英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

aisle [aisle 词源字典]: aisle: [15] The original English form of this word was ele. It was borrowed from Old French, which in turn took it from Latin āla ‘wing’ (the modern French form of the word, aile, has a diminutive form, aileron ‘movable control surface on an aircraft’s wing’ [20], which has been acquired by English). Besides meaning literally ‘bird’s wing’, āla was used metaphorically for ‘wing of a building’, which was the source of its original meaning in English, the ‘sides of the nave of a church’.

The Latin word comes from an unrecorded *acsla, which is one of a complex web of ‘turning’ words that include Latin axis, Greek axon ‘axis’, Latin axilla ‘armpit’ (whence English axillary and axil), and English axle. The notion of an aisle as a detached, separate part of a building led to an association with isle and island which eventually affected Middle English ele’s spelling.

From the 16th to the 18th century the word was usually spelled ile or isle. A further complication entered the picture in the 18th century in the form of French aile, which took the spelling on to today’s settled form, aisle.
=> aileron, axis[aisle etymology, aisle origin, 英语词源]
coleslaw: coleslaw: [18] Cole is an ancient and now little used English word for plants of the cabbage family, such as cabbage or rape (it comes ultimately from Latin caulis ‘cabbage’, whose underlying meaning was ‘hollow stem’ – see CAULIFLOWER). It was used in the partial translation of Dutch koolsla when that word was borrowed into English in the late 18th century. Kool, Dutch for ‘cabbage’, became cole, but sla presented more of a problem (it represents a phonetically reduced form of salade ‘salad’), and it was rendered variously as -slaugh (now defunct) and -slaw. (Interestingly enough, the earliest record of the word we have, from America in the 1790s – it was presumably borrowed from Dutch settlers – is in the form cold slaw, indicating that even then in some quarters English cole was not a sufficiently familiar word to be used for Dutch kool. Coldslaw is still heard, nowadays as a folketymological alteration of coleslaw.)
=> cauliflower, cole, salad
cowslip: cowslip: [OE] Old English cūslyppe literally meant ‘cow dung’ (a variant cūsloppe, which survived dialectally into the 20th century as cowslop, suggests that its second element is related to slop and sloppy). The name presumably came from the plant’s growing in pastures where cows commonly graze, and perhaps even from some perceived symbiosis with cow-pats.
gosling: gosling: see goose
grisly: grisly: [OE] Middle English had a verb grise ‘be terrified’, which points back via an unrecorded Old English *grīsan to a West Germanic *grīdenoting ‘fear, terror’, from which grisly would have been formed. Dutch has the parallel formation grijzelijk. In 1900, the Oxford English Dictionary described grisly as ‘now only arch and lit’, but since then its fortunes have recovered strongly, and it is now firmly part of the general language.
island: island: [OE] Despite their similarity, island has no etymological connection with isle (their resemblance is due to a 16th-century change in the spelling of island under the influence of its semantic neighbour isle). Island comes ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic *aujō, which denoted ‘land associated with water’, and was distantly related to Latin aqua ‘water’.

This passed into Old English as īeg ‘island’, which was subsequently compounded with land to form īegland ‘island’. By the late Middle English period this had developed to iland, the form which was turned into island. (A diminutive form of Old English īeg, incidentally, has given us eyot ‘small island in a river’ [OE].) Isle [13] itself comes via Old French ile from Latin insula (the s is a 15th-century reintroduction from Latin).

