英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abroad [abroad 词源字典]: abroad: [13] It was only in the 15th century that abroad came to mean ‘in foreign parts’. Earlier, it had been used for ‘out of doors’, a sense still current today, if with a rather archaic air; but originally it meant ‘widely’ or ‘about’ (as in ‘noise something abroad’). It was formed quite simply from a ‘on’ and the adjective broad, although it was probably modelled on the much earlier (Old English) phrase on brede, in which brede was a noun, meaning ‘breadth’.
=> broad[abroad etymology, abroad origin, 英语词源]
acrobat: acrobat: [19] The Greek adjective ákros meant ‘topmost, at the tip or extremity’ (it derives ultimately from the Indo-European base *akmeaning ‘be pointed or sharp’, which also gave rise to acid, acute, oxygen, and edge). It crops up in acrophobia ‘fear of heights’; in acropolis ‘citadel’, literally ‘upper city’; in acromegaly ‘unnaturally enlarged condition of the hands, feet, and face’, literally ‘large extremities’; and in acronym, literally ‘word formed from the tips of words’. Acrobat itself means literally ‘walking on tiptoe’.

The -bat morpheme comes from Greek baínein ‘walk’, which is closely related to basis and base, and is also connected with come. Akrobátēs existed as a term in Greek, and reached English via French acrobate.
=> acid, acute, edge, oxygen
across: across: [13] English originally borrowed across, or the idea for it, from Old French. French had the phrase à croix or en croix, literally ‘at or in cross’, that is, ‘in the form of a cross’ or ‘transversely’. This was borrowed into Middle English as a creoix or o(n) croice, and it was not until the 15th century that versions based on the native English form of the word cross began to appear: in cross, on cross, and the eventual winner, across.
=> cross
acrostic: acrostic: [16] An acrostic is a piece of verse in which the first letters of each line when put together spell out a word. The term is of Greek origin (akrostikhis), and was formed from ákros ‘at the extremity’ (see ACROBAT) and stíkhos ‘line of verse’. The second element crops up in several other prosodic terms, such as distich and hemistich, and comes from the Greek verb steíkhein ‘go’, which is related ultimately to English stair, stile, and stirrup.
=> acrobat, distich, hemistich, stair, stile, stirrup
aeroplane: aeroplane: [19] The prefix aero- comes ultimately from Greek āér ‘air’, but many of the terms containing it (such as aeronaut and aerostat) reached English via French. This was the case, too, with aeroplane, in the sense of ‘heavier-than-air flying machine’. The word was first used in English in 1873 (30 years before the Wright brothers’ first flight), by D S Brown in the Annual Report of the Aeronautical Society – he refers vaguely to an aeroplane invented by ‘a Frenchman’.

The abbreviated form plane followed around 1908. (An earlier, and exclusively English, use of the word aeroplane was in the sense ‘aerofoil, wing’; this was coined in the 1860s, but did not long survive the introduction of the ‘aircraft’ sense.) Aeroplane is restricted in use mainly to British English (and even there now has a distinctly old-fashioned air). The preferred term in American English is airplane, a refashioning of aeroplane along more ‘English’ lines which is first recorded from 1907.
=> air
affront: 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
aileron: aileron: see aisle
albatross: albatross: [17] The word albatross has a confused history. The least uncertain thing about it is that until the late 17th century it was alcatras; the change of the first element to albaseems to have arisen from association of the albatross’s white colour with Latin albus ‘white’. However, which particular bird the alcatras was, and where the word alcatras ultimately came from, are much more dubious.

The term was applied variously, over the 16th to the 19th centuries, to albatrosses, frigate birds, gannets, gulls, and pelicans. Its immediate source was Spanish and Portuguese alcatraz ‘pelican’ (hence Alcatraz, the prison-island in San Francisco Bay, USA, once the haunt of pelicans), which was clearly of Arabic origin, and it has been speculated that it comes from Arabic al qādūs ‘the bucket’, on the premise that the bucket of a water-wheel used for irrigation resembles a pelican’s beak.

