 (in euphemistic avoidance of ass "donkey" by polite speakers) and perhaps to Shakespeare, if Nick Bottom transformed into a donkey in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1594) is the word-play some think it is. Meaning "woman regarded as a sexual object" is from 1942. To have (one's) head up (one's) ass "not know what one is doing" is attested by 1969. Colloquial (one's) ass "one's self, one's person" attested by 1958.
at (prep.): Old English æt, from Proto-Germanic *at (cognates: Old Norse, Gothic at, Old Frisian et, Old High German az), from PIE *ad- "to, near, at" (cognates: Latin ad "to, toward" Sanskrit adhi "near;" see ad-).

Lost in German and Dutch, which use their equivalent of to; in Scandinavian, however, to has been lost and at fills its place. In choosing between at church, in church, etc. at is properly distinguished from in or on by involving some practical connection; a worshipper is at church; a tourist is in the church.

The colloquial use of at after where ("where it's at") is attested from 1859. At last is recorded from late 13c.; adverbial phrase at least was in use by 1775. At in Middle English was used freely with prepositions (as in at after, which is in Shakespeare), but this has faded with the exception of at about, which was used in modern times by Trollope, Virginia Woolfe, D.H. Lawrence, and Evelyn Waugh, but nonetheless is regarded as a sign of incompetent writing by my copy editor bosses.
bad (adj.): c. 1200, "inferior in quality;" early 13c., "wicked, evil, vicious," a mystery word with no apparent relatives in other languages.* Possibly from Old English derogatory term bæddel and its diminutive bædling "effeminate man, hermaphrodite, pederast," probably related to bædan "to defile." A rare word before 1400, and evil was more common in this sense until c. 1700. Meaning "uncomfortable, sorry" is 1839, American English colloquial.

Comparable words in the other Indo-European languages tend to have grown from descriptions of specific qualities, such as "ugly," "defective," "weak," "faithless," "impudent," "crooked," "filthy" (such as Greek kakos, probably from the word for "excrement;" Russian plochoj, related to Old Church Slavonic plachu "wavering, timid;" Persian gast, Old Persian gasta-, related to gand "stench;" German schlecht, originally "level, straight, smooth," whence "simple, ordinary," then "bad").

Comparative and superlative forms badder, baddest were common 14c.-18c. and used as recently as Defoe (but not by Shakespeare), but yielded to comparative worse and superlative worst (which had belonged to evil and ill).

As a noun, late 14c., "evil, wickedness." In U.S. place names, sometimes translating native terms meaning "supernaturally dangerous." Ironic use as a word of approval is said to be at least since 1890s orally, originally in Black English, emerging in print 1928 in a jazz context. It might have emerged from the ambivalence of expressions like bad nigger, used as a term of reproach by whites, but among blacks sometimes representing one who stood up to injustice, but in the U.S. West bad man also had a certain ambivalence:
These are the men who do most of the killing in frontier communities, yet it is a noteworthy fact that the men who are killed generally deserve their fate. [Farmer & Henley]
*Farsi has bad in more or less the same sense as the English word, but this is regarded by linguists as a coincidence. The forms of the words diverge as they are traced back in time (Farsi bad comes from Middle Persian vat), and such accidental convergences exist across many languages, given the vast number of words in each and the limited range of sounds humans can make to signify them. Among other coincidental matches with English are Korean mani "many," Chinese pei "pay," Nahuatl (Aztecan) huel "well," Maya hol "hole."
baloney (n.): 1894, variant of bologna sausage (q.v.). As slang for "nonsense," 1922, American English (popularized 1930s by N.Y. Gov. Alfred E. Smith; in this sense sometimes said to have been one of the coinages of legendary "Variety" staffer Jack Conway), from earlier sense of "idiot" (by 1915), perhaps influenced by blarney, but usually regarded as being from the sausage, as a type traditionally made from odds and ends. It also was ring slang early 20c. for an inferior fighter.
The aristocratic Kid's first brawl for sugar was had in Sandusky, Odryo, with a boloney entitled Young Du Fresne. He gave the green and nervous Kid a proper pastin' for six rounds and the disgusted Dummy sold me his find for a hundred bucks, leavin' the clubhouse just in time to miss seein' the boy get stung, get mad, and win by a knockout. [H.C. Witwer, "The Leather Pushers," "Colliers," Oct. 16, 1920]
bastard (n.): "illegitimate child," early 13c., from Old French bastard (11c., Modern French bâtard), "acknowledged child of a nobleman by a woman other than his wife," probably from fils de bast "packsaddle son," meaning a child conceived on an improvised bed (saddles often doubled as beds while traveling), with pejorative ending -art (see -ard). Alternative possibly is that the word is from Proto-Germanic *banstiz "barn," equally suggestive of low origin.

Not always regarded as a stigma; the Conqueror is referred to in state documents as "William the Bastard." Figurative sense of "something not pure or genuine" is late 14c.; use as a vulgar term of abuse for a man is attested from 1830. As an adjective from late 14c. Among the "bastard" words in Halliwell-Phillipps' "Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words" are avetrol, chance-bairn, by-blow, harecoppe, horcop, and gimbo ("a bastard's bastard").
Benjamin: masc. proper name, in Old Testament, Jacob's youngest son (Gen. xxxv:18), from Hebrew Binyamin, literally "son of the south," though interpreted in Genesis as "son of the right hand," from ben "son of" + yamin "right hand," also "south" (in an East-oriented culture). Compare Arabic cognate yaman "right hand, right side, south;" yamana "he was happy," literally "he turned to the right." The right was regarded as auspicious (see left and dexterity). Also see Yemen, southpaw, and compare deasil "rightwise, turned toward the right," from Gaelic deiseil "toward the south; toward the right," from deas "right, right-hand; south." Also compare Sanskrit dakshina "right; south." Slang meaning "money" (by 1999) is from portrait of Benjamin Franklin on U.S. $100 bill.
bloom (n.2): "rough mass of wrought iron," from Old English bloma "lump of metal; mass," which is of unknown origin. Identical in form to bloom (n.1), and sometimes regarded as a secondary sense of it, but evidence of a connection is wanting.
bowel (n.): c. 1300, from Old French boele "intestines, bowels, innards" (12c., Modern French boyau), from Medieval Latin botellus "small intestine," originally "sausage," diminutive of botulus "sausage," a word borrowed from Oscan-Umbrian, from PIE *gwet-/*geut- "intestine" (cognates: Latin guttur "throat," Old English cwið, Gothic qiþus "belly, womb," German kutteln "guts, chitterlings").

Greek splankhnon (from the same PIE root as spleen) was a word for the principal internal organs, which also were felt in ancient times to be the seat of various emotions. Greek poets, from Aeschylus down, regarded the bowels as the seat of the more violent passions such as anger and love, but by the Hebrews they were seen as the seat of tender affections, especially kindness, benevolence, and compassion. Splankhnon was used in Septuagint to translate a Hebrew word, and from thence early Bibles in English rendered it in its literal sense as bowels, which thus acquired in English a secondary meaning of "pity, compassion" (late 14c.). But in later editions the word often was translated as heart. Bowel movement is attested by 1874.
Brit (n.): U.S. colloquial shortening of Britisher or Briton, 1901, formerly (in common with Britisher) highly offensive to Englishmen traveling in the States, who regarded it as yet another instance of the "odious vulgarism" of the Americans, but Bret and Bryt were common Old English words for the (Celtic) Britons and survived until c. 1300. In Old French, Bret as an adjective meant "British, Breton; cunning, crafty; simple-minded, stupid."