Other contributions made by insula to English include insular [17], insulate [16], insulin, isolate (via Italian) [18], and peninsula [16].
=> eyot
measles: measles: [14] Measles means literally ‘spots, blemishes’. The word was originally borrowed from Middle Dutch māsel ‘blemish’, which went back to a prehistoric Germanic base *mas- ‘spot, blemish, excrescence’. The earliest English form of the word was thus maseles, and the change to measles (which began in the 14th century) may have been due to association with the now obsolete mesel ‘leper’, a descendant of Latin miser ‘wretched, unfortunate’ (source of English misery).
muesli: muesli: [20] Etymologically, muesli means ‘little pap’. It is a Swiss-German diminutive form of German mus ‘pulp, purée’. Old English had the cognate mōs, which survived into the 16th century in the compound apple-mose ‘dish made from a purée of stewed apples’.
muslin: muslin: [17] Etymologically, muslin is ‘cloth from Mosul’, a city in Iraq where fine cotton fabric was once made. The Arabic form mūslin was adopted into Italian as mussolino, and made its way into English via French mousseline.
parsley: parsley: [14] The ultimate source of parsley is Greek petrōselínon, a compound formed from pétrā ‘rock’ (source of English petrify, petrol, etc) and sélīnon ‘parsley’ (source of English celery). From it was descended Latin petroselīnum, which in post-classical times became petrosilium. This passed into English in two distinct phases: first, direct from Latin in the Old English period as petersilie, and secondly, in the 13th century via Old French peresil as percil. By the 14th century these had started to merge together into percely, later parsley.
=> celery, petrol
quisling: quisling: [20] Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian politician who from 1933 led the National Union Party, the Norwegian fascist party (Quisling was not his real name – he was born Abraham Lauritz Jonsson). When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940 he gave them active support, urging his fellow Norwegians not to resist them, and in 1942 he was installed by Hitler as a puppet premier. In 1945 he was shot for treason. The earliest recorded use of his name in English as a generic term for a ‘traitor’ comes from April 1940.
slack: slack: [OE] In common with Dutch and Swedish slak, slack comes from a prehistoric Germanic *slakaz. This was derived from the same ultimate source that produced Latin laxus ‘loose’ (source of English lax, relax, release, and relish) and languēre ‘languish’ (source of English languish). The plural noun slacks was first used for ‘trousers’ in the early 19th century. (The noun slack ‘small pieces of coal’ [15] is a different word, probably borrowed from Middle Dutch slacke ‘waste produced by smelting metal’.)
=> languish, lax, relax, release, relinquish
slander: slander: [13] Slander and scandal are ultimately the same word. Both go back to Latin scandalum ‘cause of offence’. This passed into Old French as escandle, which in due course had its consonants switched round to produce esclandre, source of English slander. Scandal was borrowed from the later French form scandale.
=> scandal
slang: slang: [18] Slang is a mystery word. It first appeared in underworld argot of the mid-18th century. It had a range of meanings – ‘cant’, ‘nonsense’, ‘line of business’, and, as a verb, ‘defraud’. Most of these have died out, but ‘cant’ is the lineal ancestor of the word’s modern meaning. It is not clear where it came from, although the use of the verb slang for ‘abuse’, and the expression slanging match ‘abusive argument’, suggest some connection with Norwegian dialect sleng- ‘offensive language’ (found only in compounds).
slat: slat: [14] Slat was adapted from Old French esclat ‘piece broken off, splinter’. This was derived from the verb esclater ‘shatter’, a descendant of Vulgar Latin *esclatāre or *exclatāre. And this in turn may have been formed from a base *clatsuggestive of the sound of breaking. An alternative theory, however, is that it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *slaitan ‘cause to split or break’, a variant of *slītan ‘split, break’ (from which English gets slice and slit).

The feminine form of Old French esclat was esclate, which has given English slate [14]. And its modern descendant éclat was borrowed by English in the 17th century in the metaphorical sense ‘brilliance’. It has been conjectured that esclater may have been related to Old French esclachier ‘break’, which could have had a variant form *esclaschier.

This would be a plausible candidate as a source for English slash [14].
=> slate
slaughter: slaughter: [13] Slaughter was borrowed from Old Norse *slahtr, which went back to the same prehistoric Germanic base (*slakh- ‘strike’) that produced English slay. Old English appears to have had its own version of the word, *slæht, which survived into the 17th century as slaught. This forms the second syllable of onslaught [17], where it replaced the -slag in the borrowing from Middle Dutch aenslag (literally ‘onstriking’).
=> onslaught, slay
slave: slave: [13] The word slave commemorates the fate of the Slavic people in the past, reduced by conquest to a state of slavery. For ultimately slave and Slav are one and the same. The earliest record we have of the ethnic name is as Slavic Sloveninu, a word of unknown origin borrowed by Byzantine Greek as Sklábos and passed on to medieval Latin as Sclavus. It was this that was turned into a generic term sclavus ‘slave’, which passed into English via Old French esclave.
slay: slay: [OE] Etymologically, slay means ‘hit’ (its German relative schlagen still does), but from the earliest Old English times it was also used for ‘kill’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic base *slakh-, *slag-, *slög- ‘hit’, which also produced English onslaught, slaughter, the sledge of sledgehammer, sleight, sly, and possibly slag [16] (from the notion of ‘hitting’ rock to produce fragments), slog, and slug ‘hit’.
=> onslaught, slaughter, sledge, sleight, sly
sleaze: sleaze: [20] It is common practice to name fabrics after their place of manufacture, and from the 17th century that applied to cloth made in Silesia (a region in east-central Europe, now mainly within Poland), and in particular to a type of fine linen or cotton. It did not take long for Silesia to be worn down to Slesia or Sleasia and finally to Sleasie. Also in the 17th century we find sleasie being applied as an adjective to fabrics that are thin or flimsy, and although a connection between the two usages has never been proved, the closeness of meaning seems unlikely to be coincidental.