Arabic qādūs itself comes from Greek kádos ‘jar’.
ambidextrous: ambidextrous: [16] Ambidextrous means literally ‘right-handed on both sides’. It was formed in Latin from the prefix ambi- ‘both’ and the adjective dexter ‘right-handed’ (source of English dextrous). Ambi- corresponds to the Latin adjective ambo ‘both’, which derived ultimately from the Indo-European base *amb- ‘around’ (an element in the source of ambassador and embassy).

The second element in Latin ambo seems to correspond to Old English ba ‘both’, which is related to modern English both. Other English words formed with the prefix amb(i)- include ambient [16] (which came, like ambition, from Latin ambīre ‘go round’), ambit [16] (from Latin ambitus ‘circuit’), ambiguous, ambition, amble, and ambulance.
=> dextrous
anachronism: anachronism: [17] The Greek prefix anameant ‘up’, and hence, in terms of time, ‘back’; Greek khrónos meant ‘time’ (as in English chronicle): hence Greek anakhronismós ‘reference to a wrong time’. From the point of view of its derivation it should strictly be applied to the representation of something as happening earlier than it really did (as if Christ were painted wearing a wristwatch), but in practice, ever since the Greek term’s adoption into English, it has also been used for things surviving beyond their due time.
=> chronicle
apostrophe: apostrophe: [17] Apostrophe comes originally from the Greek phrase prosōidiā apóstrophos, literally ‘accent of turning away’, hence, a mark showing where a letter or sound has been omitted. Apóstrophos itself was derived from the compound verb apostréphein, formed from the prefix apo- ‘away’ and the verb stréphein ‘turn’ (related to the second element of catastrophe [16], whose Greek original meant literally ‘overturning’). English acquired the word via French and Latin.
=> catastrophe
approach: approach: [14] Approach is etymologically connected with propinquity ‘nearness’; they both go back ultimately to Latin prope ‘near’. Propinquity [14] comes from a derived Latin adjective propinquus ‘neighbouring’, while approach is based on the comparative form propius ‘nearer’. From this was formed the late Latin verb appropiāre ‘go nearer to’, which came to English via Old French aprochier.

Latin prope, incidentally, may be connected in some way with the preposition prō (a relative of English for), and a hypothetical variant of it, *proqe, may be the source, via its superlative proximus, of English proximity and approximate.
=> approximate, propinquity, proximity
appropriate: appropriate: see proper
approve: approve: [14] The Latin source of approve, approbāre, was a derivative of probāre, source of English prove. Probāre originally meant ‘test something to find if it is good’ (it was based on Latin probus ‘good’) and this became extended to ‘show something to be good or valid’. It was this sense that was taken up by approbāre and carried further to ‘assent to as good’. When English acquired the word, via Old French aprover, it still carried the notion of ‘demonstrating’, but this was gradually taken over exclusively by prove, and the senses ‘sanction’ and ‘commend’, present since the beginning, established their primacy.
=> probity, prove
approximate: approximate: see proximity
apron: apron: [14] As in the case of adder, umpire, and many others, apron arose from a mistaken analysis of the combination ‘indefinite article + noun’. The original Middle English word was napron, but as early as the 15th century a napron had turned into an apron. Napron itself had been borrowed from Old French naperon, a derivative of nape ‘cloth’ (source of English napery and napkin); and nape came from Latin mappa ‘napkin, towel’ (source of English map).
=> map, mat, napkin
around: around: [14] Around was formed in Middle English from the prefix a- ‘on’ and the noun round (perhaps influenced by the Old French phrase a la reonde ‘in the round, roundabout’). It was slow to usurp existing forms such as about – it does not occur in Shakespeare or the 1611 translation of the Bible – and it does not seem to have become strongly established before the end of the 17th century. The adverb and preposition round may be a shortening of around.
=> round
arouse: arouse: [16] Shakespeare is the first writer on record to use arouse, in 2 Henry VI, 1593: ‘Loud howling wolves arouse the jades that drag the tragic melancholy night’. It was formed, with the intensive prefix a-, from rouse, a word of unknown origin which was first used in English in the 15th century as a technical term in falconry, meaning ‘plump up the feathers’.
=> rouse
arrogant: arrogant: [14] Etymologically, to be arrogant is to make great claims about oneself. It originated in the Latin compound verb arrogāre ‘claim for oneself’, formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and rogāre ‘ask’ (as in English interrogate). Already in Latin the present participle arrogāns was being used adjectivally, for ‘overbearing’, and this passed via Old French into English.
=> interrogate, prerogative
arrow: arrow: [OE] Appropriately enough, the word arrow comes from the same ultimate Indo- European source that produced the Latin word for ‘bow’ – *arkw-. The Latin descendant of this was arcus (whence English arc and arch), but in Germanic it became *arkhw-. From this basic ‘bow’ word were formed derivatives in various Germanic languages meaning literally ‘that which belongs to the bow’ – that is, ‘arrow’ (Gothic, for instance, had arhwazna).

