英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

affront [affront 词源字典]: affront: [14] The present-day notion of ‘insulting someone’ has replaced the more direct action of hitting them in the face. Affront comes, via Old French afronter, from Vulgar Latin *affrontāre ‘strike in the face’, which was formed from the Latin phrase ad frontem, literally ‘to the face’.
=> front[affront etymology, affront origin, 英语词源]
altar: altar: [OE] The etymological notion underlying the word altar is that of sacrificial burning. Latin altar, which was borrowed directly into Old English, was a derivative of the plural noun altāria, ‘burnt offerings’, which probably came from the verb adolēre ‘burn up’. Adolēre in turn appears to be a derivative of olēre ‘smell’ (the connection being the smell made by combustion), which is related to English odour, olfactory, and redolent. (The traditional view that altar derives from Latin altus ‘high’ is no longer generally accepted, although no doubt it played a part, by association, in its development.) In Middle English, the Old French form auter replaced altar, but in the 16th century the Latin form re-established itself.
=> odour, olfactory, redolent
always: always: [13] In Old English, the expression was alne weg, literally ‘all the way’. It seems likely that this was used originally in the physical sense of ‘covering the complete distance’, but by the time it starts to appear in texts (King Alfred’s is the first recorded use, in his translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae around 888) it already meant ‘perpetually’. Alway survived into modern English, albeit as an archaism, but began to be replaced as the main form by always in the 12th century.

The final -s is genitive, not plural, and was originally added to all as well as way: alles weis. It has a generalizing force, much as in modern English one might say of a morning for ‘every morning’.
=> way
ambulance: ambulance: [19] Originally, ambulance was a French term for a field hospital – that is, one set up at a site convenient for a battlefield, and capable of being moved on to the next battlefield when the army advanced (or retreated). In other words, it was an itinerant hospital, and the ultimate source of the term is the Latin verb ambulāre ‘walk’ (as in amble). The earliest recorded term for such a military hospital in French was the 17th-century hôpital ambulatoire.

This was later replaced by hôpital ambulant, literally ‘walking hospital’, and finally, at the end of the 18th century, by ambulance. This sense of the word had died out by the late 19th century, but already its attributive use, in phrases such as ambulance cart and ambulance wagon, had led to its being used for a vehicle for carrying the wounded or sick.
=> acid, alacrity, amble, perambulator
apostle: apostle: [OE] Apostle was an early borrowing into Old English from Latin, and like angel it originally meant ‘messenger’. Latin apostolus came from Greek apóstolos ‘messenger’, or literally ‘someone sent out’; this was a compound formed from the prefix apo- ‘away’ and the verb stéllein ‘send’ (related to English stall and local). The Old English form, apostol, was gradually replaced from the 12th century by apostle, from Old French apostle.
=> epistle, local, stall
apricot: apricot: [16] The word apricot reached English by a peculiarly circuitous route from Latin. The original term used by the Romans for the apricot, a fruit which came ultimately from China, was prūnum Arminiacum or mālum Arminiacum ‘Armenian plum or apple’ (Armenia was an early source of choice apricots). But a new term gradually replaced these: mālum praecocum ‘early-ripening apple’ (praecocus was a variant of praecox, from which English gets precocious). Praecocum was borrowed by a succession of languages, making its way via Byzantine Greek beríkokkon and Arabic al birqūq ‘the apricot’ to Spanish albaricoque and Portuguese albricoque.

This was the source of the English word, but its earliest form, abrecock, shows that it had already acquired the initial abrof French abricot, and the final -t followed almost immediately. Spellings with p instead of b are also found in the 16th century.
=> precocious
aubergine: aubergine: [18] Etymologically, the aubergine is the ‘anti-fart vegetable’. That was the meaning of its ultimate source, Sanskrit vātinganah, so named because it did not produce intestinal gas. This was borrowed into Persian as bādingān, and reached Arabic as (with the definite article al) al-bādindjān. It then made its way with the Moors into the Iberian peninsula: here it produced Portuguese beringela (source of brinjal [18], an Indian and African English term for ‘aubergine’) and, with the definite article retained, Catalan alberginia.

French turned this into aubergine and passed it on to English. In British English it has gradually replaced the earlier eggplant, named after the vegetable’s shape, which American English has retained.
band: band: There are two distinct words band in English, but neither of them goes back as far as Old English. The one meaning ‘group of people’ [15] comes from Old French bande, but is probably Germanic in ultimate origin; the specific sense ‘group of musicians’ developed in the 17th century. Band ‘strip’ [13] comes from Germanic *bindan, source of English bind, but reached English in two quite separate phases.