Soon sleasie (or sleazy) was being used metaphorically for ‘slight, flimsy, insubstantial’. It took a sudden sideways semantic leap in the 1930s and 40s when it began to be used as a term of moral disapproval, denoting squalor, depravity or slatternliness, and it was in this sense that the back-formed noun sleaze first emerged in the 1960s. Then in the 1980s the word shifted its target from sex to financially motivated misdemeanours, notably the taking of bribes (the new usage is first recorded in ‘The sleaze factor’, a chapter heading in the book Gambling with History (1983) by the US journalist Laurence Barrett).
sledge: sledge: English has two words sledge. The sledge [OE] of sledgehammer [15] was once a word in its own right, meaning ‘heavy hammer’. It goes back to the prehistoric Germanic base *slakh- ‘hit’, source also of English slaughter, slay, etc. Sledge ‘snow vehicle’ [17] was borrowed from Middle Dutch sleedse. Like Dutch slee (source of English sleigh [18]) and Middle Low German sledde (source of English sled [14]), its ultimate ancestor was the prehistoric Germanic base *slid- ‘slide’ (source of English slide). Sledging ‘unsettling a batsman with taunts’ [20], which originated in Australia in the 1970s, may have been derived from sledgehammer.
=> slaughter, slay, sly; sled, sleigh, slide
sleek: sleek: [16] Sleek originated as a variant form of slick [14], which probably went back to an unrecorded Old English *slice. It apparently has relatives in Icelandic slíkja and Norwegian slikja ‘smoothen’.
=> slick
sleep: sleep: [OE] Sleep comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *slǣpan, which also produced German schlafen and Dutch slapen. Its ancestry has not been pieced together in detail, but it is related to Dutch slap ‘sluggish’ and German schlaff ‘slack, loose’, and a link has been suggested with Lithuanian slabnas ‘weak’.
sleigh: sleigh: see sledge
sleuth: sleuth: [12] Sleuth originally meant ‘track, trail’ (‘John of Lorn perceived the hound had lost the sleuth’, John Barbour, The Bruce 1375). It was borrowed from Old Norse slóth ‘track, trail’, which was probably also the ultimate source of English slot ‘trail of an animal’ [16]. In the 14th century the compound sleuth-hound ‘bloodhound for tracking fugitives’ was coined. This was later shortened back to sleuth, and applied in 19th-century America to a ‘detective’.
=> slot
slice: slice: [14] Slice comes from Old French esclice ‘splinter’, a derivative of the verb esclicier ‘reduce to splinters, shatter’. This in turn was acquired from Frankish *slītjan, a descendant of prehistoric Germanic *slītan ‘slit’ (source of English slit and possibly of slat and slate). English originally took over the word’s French meaning, but this had died out by the end of the 16th century. The modern sense ‘piece cut from something’ is first recorded in the early 15th century.
=> slit
slick: slick: see sleek
slide: slide: [OE] Slide comes from a prehistoric Germanic *slīd- ‘slide, slip’, which also produced English sled, sledge, sleigh, and slither [OE]. Its ultimate source was the Indo-European base *slei- or *lei-, a prolific source of words for ‘slide’. A version with -dh- on the end lies behind slide, and is also responsible for Greek olisthánein, Lithuanian slysti, Latvian slīdēt, and probably Welsh llithro ‘slide’. A version suffixed -b- produced English slip, and one ending in -g- has spread throughout the Slavic languages, giving Russian skol’zit’, Czech klouznouti, etc, all meaning ‘slide’.
=> sled, sledge, sleigh, slither
slight: slight: [13] The ancestral sense of slight is ‘level, even’. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *slekhtaz, a word of unknown origin which had that meaning, but whose descendants have diversified semantically beyond all recognition (German schlecht and Dutch slecht, for instance, now mean ‘bad’, having arrived there by way of ‘level, smooth’ and ‘simple, ordinary’). ‘Smooth’ was the original meaning of English slight (Miles Coverdale, in his 1535 translation of the Bible, recorded how David ‘chose five slight stones out of the river’ to confront Goliath with (1 Samuel 17:40), where the Authorized Version of 1611 has ‘smooth stones’), and it survived dialectally into the 20th century.