The Old English version of this was earh, but it is recorded only once, and the commonest words for ‘arrow’ in Old English were strǣl (still apparently in use in Sussex in the 19th century, and related to German strahl ‘ray’) and fiān (which remained in Scottish English until around 1500). Modern English arrow seems to be a 9th-century reborrowing from Old Norse *arw-.
=> arc, arch
arrowroot: arrowroot: [17] Arrowroot, a tropical American plant with starchy tubers, gets its name by folk etymology, the process whereby an unfamiliar foreign word is reformulated along lines more accessible to the speakers of a language. In this case the word in question was aru-aru, the term used by the Arawak Indians of South America for the plant (meaning literally ‘meal of meals’). English-speakers adapted this to arrowroot because the root of the plant was used by the Indians to heal wounds caused by poisoned arrows.
astronomy: astronomy: [13] Astronomy comes via Old French and Latin from Greek astronomíā, a derivative of the verb astronomein, literally ‘watch the stars’. Greek ástron and astér ‘star’ (whence English astral [17] and asterisk [17]) came ultimately from the Indo-European base *ster-, which also produced Latin stella ‘star’, German stern ‘star’, and English star.

The second element of the compound, which came from the verb némein, meant originally ‘arrange, distribute’. At first, no distinction was made between astronomy and astrology. Indeed, in Latin astrologia was the standard term for the study of the stars until Seneca introduced the Greek term astronomia. When the two terms first coexisted in English (astrology entered the language about a century later than astronomy) they were used interchangeably, and in fact when a distinction first began to be recognized between the two it was the opposite of that now accepted: astrology meant simply ‘observation’, whereas astronomy signified ‘divination’.

The current assignment of sense was not fully established until the 17th century.
=> asterisk, astral, star
atrocious: atrocious: [17] Traced back to its ultimate source, atrocious meant something not too dissimilar to ‘having a black eye’. Latin āter was ‘black, dark’ (it occurs also in English atrabilious ‘melancholic’ [17] – Greek mélās meant ‘black’), and the stem *-oc-, *-ox meant ‘looking, appearing’ (Latin oculus ‘eye’ and ferox ‘fierce’ – based on ferus ‘wild’, and source of English ferocious – were formed from it, and it goes back to an earlier Indo-European base which also produced Greek ōps ‘eye’ and English eye).