It first came via Old Norse band, in the sense ‘something that ties or constrains’; this replaced Old English bend, also from Germanic *bindan (which now survives only as a heraldic term, as in bend sinister), but is now itself more or less obsolete, having been superseded by bond, a variant form. But then in the 15th century it arrived again, by a different route: Old French had bande ‘strip, stripe’, which can be traced back, perhaps via a Vulgar Latin *binda, to the same ultimate source, Germanic *bindan.
=> bend, bind, bond, bundle, ribbon
be: be: [OE] There are four distinct components that go to make up the modern English verb be. The infinitive form be comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *bheu-, *bhu-, which also produced, by other routes, future and physical. Its Germanic descendant was *bu-, which signified on the one hand ‘dwell’ (from which we get booth, bower, byre, build, burly, byelaw, and the final element of neighbour), and on the other hand ‘grow, become’, which led to its adoption as part of the verb expressing ‘being’ (in Old English particularly with the future sense of ‘coming to be’). Am and is go back to the ancient Indo- European verb ‘be’, *es- or *s-, which has contributed massively to ‘be’ verbs throughout all Indo-European languages (third person present singulars Greek esti, Latin est, French est, German ist, Sanskrit ásti, Welsh ys, for example) The Indo-European first and third person singular forms were, respectively, ésmi and ésti.

For the present plural Old English used the related sind(on) (as found in Latin sunt, French sont, and German sind), but this died out in the 12th century, to be replaced by are, which comes from a Germanic base *ar- of unknown origin. From the same source is the now archaic second person singular art. The past tense forms was, were come ultimately from an Indo-European base *weswhich meant ‘dwell, remain’.

Related words in other Indo-European languages include Sanskrit vásati ‘dwell, remain’ and Gothic wisan ‘remain, continue’.
=> booth, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre
beast: beast: [13] Beast replaced deer as the general word for ‘animal’ in the 13th century (deer of course remained in use for antlered animals of the family Cervidae), and was itself replaced by animal in the 17th century. It entered English via Old French beste from Latin bēstia (source of English bestial [14]).
=> bestial
bellows: bellows: [OE] Bellows and belly were originally the same word, Old English belig, which meant ‘bag’. This was used in the compound blǣstbelig, literally ‘blowing bag’, a device for blowing a fire, which was replaced in the late Old English period by the plural form of the noun, belga or belgum, from which we get bellows. Meanwhile the meaning of belly developed from ‘bag’ to, in the 13th century, ‘body’ and, in the 14th century, ‘abdomen’.

Ultimately the word goes back to Germanic *balgiz ‘bag’, from the base *balg- or *belg- (itself a descendant of Indo-European *bhel- ‘swell’), which also lies behind billow [16], bolster, and possibly bellow and bell.
=> bell, bellow, belly, billow, bold, bolster
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
black: black: [OE] The usual Old English word for ‘black’ was sweart (source of modern English swart and swarthy, and related to German schwarz ‘black’), but black already existed (Old English blæc), and since the Middle English period it has replaced swart. Related but now extinct forms existed in other Germanic languages (including Old Norse blakkr ‘dark’ and Old Saxon blac ‘ink’), but the word’s ultimate source is not clear. Some have compared it with Latin flagrāre and Greek phlégein, both meaning ‘burn’, which go back to an Indo-European base *phleg-, a variant of *bhleg-.
blunderbus: blunderbus: [17] Blunderbus was originally Dutch donderbus (literally ‘thundergun’), and its transformation is due to folk etymology: the unfamiliar donder was replaced by the English word blunder, perhaps with some reference to the fact that, with its wide muzzle, it is capable only of fairly random firing. The second part of the word (which also occurs in arquebus) is ultimately related to box, Dutch bus or buis being not just a ‘box’ but also a ‘tube’, and hence a ‘gun’. There is no connection with the 20thcentury thunderbox, a colloquial term for a ‘portable loo’.
brooch: brooch: [13] English acquired brooch from Old French broche, a source it returned to a century later to borrow broach. The French word meant ‘long needle’, and at first a brooch was simply a decorative pin whose main function was to fasten a garment. Over the centuries the decorative role has replaced the practical one.
=> broach
camel: camel: [OE] Naturally enough, camel is of Semitic origin: Hebrew has gāmāl, for example, and Arabic jamal. It was a relative of these that was the source of Greek kámēlos, which passed via Latin camēlus into English as early as the mid 10th century. (It replaced a previous Old English olfend, a word – shared by other early Germanic languages – apparently based on the misconception that a camel was an elephant.)
camphor: camphor: [15] Camphor is probably of Indian origin. It has been traced back to Sanskrit karpūram, which appears to have reached English via Arabic kāfūr and then either Old French camphre or medieval Latin camphora. European forms replaced the long Arabic ā with a nasalized vowel.
capture: capture: [16] Along with its relatives captive, captivity, captivate, and captor, capture is the English language’s most direct lineal descendant of Latin capere ‘take, seize’ (others include capable, case for carrying things, cater, and chase, and heave is distantly connected). First to arrive was captive [14], which was originally a verb, meaning ‘capture’; it came via Old French captiver from Latin captīvus, the past participle of capere.