By the 14th century, however, it was evolving into ‘slim’, and this eventually became, in the early 16th century, ‘small in amount’. English acquired the adjective from Old Norse sléttr ‘smooth’, and Old Norse was also the original source of a verb slight [13], meaning ‘make level or smooth’. This died out in the 17th century, however, and the modern verb slight ‘disdain, snub’, first recorded at the end of the 16th century, is derived from the adjective, in the sense ‘of little importance’.

The noun comes from the verb.
slim: slim: [17] Slim is now quite an upbeat word, but that is a comparatively new departure, for historically it has been neutral if not downright derogatory. It was borrowed from Dutch slim ‘small, inferior’, which went back via Middle Dutch slim ‘slanting, bad’ to a prehistoric Germanic *slimbaz ‘oblique, crooked’ (source also of German schlimm ‘bad’). It may be distantly related to Latvian slīps ‘crooked, steep’.
slime: slime: [OE] Along with its relatives German schleim, Dutch slijm, and Danish slim, slime comes from a prehistoric Germanic slīm-. This probably has connections with English lime ‘calcium’ and Latin līmus ‘mud’.
sling: sling: English has at least two distinct words sling, maybe more – the picture is far from clear. The first to appear was the verb, ‘throw’ [13]. This was probably borrowed from Old Norse slyngva, but as it originally meant specifically ‘throw with a sling’ there is clearly some connection with the noun sling ‘strap for throwing stones’ [13], whose immediate source was perhaps Middle Low German slinge. Sling ‘loop or strap for holding things’ [14] may be the same word, although there is no conclusive proof for this. Sling ‘spirit-based drink’ [18] first came on the scene in America, but its origins are unknown.
slip: slip: There are three separate words slip in English. The verb [13] was probably borrowed from Middle Low German slippen, a product of the prehistoric Germanic base *slip-. This in turn went back to Indo-European *sleib- (source also of English lubricate [17]), a variant of the base which gave English slide. Slippery [16] was based on an earlier and now defunct slipper ‘slippery’, which also goes back to Germanic *slip-.

It may have been coined by the Bible translator Miles Coverdale, who used it in Psalm 34:6: ‘Let their way be dark and slippery’. It is thought that he modelled it on German schlipfferig ‘slippery’, used in the same passage by Martin Luther in his translation of the Bible. Slipper ‘soft shoe’ [15] was originally a shoe ‘slipped’ on to the foot; and someone who is slipshod [16] is etymologically wearing ‘loose shoes’. Slip ‘thinned clay’ [OE] is descended from Old English slypa ‘slime’, and may be related to slop [14].

One of its earlier meanings was ‘dung’, which is fossilized in the second element of cowslip. Slip ‘strip, piece’ [15], as in a ‘slip of paper’, was probably borrowed from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch slippe ‘cut, slit, strip’.
=> lubricate, slide; cowslip, slop
slit: slit: [13] Slit is not recorded in Old English, but it is assumed to have existed, as *slittan (its first cousin slītan ‘slit’ survived into the 20th century in Scottish English as slite). It goes back ultimately to the same Germanic base that produced English slice and possibly also slash, slat and slate.
=> slice
sloe: sloe: [OE] Etymologically, the sloe is probably the ‘blue-black’ fruit. The word comes, along with its relatives German schlehe, Dutch slee, Swedish slå, and Danish slaa, from a prehistoric Germanic *slaikhwōn, which has been linked with Latin līvēre ‘be blue-black’ (source of English livid [17]). Another close relative is Serbo-Croat shljiva ‘plum’, whose derivative shljivovica ‘plum brandy’ has given English slivovitz [19].
=> livid, slivovitz
slogan: slogan: [16] Slogan is a Gaelic contribution to English. It comes from sluaghghairm ‘war-cry’, a compound formed from sluagh ‘army’ and ghairm ‘shout’. English at first used it in its original Gaelic sense, and the metaphorical ‘catchphrase’ did not emerge until the 18th century.
slop: slop: see slip
slope: slope: [15] The noun slope did not emerge until the 17th century. Originally it was an adverb, short for the now defunct aslope. This is generally supposed to go back to an unrecorded Old English *āslopean, an adverbial use of the past participle of āslūpan ‘slip away’. Such a scenario would appear to fit in well with the colloquial slope off ‘leave’, but in fact this usage did not emerge until the early 19th century, in America.
slow: slow: [OE] The etymological notion underlying slow is ‘dullness, sluggishness’; ‘lack of speed’ is a secondary development. The word goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *slæwaz, which also produced Swedish slö and Danish sløv ‘dull, blunt’. The original idea of ‘sluggishness’ is better preserved in the derivative sloth [12] (etymologically ‘slow-ness’).
=> sloth
slug: slug: English has at least two, possibly four distinct words slug. The oldest, ‘shell-less mollusc’ [15], originally meant ‘slow or lazy person’. It was not applied to the slow-moving animal until the 18th century. It was probably a borrowing from a Scandinavian source (Norwegian has a dialectal slugg ‘large heavy body’). A similar ancestor, such as Swedish dialect slogga ‘be lazy’, may lie behind the now obsolete English verb slug ‘be lazy’, from which were derived sluggard [14] and sluggish [14]. Slug ‘bullet’ [17] is of uncertain origin.