Combined, they formed atrox, literally ‘of a dark or threatening appearance’, hence ‘gloomy, cruel’. English borrowed it (in the stem form atrōci-) originally in the sense ‘wantonly cruel’.
=> eye, ferocious, inoculate, ocular
aurochs: aurochs: see ox
barbarous: barbarous: [15] Originally, a barbarous person was a ‘foreigner’, anyone who did not speak your own language. Greek bárbaros meant ‘foreign, ignorant’, and it has been speculated that its ultimate signification was ‘unable to speak intelligibly’ (the related Sanskrit barbaras meant ‘stammering’). English acquired the word from Latin barbarus, a modified Vulgar Latin version of which, *brabus, produced Italian bravo and hence, via French, English brave.
=> brave
baron: baron: [12] The earliest historical sense of baron, ‘tenant under the feudal system who held his land and title directly from the king’, can be traced back to its probable source, medieval Latin barō, which originally meant simply ‘man’, and hence ‘vassal’ or ‘retainer’. The word was of course brought into English by the Normans, as Anglo-Norman barun, and from earliest times was used as a title for someone belonging to the lowest order of peerage. Some have suggested an ultimate Germanic origin, and compared Old High German baro ‘freeman’.
barrow: barrow: [OE] Barrow for carrying things and barrow the burial mound are two distinct words in English. The barrow of wheelbarrow is related to bear ‘carry’. The Old English word, bearwe, came from the same Germanic base, *ber- or *bar-, as produced bear, and also bier. Barrow the burial mound, as erected by ancient peoples over a grave site, is related to German berg ‘mountain, hill’. The Old English word, beorg, came from prehistoric Germanic *bergaz.
=> bear, bier
betroth: betroth: see true
borough: borough: [OE] Borough (Old English burg or burh) comes from Germanic *burgs ‘fortress’ (whence also German burg ‘castle, stronghold’). It was a derivative of the base *burg- ‘protect’ (whence also bury), a variant of *berg- (source of English barrow ‘mound’ and German berg ‘mountain’) and *borg- (source of English borrow).

At some time during the prehistoric Germanic period a progression in meaning began to take place from ‘fortress’ (which had largely died out in English by 1000), through ‘fortified town’, to simply ‘town’. Romance languages borrowed the word, giving for instance French bourg, from which English gets burgess [13] and bourgeois [16]. Burrow [13] is probably a variant form.
=> bourgeois, burgess, burrow, bury
borrow: borrow: [OE] Modern English borrow is a descendant of Old English borgian, which came from the Germanic base *borg-. This was a variant of *berg- (source of English barrow ‘mound’) and *burg- (source of English borough and bury). The underlying sense of the Germanic base was ‘protection, shelter’, and the development of meaning in the case of borrow seems to have been like this: originally, to borrow something from somebody was to receive it temporarily from them in return for some sort of security, which would be forfeited if the thing borrowed were not kept safe and eventually returned.

Gradually, the notion of giving some sort of concrete security, such as money, weakened into a spoken pledge, which by modern times had become simply the unspoken assumption that anything that has been borrowed must by definition be returned.
=> barrow, borough, bury
bridegroom: bridegroom: see groom
broach: broach: [14] The original meaning of broach was ‘pierce’, and it came from a noun meaning ‘spike’. The word’s ultimate source was the Latin adjective brocchus ‘pointed, projecting’, which in Vulgar Latin came to be used as a noun, *broca ‘spike’. This passed into Old French as broche, meaning ‘long needle’ and also ‘spit for roasting’. English first borrowed the word in the 13th century, as brooch, and then took it over again in the 14th century in the above quoted French meanings.

The nominal senses have now either died out or are restricted to technical contexts, but the verb, from the Vulgar Latin derivative *broccare, remains. From ‘pierce’, its meaning became specifically ‘tap a barrel’, which in the 16th century was applied metaphorically to ‘introduce a subject’. In French, the noun broche has produced a diminutive brochette ‘skewer’, borrowed into English in the 18th century; while a derivative of the verb brocher ‘stitch’ has been brochure, literally ‘a few pages stitched together’, also acquired by English in the 18th century.