Contemporary in English was the adjectival use of captive, from which the noun developed. (The now archaic caitiff [13] comes from the same ultimate source, via an altered Vulgar Latin *cactivus and Old French caitiff ‘captive’.) Next on the scene was capture, in the 16th century; originally it was only a noun, and it was not converted to verbal use until the late 18th century, when it replaced captive in this role.

Also 16th-century is captivate, from the past participle of late Latin captivāre, a derivative of captīvus; this too originally meant ‘capture’, a sense which did not die out until the 19th century: ‘The British … captivated four successive patrols’, John Neal, Brother Jonathan 1825.
=> captive, cater, chase, cop, heave
cast: cast: [31] Cast comes from Old Norse kasta ‘throw’. It has gradually been replaced since Middle English times as the ordinary word for ‘propelling with the arm’ by throw. Of the various metaphorical senses of the noun, ‘set of performers in a play’ developed in the 17th century, apparently from an earlier ‘plan, design’.
chest: chest: [OE] Chest comes ultimately from Greek kístē ‘box, basket’. In Latin this became cista (source of English cistern [13]). In prehistoric times the word was borrowed into Germanic as *kistā, which was the source of Old English cest. This still meant ‘box’, a sense which continued in isolation until the 16th century, when it was first applied to the ‘thorax’ – the basis of the metaphor presumably being that the ribs enclose the heart and lungs like a box. It has since replaced breast as the main term for the concept.
=> cistern
clinic: clinic: [17] Etymologically, a clinic is a place with ‘beds’. It comes ultimately from Greek klínē ‘bed’, which goes back to the Indo-European base *kli- ‘lean, slope’ (source also of English lean) and hence was originally ‘something on which one reclines’. The adjective derived from this, klīnkós, reached English via Latin clīnicus, having become specialized in meaning from ‘bed’ in general to ‘sick-bed’. Clinic was replaced as an adjective by clinical in the 18th century, but it continued on as a noun, originally in the sense ‘sick or bedridden person’.

This survived into the 19th century (‘You are free to roam at large over the bodies of my clinics’, E Berdoe, St Bernard’s 1887), and the modern sense ‘hospital’ did not arrive until the late 19th century, borrowed from French clinique or German klinik.
=> decline, lean
colour: colour: [13] The Old English words for ‘colour’ were hīw ‘hue’ and blēo, but from the 13th century onwards they were gradually replaced by Old French colour. This came from Latin color, which appears to have come ultimately from an Indo-European base *kel- ‘hide’ (source also of apocalypse, cell, clandestine, conceal, and occult).

This suggests that its original underlying meaning was ‘outward appearance, hiding what is inside’, a supposition supported by the long history of such senses of English colour as ‘outward (deceptive) appearance’ and ‘(specious) plausibility’ (as in ‘lend colour to a notion’).
=> apocalypse, cell, conceal, hell, occult
cuckoo: cuckoo: [13] So distinctive is the cuckoo’s call that it is not always clear whether the names for the bird in various languages, based on the call, owe their similarity to borrowing or coincidence – Dutch, for instance, has koekoek, Russian kukúshka, Latin cuculus, and Greek kókkūx. In the case of English cuckoo, it seems to have been borrowed from Old French cucu, which was of imitative origin. Its first appearance is in the famous Cuckoo song of the late 13th century (‘Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing, cuccu!’), where it replaced the native Middle English word yeke (from Old English gēac, also of imitative origin).
curry: curry: Of the two English words curry, the older, ‘groom a horse’ [13], is now almost forgotten except in the compound currycomb and the phrase curry favour. It comes, via Old French correier, from Vulgar Latin *conrēdāre ‘arrange, prepare, get ready’, which seems to have been an adaptation and partial translation of a prehistoric Germanic verb *garǣthjan, a derivative of the base which produced English ready.