It may have come from slug ‘mollusc’, in allusion to the shape of the animal, but that suggestion depends on the supposition that slug was being used for the mollusc at least a hundred years before our earliest written record of it. Slug ‘swig of drink’ [18] may be the same word, but it has also been speculated that it comes from Irish Gaelic slog ‘swallow’. Slug ‘hit’ [19] and the related slog [19] probably go back ultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base *slakh-, *slag-, *slōg- ‘hit’ (source of English slaughter, slay, etc).
=> slog
sluice: sluice: [14] A sluice is etymologically a device for ‘excluding’ water. The word comes via Old French escluse from Gallo-Roman *exclūsa, a noun use of the feminine past participle of Latin exclūdere ‘shut out’ (source of English exclude [14]). This was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and claudere ‘shut’ (source of English close).
=> close, exclude
slush: slush: [17] Like the very similar (and perhaps ultimately identical) slosh [19] and sludge [17], slush probably originated in imitation of the sound of squelching or splashing. The similarity of early modern Danish slus ‘sleet, mud’ and Norwegian slusk ‘slushy’ suggests the possibility of a Scandinavian borrowing rather than a native formation. Slush fund [19] comes from the use of slush for ‘grease that is a byproduct of cooking in a ship’s galley’, the allusion being to the ‘greasing’ of people’s palms with money.
sly: sly: [12] Etymologically, sly means ‘able to hit’. It was borrowed from Old Norse slǣgr ‘clever, cunning’, which went back ultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base *slakh-, *slag-, *slōg- ‘hit’ (source also of English slaughter, slay, etc). The word’s original approbatory connotations of ‘cleverness’ or ‘skill’ survived into the 20th century in northern dialects, but elsewhere they were soon ousted by the notion of ‘underhandedness’. More neutral associations linger on in sleight ‘dexterity’ [13] (as in ‘sleight of hand’), which was acquired from an Old Norse derivative of slǣgr.
=> slaughter, slay, sleight
tousle: tousle: [15] Tousle was derived from an earlier touse ‘pull about, shake’ (probable source also of tussle [15]), which went back to an Old English *tūsian. Amongst its relatives is German zausen ‘tug, tousle’.
=> tussle
translate: translate: [13] To translate something is etymologically to ‘carry it across’ from one language into another. The word was acquired from trānslātus, the past participle of Latin trānsferre ‘carry across, transfer, translate’ (source of English transfer).
=> extol, relate
tussle: tussle: see tousle
aisle (n.): late 14c., ele, "lateral division of a church (usually separated by a row of pillars), from Old French ele "wing (of a bird or an army), side of a ship" (12c., Modern French aile), from Latin ala, related to axilla "wing, upper arm, armpit; wing of an army," from PIE *aks- "axis" (see axis), via a suffixed form *aks-la-. The root meaning in "turning" connects it with axle and axis.

Confused from 15c. with unrelated ile "island" (perhaps from notion of a "detached" part of a church), and so it took an -s- when isle did, c. 1700; by 1750 it had acquired an a-, on the model of French cognate aile. The word also was confused with alley, which gave it the sense of "passage between rows of pews or seats" (1731), which was thence extended to railway cars, theaters, etc.
Ameslan (n.): 1972, acronym of Ame(rican) S(ign) Lan(guage), known by that name since 1960, but its history goes back to 1817, evolving from French Sign Language (introduced at American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Conn.) and indigenous sign languages, especially that of Martha's Vineyard. [See "Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language," Nora Ellen Groce, Harvard University Press, 1985]
anonymously (adv.): 1728, from anonymous + -ly (2).
aslant (adv.): early 14c., o-slant, literally "on slant," from on + slant (v.). As a preposition from c. 1600.
asleep (adj.): c. 1200, aslepe, o slæpe, from Old English on slæpe (see sleep). The parallel form on sleep continued until c. 1550. Of limbs, "numb through stoppage of circulation," from late 14c. Meaning "inattentive, off guard" is from mid-14c.