A further relative is broccoli [17], plural of Italian broccolo ‘cabbage sprout’, a diminutive of brocco ‘shoot’, from Vulgar Latin *brocca.
=> broccoli, brochure, brooch
broad: broad: [OE] Broad’s close relatives are widespread in the Germanic languages (German breit, for example, Dutch breed, and Swedish bred), pointing to a prehistoric Germanic ancestor *braithaz, but no trace of the word is found in any non-Germanic Indo-European language. The original derived noun was brede, which was superseded in the 16th century by breadth. The 20th-century American slang noun use ‘woman’ may come from an obsolete American compound broadwife, short for abroadwife, meaning ‘woman away from her husband’; this was a term applied to female slaves in relation to their new ‘masters’.
=> breadth
broadcast: broadcast: [18] Broadcast was originally an adjective and adverb, and meant literally ‘scattered widely’, particularly in the context of sowing seeds. A metaphorical sense developed in the late 18th and 19th centuries (William Stubbs, in his Constitutional History of England 1875 writes of ‘broadcast accusations’), and the word was ready in the early 1920s for application to the transmission of radio signals (the first actual record of such a use is as a verb, in the April 1921 issue of Discovery: ‘The [radio] station at Poldhu is used partly for broadcasting Press and other messages to ships’).
broccoli: broccoli: see broach
brochure: brochure: see broach
brogue: brogue: [16] A brogue was originally a rudimentary sort of shoe worn in the more wild and woolly Celtic corners of the British Isles; the term does not seem to have been applied to today’s ‘stout country walking shoe’ until the early 20th century. The word, Irish and Scots Gaelic brōg, comes from Old Norse brók ‘leg covering’, which is related to English breeches; the relationship between ‘leg covering’ and ‘foot covering’ is fairly close, and indeed from the 17th to the 19th century brogue was used for ‘leggings’.

It is not clear whether brogue ‘Irish accent’ [18] is the same word; if it is, it presumably comes from some such notion as ‘the speech of those who wear brogues’.
=> breeches
broker: broker: [14] Broker has no connection with the past tense of break. It comes from Anglo- Norman brocour ‘small trader’, but its ultimate origin is not clear. A variant Anglo-Norman form abrocour has fuelled speculation as to a link with Spanish alboroque ‘sealing of a bargain’ and Portuguese alborcar ‘barter’, which are presumably of Arabic origin (the alrepresenting the Arabic definite article); but other etymologists have sought to link the word with broach, as if the underlying sense were ‘someone who sells wine from [that is, by broaching] the cask’, and hence any ‘retailer’.
bromide: bromide: [19] Potassium bromide is used as a sedative, and it was that which inspired the American humorist Gelett Burgess’s book Are You A Bromide? (1906), in which he metaphoricized bromide as a ‘dull conventional person’. In British English it is the more abstract figurative sense ‘trite or conventional remark’ that has caught on. Bromide was based on bromine [19], the name of a liquid element, which in turn was formed from French brome. The element was so christened, from Greek brōmos ‘stench’, because of its highly irritant and unpleasant smell.
bronze: bronze: [18] Until the 18th century, copper alloys were lumped together under the general term brass. Bronze seems originally to have been introduced as a specialist term for ancient artefacts made from the metal, but the modern distinction tends to be between brass (alloy of copper and zinc) and bronze (cooper and tin). The word comes via French from Italian bronzo, but its ultimate source is not clear.

Perhaps the likeliest candidate is Persian birinj, pirinj ‘copper’, but it has also been speculated that it comes via medieval Greek brontésion from medieval Latin aes brundisium, literally ‘brass of Brindisi’, a port on the Adriatic coast of Italy where in antiquity bronze mirrors were made.
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
brood: brood: [OE] Like breed, brood came from a prehistoric Germanic base *brōd-, whose ultimate source was Indo-European *bhrē- ‘burn, heat’ (its other English descendants include braise, breath, and probably brawn). The underlying notion of brood is thus not so much ‘reproduction’ as ‘incubation, the warmth that promotes hatching’. The verbal sense ‘worry’ developed in the 18th century.
=> braise, brawn, breath, breed
brook: brook: [OE] There are two distinct words brook in English. The one meaning ‘stream’ is comparatively isolated; it apparently has relatives in other Germanic languages (such as German bruch), but they mean ‘swamp’, and there the story ends. The now rather archaic verb brook, however, meaning ‘stand for, tolerate’, can be traced right back to an Indo-European base *bhrug-, from which English also gets fruit and frugal.