The expression curry favour is a partial translation of Old French estriller favel or torcher favel, literally ‘groom a chestnut horse’, which, for reasons that are not known, was used as a metaphor for hypocritical behaviour; the word favel, unfamiliar to English speakers, was replaced with the semantically appropriate favour. Curry ‘spiced dish’ [16] was borrowed from Tamil kari ‘sauce’.
=> ready
dice: dice: [14] Dice originated, as every schoolboy knows, as the plural of die, which it has now virtually replaced in British English as the term for a ‘cube marked with numbers’. Die itself comes via Old French de from Latin datum, the past participle of the verb dare (and source also of English date). The main meaning of dare was ‘give’, but it also had the secondary sense ‘play’, as in ‘play a chess piece’.

The plural of the Old French word was dez (itself occasionally used as a singular), which gave rise to such Middle English forms as des, dees, and deys and, by around 1500, dyse. The singular die survives for ‘dice’ in American English, and also in the later subsidiary sense ‘block or other device for stamping or impressing’ (which originated around 1700).
=> date, donate
equestrian: equestrian: [17] Equestrian was adapted from Latin equester, an adjective derived from eques ‘horseman’. Eques in turn was based on equus ‘horse’ (source of English equine [18]). This was the Latin descendant of *ekwos, the prehistoric Indo-European term for ‘horse’, which was once found in all the daughter languages of Indo- European except for the Slavic branch: Old English had eoh, for example, Old Irish ech, Sanskrit avás, and ancient Greek híppos (source of English hippodrome and hippopotamus).

It is a remarkable circumstance, however, that over the past thousand years equus and its relatives have (other than in derivatives such as equine) died out, to be replaced by secondary terms such as French cheval (from Latin caballus, probably a non-Indo-European borrowing), German pferd (from late Latin paraverēdus ‘extra post-horse’, source also of English palfrey), and English horse.
=> equine, hippopotamus
ethical: ethical: [17] The underlying meaning of Greek ēthos was ‘personal disposition’. It came ultimately from prehistoric Indo-European *swedh-, a compound formed from the reflexive pronoun *swe- ‘oneself’ and dhē- ‘put’ (from which English gets do). Gradually the meaning broadened out to ‘trait, character’ and then ‘custom’, or in the plural ‘manners’ or ‘morals’.

English acquired it, in the sense ‘distinctive characteristic’ (based on the usage of Aristotle), in the 19th century. The Greek derived adjective ēthikós entered English, via Latin ēthicus, as ethic in the 16th century. This had largely been replaced by ethical by the end of the 17th century, but it has survived as a noun (as in ‘the work ethic’), which actually predates the adjective in English by about two hundred years.

The plural usage ethics ‘science of morals’ dates from the beginning of the 17th century.
=> do
explode: explode: [16] The use of explode to mean ‘burst with destructive force’ is a comparatively recent, late 19th-century development. The Latin verb explōdere, from which it comes, signified something quite different – ‘drive off the stage with hisses and boos’ (it was a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and plaudere ‘clap’, source of English applaud and plaudits).

From this developed the figurative sense ‘reject, disapprove’, which was how the word was used when it was first taken over into English: ‘Not that I wholly explode Astrology; I believe there is something in it’, Thomas Tryon, Miscellanea 1696 (the modern notion of ‘exploding a theory’ is descended from this usage). In the 17th century, however, the Latin verb’s original sense was reintroduced, and it survived into the 19th century: ‘In the playhouse when he doth wrong, no critic is so apt to hiss and explode him’, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones 1749.

