英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

exercise [exercise 词源字典]: exercise: [14] The notion underlying exercise is of ‘removal of restraint’. It comes ultimately from Latin exercēre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out of, from’ and arcēre ‘restrain, enclose’ (source of English arcane and related to English ark). It has been speculated that this originally denoted the driving of draught animals out into the fields to plough, but however that may be, it soon developed the general senses ‘set to work, keep at work’ and ‘drill, practise’ which form the semantic basis of English exercise.
=> arcane, ark[exercise etymology, exercise origin, 英语词源]
harlequin: harlequin: [16] Harlequin, a brightly-clad character in the Italian commedia dell’arte, has a murky history. He seems to have originated in a mythical figure known in Old French as Herlequin or Hellequin, who was the leader of a ghostly troop of horsemen who rode across the sky at night. And Herlequin could well be a later incarnation of King Herla (in Old English Herla cyning), a legendary personage who has been identified with the chief Anglo-Saxon god Woden.

It seems likely that another piece of the jigsaw could be the erlking, the supernatural abductor of children described in a Goethe poem memorably set to music by Schubert; its name is generally traced back to Danish ellerkonge, a variant of elverkonge, literally ‘king of the elves’, which bears a resemblance to Herlequin that is surely too strong to be coincidental.

In early modern French Herlequin became Harlequin, the form borrowed by English (present-day French arlequin shows the influence of Italian arlecchino).
=> king
anthem (n.): Old English ontemn, antefn, "a composition (in prose or verse) sung antiphonally," from Late Latin antefana, from Greek antiphona "verse response" (see antiphon). Sense evolved to "a composition set to sacred music" (late 14c.), then "song of praise or gladness" (1590s). Used in reference to the English national song (technically, as OED points out, a hymn) and extended to those of other nations. Modern spelling is from late 16c., perhaps an attempt to make the word look more Greek.
cooler (n.): 1570s, "a vessel in which something is set to cool," agent noun from cool (v.). Meaning "insulated box to keep things cool" is from 1958. Slang meaning "jail" is attested from 1884.
eureka: c. 1600, from Greek heureka "I have found (it)," first person singular perfect active indicative of heuriskein "to find" (see heuristic). Supposedly shouted by Archimedes (c. 287-212 B.C.E.) when he solved a problem that had been set to him: determining whether goldsmiths had adulterated the metal in the crown of Hiero II, king of Syracuse.
evening (n.): from Old English æfnung "the coming of evening, sunset, time around sunset," verbal noun from æfnian "become evening, grow toward evening," from æfen "evening" (see eve). As a synonym of even (n.) in the sense "time from sunset to bedtime," it dates from mid-15c. and now entirely replaces the older word in this sense. Another Old English noun for "evening" was cwildtid.
pastor (n.): late 14c. (mid-13c. as a surname), "shepherd," also "spiritual guide, shepherd of souls," from Old French pastor, pastur "herdsman, shepherd" (12c.), from Latin pastorem (nominative pastor) "shepherd," from pastus, past participle of pascere "to lead to pasture, set to grazing, cause to eat," from PIE root *pa- "to tend, keep, pasture, feed, guard, protect" (see food). The spiritual sense was in Church Latin (e.g. Gregory's "Cura Pastoralis"). The verb in the Christian sense is from 1872.
set (n.1): "collection of things," mid-15c., from Old French sette "sequence," variant of secte "religious community," from Medieval Latin secta "retinue," from Latin secta "a following" (see sect). "[I]n subsequent developments of meaning influenced by SET v.1 and apprehended as equivalent to 'number set together'" [OED]. The noun set was in Middle English, but only in the sense of "religious sect" (late 14c.), which likely is the direct source of some modern meanings, such as "group of persons with shared status, habits, etc." (1680s).

Meaning "complete collection of pieces" is from 1680s. Meaning "group of pieces musicians perform at a club during 45 minutes" (more or less) is from c. 1925, though it is found in a similar sense in 1580s. Set piece is from 1846 as "grouping of people in a work of visual art;" from 1932 in reference to literary works.
zero hour: "The time at which a planned operation, typically a military one, is set to begin", First World War: from zero + hour.