Its Germanic descendant was *brūk- ‘use’, which has given rise to a range of current verbs in the Germanic languages, including German brauchen ‘use, need’. The Old English version was brūcan, which also meant ‘use’. A particular application to food (‘use’ in the sense ‘eat’, and later ‘be able to digest’) started to develop in the late Old English period, and by the 16th century this had come to be used more generally (rather like stomach) for ‘tolerate’.
=> frugal, fruit
broom: broom: [OE] Broom was originally the name of the yellow-flowered bush; its application to the long-handled brush did not come about until the 15th century (the underlying notion is of a brush made from broom twigs tied to a handle). The plant-name occurs throughout the Germanic languages, but it is applied to quite a wide range of plants: Old High German brāmma, for instance, is a ‘wild rose’; Old Saxon hiopbrāmio is a ‘hawthorn bush’; and English bramble probably comes from the same source.
=> bramble
broth: broth: [OE] Broth comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhreu- or *bhru- ‘heat, boil’, which also produced brew and fervent. Etymologically, therefore, it means ‘liquid in which something has been boiled’. The notion of ‘heating’ has now disappeared, but it seems to have survived into the modern English period, as is shown by such compounds as snow-broth ‘melted snow’, first recorded at the end of the 16th century.

The Germanic form *brotham was borrowed into Vulgar Latin as *brodo, which came via Old French broez into 13th-century English as broys or browes. This survives in Scottish English as brose ‘type of porridge’, as in Atholl brose.
=> brew, fervent, imbrue
brothel: brothel: [14] Originally, brothel was a general term of abuse for any worthless or despised person (John Gower, in his Confessio Amantis 1393, writes: ‘Quoth Achab then, there is one, a brothel, which Micheas hight [who is called Micheas]’); it was a derivative of the Old English adjective brothen ‘ruined, degenerate’, which was originally the past participle of the verb brēothan ‘deteriorate’ (possibly a relative of brēotan ‘break’, which may be connected with brittle).

In the late 15th century we have the first evidence of its being applied specifically to a ‘prostitute’. Thence came the compound brothel-house, and by the late 16th century this had been abbreviated to brothel in its current sense.
brother: brother: [OE] The word brother is widespread throughout the Indo-European languages. The Indo-European form was *bhrāter, from which are descended, among many others, Latin frāter (as in English fraternal), Greek phrátēr, Sanskrit bhrātr, and Breton breur. Its Germanic descendant was *brōthar, which, as well as English brother, has produced German bruder, Dutch broeder, and Swedish broder.
=> buddy, fraternal, pal
brougham: brougham: [19] A brougham was a fourwheeled one-horse carriage. It was named after Henry Peter Brougham, first Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868), British Whig politician, jurist, and educational reformer, who designed the original brougham in 1838.
brow: brow: [OE] In Old English, brow meant ‘eyelash’, but there seems little doubt, from related words in other languages (such as Sanskrit bhrūs and Greek ophrus), that the original underlying sense of the word is ‘eyebrow’, and this resurfaced, or was recreated, in English in the 11th century. Its ultimate source is Indo- European *bhrūs, which passed via Germanic brūs into Old English as brū.
brown: brown: [OE] In Old English, brown meant, rather vaguely, ‘dark’; it does not seem to have become a definite colour word until the 13th century. It comes from West and North Germanic *brūnaz, which probably goes back ultimately to the same Indo-European source (*bheros) as bear, etymologically the ‘brown [that is, dark] animal’. An additional meaning of brown in Old and Middle English, shared also by related words such as Old High German brūn, was ‘shining, glistening’, particularly as applied to weapons (it survives in fossilized form in the old ballad Cospatrick, recorded in 1802: ‘my bonny brown sword’); Old French took it over when it borrowed brun from Germanic, and it is the basis of the verb burnir ‘polish’, from which English gets burnish [14].

Another contribution made by French brun to English is the feminine diminutive form brunette [17]. An earlier Old French variant burnete had previously been borrowed by English in the 12th century as burnet, and since the 14th century has been applied to a genus of plants of the rose family. The term burnet moth is first recorded in 1842.
=> bear, brunette, burnish