Towards the end of the 17th century we find the first traces of a metaphorical use that combines the notion of ‘driving out, expelling’ with ‘loud noise’ (‘the effects of Lightning, exploded from the Clouds’, Robert Plot, Natural History of Staffordshire 1679), but it was not to be for more than a century that the meaning element ‘drive out’ was replaced by the ‘burst, shatter’ of present-day English explode (Dr Johnson makes no mention of it in his Dictionary 1755, for example) Today the notion of ‘bursting violently’ is primary, that of ‘loud noise’ probably secondary, although still present.
=> applause, plaudits
fairy: fairy: [14] Fairy is an Old French coinage. It comes from Old French faerie, which meant ‘enchantment, magic’ and was derived from fae ‘fairy’ (source of English fay [14]). This in turn came from the Latin plural fāta, used in personifying the Fates, three goddesses who in ancient mythology governed human destiny. The original notion of the French noun survives in the mock-medieval term faerie (introduced by Edmund Spenser in his Faerie Queene 1590), but in fairy itself it has been gradually replaced by the meaning of the word from which it was originally derived – fay.
=> fable, fame, fate
far: far: [OE] Far is a word of ancient ancestry. It goes back to Indo-European *per-, which also produced Greek pérā ‘beyond, further’ and Sanskrit paras ‘beyond’. The Germanic descendant of the Indo-European form was *fer-, whose comparative form *ferrō ‘further’ passed into Old English as feorr, having lost its comparative connotations and come to mean simply ‘far’.

The Old English comparative was fierr, but in early Middle English this too lost its comparative force and a new form was created with the -er ending, ferrer, later farrer. This in turn was gradually replaced by further (a completely different – although probably distantly related – word, based on forth), of which farther is a 13th-century variant modelled on far.
fiddle: fiddle: [OE] Like its distant cousin violin, fiddle comes ultimately from the name of a Roman goddess of joy and victory. This was Vītula, who probably originated among the pre-Roman Sabine people of the Italian peninsula. A Latin verb was coined from her name, vītulārī, meaning ‘hold joyful celebrations’, which in post-classical times produced the noun vītula ‘stringed instrument, originally as played at such festivals’.

In the Romance languages this went on to give viola, violin, etc, but prehistoric West and North Germanic borrowed it as *fithulōn, whence German fiedel, Dutch vedel, and English fiddle. In English, the word has remained in use for the instrument which has developed into the modern violin, but since the 16th century it has gradually been replaced as the main term by violin, and it is now only a colloquial or dialectal alternative.

The sense ‘swindle’ originated in the USA in the mid-to-late 19th century.
=> violin
fir: fir: [14] As with many Indo-European tree-names, fir is a widespread term, but it does not mean the same thing wherever it occurs. Its prehistoric Indo-European ancestor was *perkos, which in Latin became quercus, the name for the ‘oak’. Nor was the application confined to southern Europe, for Swiss German has a related ferch ‘oak wood’. But by and large, the Germanic languages took the term over and applied it to the ‘pine’: German föhre, Swedish fura, and Danish fyr all mean ‘pine’.

So also did Old English furh (known only in the compound furhwudu ‘pinewood’), but this appears to have died out. It was replaced semantically by pine, but formally by Middle English firre, a borrowing from the Old Norse form fyri- (also known only in compounds). This was used as a name not for the ‘pine’, but for the ‘fir’ (which in Old English times had been called sæppe or gyr).
flower: flower: [13] The Old English word for ‘flower’ was blōstm, which is ultimately related to flower. Both come from Indo-European *bhlō-, which probably originally meant ‘swell’, and also gave English bloom, blade, and the now archaic blow ‘come into flower’. Its Latin descendant was flōs, whose stem form flōr- passed via Old French flour and Anglo-Norman flur into English, where it gradually replaced blossom as the main word for ‘flower’. Close English relatives include floral, florid [17] (from Latin flōridus), florin, florist [17] (an English coinage), flour, and flourish.
=> blade, bloom, blow, floral, florid, flour, flourish
forth: forth: [OE] Forth can be traced back to the same Indo-European source, *pr, as produced English first, for, fore, foremost, former, from, and before. It formed the basis of a word *prto ‘forwards’, whose Germanic descendant *furtha gave German fort, Dutch voort, and English forth. Modern English forward(s) [OE], which has largely replaced forth in general use, was originally a compound formed from forth and -ward.

