英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

tongs [tongs 词源字典]: tongs: [OE] The etymological notion underlying the word tongs is of ‘biting’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *tanguz (source also of German zange, Dutch and Danish tang, and Swedish tång), which went back ultimately to the Indo-European base *dank- ‘bite’ (ancestor of Greek dáknein ‘bite’). (Tong ‘Chinese secret society’ [19], incidentally, comes from Cantonese tong ‘assembly hall’.)
[tongs etymology, tongs origin, 英语词源]
Black Hand (n.): Italian immigrant secret society in U.S., 1904; earlier a Spanish anarchist society, both from the warning mark they displayed to potential victims.
grip (n.): c. 1200, "act of grasping or seizing; power or ability to grip," fusion of Old English gripe "grasp, clutch" and gripa "handful, sheaf" (see grip (v.)). Figurative use from mid-15c. Meaning "a handshake" (especially one of a secret society) is from 1785. Meaning "that by which anything is grasped" is from 1867. Meaning "stage hand" is from 1888, from their work shifting scenery.
illuminati (n.): 1590s, plural of Latin illuminatus "enlightened" (in figurative sense), past participle of illuminare (see illumination). Originally applied to a 16c. Spanish sect (the Alumbrados), then to other sects; since 1797 used as a translation of German Illuminaten, name of a secret society founded 1776 in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, and holding deistic and republican principles; hence used generally of free-thinkers and sarcastically of those professing intellectual enlightenment (1816). Related: Illuminatism; illuminatist.
know-nothing (n.): "ignoramus," 1827, from know (v.) + nothing. As a U.S. nativist political party, active 1853-56, the name refers to the secret society at the core of the party, about which members were instructed to answer, if asked about it, that they "know nothing." The party eventually merged into the Republican Party.
mafia (n.): 1875, from Italian Mafia "Sicilian secret society of criminals" (the prevailing sense outside Sicily), earlier, "spirit of hostility to the law and its ministers," from Italian (Sicilian) mafia "boldness, bravado," probably from Arabic mahjas "aggressive, boasting, bragging." Or perhaps from Old French mafler "to gluttonize, devour." A member is a mafioso (1870), fem. mafiosa, plural mafiosi.
Marianne: fem. proper name, from French, a variant of Marian; sometimes anglicized as Mary Anne. Name of a republican secret society formed in France in 1851, hence "personification of the French Republic."
Mau Mau (n.): African secret society devoted to ending European rule, 1950, from the Kikuyu language of Kenya.
Molly Maguire (n.): secret society in the mining districts of Pennsylvania, 1867 (suppressed 1876); named for earlier secret society formed in Ireland (1843) to resist payment of rents. From Molly (see Moll) + common Irish surname Maguire. Memebers were said to sometimes wear women's clothing as disguise.
Orangemen (n.): secret society founded 1795 in Belfast to promote Protestant power in Northern Ireland, named for William of Orange (who became King William III of England and triumphed in Ireland at the head of a Protestant army at the Battle of the Boyne), of the German House of Nassau. His cousins and their descendants constitute the royal line of Holland.

The name is from the town of Orange on the Rhone in France, which became part of the Nassau principality in 1530. Its Roman name was Arausio, which is said in 19c. sources to be from aura "a breeze" and a reference to the north winds which rush down the valley, but perhaps this is folk etymology of a Celtic word. The name subsequently was corrupted to Auranche, then Orange. The town has no obvious association with the fruit other than being on the road from Marseilles to Paris, along which masses of oranges were transported to northern France and beyond. In this roundabout way the political/religious movement of Northern Irish Protestantism acquired an association with the color orange, the Irish national flag acquired its orange band, and Syracuse University in New York state acquired its "Otto the Orange" mascot.
Rosicrucian (n.): 1620s, from Modern Latin rosa crucis (DuCange) or crux, Latinization of German Rosenkreuz, French rosecroix, from the secret society's reputed founder Christian Rosenkreuz, said to date from 1484, but not mentioned before 1614. As an adjective from 1660s.
Tong (n.): "Chinese secret society," 1883, from Cantonese t'ong "assembly hall."