英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

bald [bald 词源字典]: bald: [14] In Middle English times, bald was ballede, which suggests that it may have been a compound formed in Old English with the suffix -ede ‘characterized by, having’. It has been conjectured that the first element in the compound was Old English *ball-, meaning ‘white patch’ or ‘blaze’ on an animal’s head; this may be supported by isolated examples of the use of the adjective to mean (of a horse) ‘whitefaced’ from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and by the obsolete dialectal ball meaning both ‘white patch on the head’ and ‘white-faced horse’.

This would have produced the Old English adjective *bællede or *beallede, which, from ‘having a white blaze’, progressed naturally in meaning to ‘hairless’. The compounds piebald [16] and skewbald [17] are both based on bald: piebald means ‘having black and white patches like a magpie’, while skewbald may be based on Middle English skew ‘(cloudy) skies’ or on Old French escu ‘shield’.
=> piebald, skewbald[bald etymology, bald origin, 英语词源]
planet: planet: [12] A planet is etymologically a ‘wanderer’. The word comes via Old French planete and late Latin planēta from Greek planétos, a derivative of the verb planasthai ‘wander’. This was applied to any heavenly body that appeared to move or ‘wander’ across the skies among the fixed stars, which in ancient astronomy included the sun and moon as well as Mars, Venus, etc. The modern application to a ‘body that orbits the sun (or similar star)’ dates from the mid 17th century.
skewbald: skewbald: [17] Skewbald, which denotes a horse with brown and white patches, is a compound formed (on the model of piebald) from an earlier skued ‘skewbald’ and bald (in the ancestral sense ‘having white patches on the coat’). It is not clear where skued came from. One candidate as its ancestor is Old French escu ‘shield’, as if it meant etymologically ‘marked with shield shapes’ or ‘chequered’, but another possibility is Middle English skew ‘(cloudy) skies’.
sky: sky: [13] Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called the sky heofon ‘heaven’. Not until the early Middle English period did heaven begin to be pushed aside by sky, a borrowing from Old Norse ský ‘cloud’. This came ultimately from an Indo- European base meaning ‘cover’, which also produced Latin obscūrus, source of English obscure [14]. (For a while English continued to use sky for ‘cloud’ as well as for ‘sky’: the medieval Scots poet William Dunbar wrote, ‘When sable all the heaven arrays with misty vapours, clouds, and skies’.)
=> obscure
husky (n.): "Eskimo dog," 1852, Canadian English, earlier (1830) hoskey "an Eskimo," probably shortened variant of Ehuskemay (1743), itself a variant of Eskimo.
The moment any vessel is noticed steering for these islands [Whalefish Islands], the Esquimaux, or "Huskies,"* as the Danes customarily term them, come off in sufficient numbers to satisfy you that you are near the haunts of uncivilized men, and will afford sufficient information to guide any stranger to his anchorage. *"Husky" is their own term. I recollect the chorus to a song at Kamtchatka was "Husky, Husky." ["Last of the Arctic Voyages," London, 1855]
sky (n.): c. 1200, "a cloud," from Old Norse sky "cloud," from Proto-Germanic *skeujam "cloud, cloud cover" (cognates: Old English sceo, Old Saxon scio "cloud, region of the clouds, sky;" Old High German scuwo, Old English scua, Old Norse skuggi "shadow;" Gothic skuggwa "mirror"), from PIE root *(s)keu- "to cover, conceal" (see hide (n.1)).

Meaning "upper regions of the air" is attested from c. 1300; replaced native heofon in this sense (see heaven). In Middle English, the word can still mean both "cloud" and "heaven," as still in the skies, originally "the clouds." Sky-high is from 1812; phrase the sky's the limit is attested from 1908. Sky-dive first recorded 1965; sky-writing is from 1922.
sky (v.): "to raise or throw toward the skies," 1802, from sky (n.).
surmise (n.): early 15c., legal, "a charge, a formal accusation," from Old French surmise "accusation," noun use of past participle of surmettre (see surmise (v.)). Meaning "inference, guess" is first found in English 1580s.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacificâand all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmiseâ
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

[Keats]
underworld (n.): c. 1600, "the lower world, Hades, place of departed souls," also "the earth, the world below the skies," as distinguished from heaven. Similar formation in German unterwelt, Dutch onderwereld, Danish underverden. Meaning "lower level of society" is first recorded 1890; "criminals and organized crime collectively" is attested from 1900.