Other related forms include afford, which originally meant ‘accomplish, fulfil’, forthwith [14], at first literally ‘along with’, hence ‘at the same time as’ and ‘immediately’, and further.
=> afford, before, first, for, fore, former, from, further
fowl: fowl: [OE] Fowl was the main term for ‘bird’ in the Old English period, but in Middle English it was gradually replaced by bird. (It remains in use in compounds, such as wildfowl and waterfowl, and is sometimes still applied to ‘chickens’.) It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *foglaz or *fuglaz, which also produced the still very much current German and Dutch vogel, Swedish fåagel, and Danish fugl, all signifying ‘bird’, and which may have been a derivative of the same source (*fleug-) as gave English fly – in which case fowl would mean literally ‘flying creature’.
=> fly
gentle: gentle: [13] Expressions like ‘of gentle birth’, and related forms such as gentility [14] and gentleman [13] point up the original link between gentle and ‘family, stock, birth’. The word comes via Old French gentil from Latin gentīlis, a derivative of gēns ‘family, stock’, which in turn goes back to the Indo-European base *gen- ‘produce’ (source of English gene, generate, genitive, etc).

To begin with it meant ‘of the same family’, but by post-classical times it had shifted to ‘of good family’, the sense in which English originally acquired it. Like the closely related generous, it then moved on semantically from ‘well-born’ to ‘having a noble character, generous, courteous’, but interestingly this sense has virtually died out in English (except in such fixed phrases as gentle knight and gentle reader), having been replaced since the 16th century by ‘mild, tender’.

French gentil was reborrowed into English in the 16th century as genteel, in which again connotations of good breeding figure highly. Attempts at a French accent resulted ultimately in jaunty [17], which originally meant ‘wellbred’ or ‘elegant’. The other English descendant of Latin gentīlis is the directly borrowed gentile [14], whose application to ‘non-Jewish people’ comes from its use in the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible.
=> general
glamour: glamour: [18] Unlikely as it may seem, glamour is ultimately the same word as grammar. This seems to have been used in the Middle Ages for ‘learning’ in general, and hence, by superstitious association, for ‘magic’ (there is no actual record of this, but the related gramarye was employed in that sense). Scottish English had the form glamour for grammar (l is phonetically close to r, and the two are liable to change places), used for ‘enchantment’, or a ‘spell’, for whose introduction to general English Sir Walter Scott was largely responsible.

The literal sense ‘enchanted’ has now slipped into disuse, gradually replaced since the early 19th century by ‘delusive charm’, and latterly ‘fashionable attractiveness’.
=> grammar
go: go: [OE] Go is an ancient verb, traceable back to a prehistoric Indo-European base *ghēi- or *ghē-. This seems to have been relatively unproductive outside the Germanic languages (Sanskrit hā-, hī- ‘leave’ and Greek kikhánō ‘reach’ may be descendants of it), but it has provided the basic word for ‘move along, proceed’ in all the Germanic languages, including German gehen, Dutch gaan, Swedish gā, Danish gaa, and English go. In Old and Middle English its past tense was ēode, later yode, a word of uncertain origin, but from about 1500 this was replaced by went, originally the past tense of wend.
horse: horse: [OE] The Germanic languages have gone their own way as far as the horse is concerned. The prehistoric Indo-European term for the animal was *ekwos, which produced Latin equus (source of English equestrian and equine), Greek híppos (whence English hippodrome and hippopotamus), Sanskrit açvás, and Old English eoh. Remarkably, though, this has virtually died out as the day-to-day word for ‘horse’ in the modern European branches of the Indo- European languages.

In the case of English, it has been replaced by a descendant of prehistoric Germanic *khorsam or *khorsaz: horse (German ross, now mainly a literary term equivalent to English steed, is related). Its source is not known, although some have linked it with Latin currere ‘run’.
indigo: indigo: [16] Etymologically indigo, a blue dye, is the ‘Indian dye’ – so named because supplies of it were obtained from India. The term is an ancient one. It originated in Greek indikón, literally the ‘Indian substance’, a derivative of the adjective Indikós ‘Indian’, and passed via Latin indicum and Spanish indico into English as indico.

This was replaced in the 17th century by the Portuguese form indigo, and it was Portuguese influence, stemming from their commercial activities in India, that really established the term among the European languages (hitherto the commoner term for the dye had been anil, a word of Sanskrit origins). (The name India, incidentally, to which indigo is related, comes ultimately from Old Persian hiñd’u, which originally meant ‘river’, was subsequently applied specifically to the river Indus, and finally became the name for the country through which the Indus flowed.)
=> india
keen: keen: [OE] The ancestral meaning of keen is ‘brave’. That is what its German and Dutch relatives, kühn and koen, mean, and that is what keen itself meant in the Old English period. But this sense had died out by the 17th century, having been replaced by the meanings familiar today, such as ‘eager’ and ‘sharp’.
late: late: [OE] English and Dutch (with laat) are the only modern European languages to use this word to express the idea of ‘behind time’. It comes from an Indo-European base *lad- ‘slow, weary’, which also produced Latin lassus ‘tired’ (source of English alas [13] and lassitude [16]). In prehistoric Germanic this gave *lataz ‘slow, sluggish’.

Its English descendant late originally meant ‘slow’ (and the related German lass still means ‘lazy’), but although this survived dialectally into the 19th century, in the mainstream language ‘delayed’ had virtually replaced it by the 15th century. From the same ultimate Indo-European source come English lease, let, and liege.
=> alas, lassitude, last, lease, let, liege
list: list: Over the centuries, English has had no fewer than five different words list, only two of which are now in everyday common usage. List ‘catalogue’ [17] was borrowed from French liste ‘band, border, strip of paper, catalogue’. This goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *līstōn, source also of English list ‘border, strip’ [OE], which now survives only in the plural lists ‘tournament arena’. List ‘tilt’ [17] is of unknown origin. List ‘listen’ [OE], which goes back to Indo-European *klu-, has been replaced by the related listen.

And the archaic list ‘desire’ [OE] (source of listless [15]) goes back to the same source as lust.
=> listless, lust
loan: loan: [13] Old English had a noun lǣn, a close relative of the verb lǣnan (precursor of modern English lend). It meant ‘gift’, but it died out before the Middle English period, and was replaced by the related Old Norse lán, which has become modern English loan. Both go back ultimately to prehistoric Indo-European *loiq-, *leiq-, *liq-, which also produced Greek leípein ‘leave’ (source of English ellipse) and Latin linquere ‘leave’ (source of English delinquent, relic, and relinquish).
=> delinquent, lend, relic, relinquish
lose: lose: [OE] The verb lose originated as a derivative of the Old English noun los ‘loss’, which went back ultimately to the same Indo-European source (*lau-, *leu-, lu-) as produced English loose and the suffix -less. In Old English it was losian, which eventually ousted the original lēosan to become the only verb for ‘lose’. The noun los died out before the Middle English period, and was replaced by loss [14], probably a derivative of the past participle lost. The past participle of lēosan ‘lose’ was loren, which survives in forlorn and love-lorn.
=> loose
marble: marble: [12] Greek mármaros, a word of unknown origin, denoted to begin with ‘any hard stone’, but association with the verb marmaírein ‘shine’ led to a particular application to ‘marble’. Latin took it over as marmor, and it passed into Old French as marbre. Here, by a process known as dissimilation, in which one of two similar sounds is replaced by a different one, marbre became marble – whence English marble. The use of the word for the little ball with which the game of ‘marbles’ is played dates from the late 17th century.
mill: mill: [OE] Mill is one of a large family of English words that go back ultimately to the Indo- European base *mel-, *mol-, *ml-, denoting ‘grind’. It includes meal ‘flour’, mollify, mollusc, mould ‘earth’, and (via the extended form *meld-, *mold-) melt and mild. One particular subset of the family comes from closely related Latin sources: the verb molere ‘grind’ has produced emolument and ormolu [18] (etymologically ‘ground gold’); the noun mola ‘grindstone’ has given molar [16] and (via a later sense ‘flour mixed with salt, sprinkled on sacrificial victims’) immolate [16]; and late Latin molīnus ‘grindstone’, which replaced classical Latin mola, was borrowed into Old English as mylen, from which we get modern English mill.
=> emolument, meal, melt, mild, molar, mollify, mollusc, mould, ormolu
mud: mud: [14] The Old English word for ‘mud’ was fen, which now survives only in the sense ‘swamp’. It was replaced in the Middle English period by mud, probably a borrowing from Middle Low German mudde. This goes back ultimately to a prehistoric base *meu-, *mu- that has produced a range of words in the Indo- European languages denoting ‘dirt’ or ‘wet’: Greek múdos ‘damp’, for instance, and Polish muł ‘slime’. Muddle [17] may come from Middle Dutch moddelen ‘make muddy’, a derivative of modde ‘mud’.
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
once: once: [12] Once originated as the genitive form of one (the genitive case was widely used in Old and Middle English for making adverbs out of nouns – other examples include always, needs, nowadays, and towards). To begin with, this was clearly indicated by its spelling – ones – but from about the start of the 16th century -es was gradually replaced by -ce (reflecting the fact that once retained a voiceless /s/ at its end, whereas in ones it had been voiced to /z/).
=> one