英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

adobe [adobe 词源字典]: adobe: [18] Adobe is of Egyptian origin, from the time of the pharaohs. It comes from Coptic tōbe ‘brick’ (the form t.b appears in hieroglyphs). This was borrowed into Arabic, where the addition of the definite article al produced attob ‘the brick’. From Arabic it passed into Spanish (the corridor through which so many Arabic words reached other European languages), and its use by the Spanish-speaking population of North America (for a sun-dried brick) led to its adoption into English in the mid 18th century.
[adobe etymology, adobe origin, 英语词源]
agiotage: agiotage: [19] Agiotage is the speculative buying and selling of stocks and shares. The term was borrowed from French, where it was based on agioter ‘speculate’, a verb formed from the noun agio ‘premium paid on currency exchanges’. English acquired agio in the 17th century (as with so many other banking and financial terms, directly from Italian – aggio). This Italian word is thought to be an alteration of a dialectal form lajjē, borrowed from medieval Greek allagion ‘exchange’. This in turn was based on Greek allagē ‘change’, which derived ultimately from állos ‘other’ (a word distantly related to English else).
=> else
aloof: aloof: [16] Aloof was originally a nautical term, a command to steer to windward. Its second syllable is a variant of luff ‘sail closer to the wind’ [13]. This was borrowed from Old French lof, ‘windward side of a ship’, which may itself have been, like so many maritime expressions, of Dutch origin. The modern figurative meaning ‘reserved, uninvolved’ developed via an intermediate physical sense ‘away, at a distance’.
=> luff
benzene: benzene: [19] The original name given to this hydrocarbon, by the German chemist Eilhardt Mitscherlich in 1833, was benzine. He based it on the term benzoic acid, a derivative of benzoin, the name of a resinous substance exuded by trees of the genus Styrax. This came ultimately from Arabic lubān-jāwī, literally ‘frankincense of Java’ (the trees grow in Southeast Asia).

When the expression was borrowed into the Romance languages, the initial lu- was apprehended as the definite article, and dropped (ironically, since in so many Arabic words which do contain the article al, it has been retained as part and parcel of the word – see ALGEBRA). This produced a variety of forms, including French benjoin, Portuguese beijoim, and Italian benzoi.

English probably acquired the word mainly from French (a supposition supported by the folketymological alteration benjamin which was in common use in English from the end of the 16th century), but took the z from the Italian form. Meanwhile, back with benzine, in the following year, 1834, the German chemist Justus von Liebig proposed the alternative name benzol; and finally, in the 1870s, the chemist A W Hofmann regularized the form to currently accepted chemical nomenclature as benzene.
=> benzol
chair: chair: [13] Chair comes ultimately from Greek kathédrā ‘seat’ (source also of cathedral, of course), which was a compound originally meaning literally ‘something for sitting down on’ – it was formed from katá- ‘down’ and *hed- ‘sit’. It produced Latin cathedra, which in Old French became chaiere, the source of the English word.

The use of chair specifically for the seat occupied by someone presiding at a meeting dates from the mid 17th century, and its metaphorical extension to the person sitting in it, as symbolizing his or her office – as in ‘address one’s remarks to the chair’ – is virtually contemporary (‘The Chair behaves himself like a Busby amongst so many schoolboys’, Thomas Burton’s Diary, 23 March 1658); but its use as a synonym for chairperson, to avoid a distinction on grounds of sex, is a late 20th-century development.
=> cathedral
duffel: duffel: [17] Duffel is actually a sort of heavy woollen material, and like so many names of fabrics, it comes from the place where it was originally made or exported from – in this case Duffel, a town in Belgium, near Antwerp. However, the term duffel coat (which dates back to the late 17th century) has in modern times become associated with a particular design of coat (with a hood and toggles) as much as with the material it is made from. Duffel bag [20], a term of American origin, was to begin with a bag for ‘personal belongings and equipment’, or duffel, as it is called in American English (the application seems to have started with ‘spare clothes made of duffel’).
edge: edge: [OE] Edge is probably the main native English representative of the Indo-European base *ak- ‘be sharp or pointed’, which has contributed so many words to the language via Latin and Greek (such as acid, acrid, acute, acne, alacrity, and oxygen). Its Germanic descendant was *ag-, on which was based the noun *agjā, source of German ecke ‘corner’, Swedish egg ‘edge’ (a probable relative of English egg ‘urge’), and English edge. The word’s application to a ‘border’ or ‘boundary’ dates from the late 14th century.
=> acid, acne, acrid, acute, alacrity, egg, oxygen
fate: fate: [14] Etymologically, fate is ‘that which is spoken’ – that is, by the gods. Like so many other English words, from fable to profess, it goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *bha- ‘speak’. Its immediate source was Italian fato, a descendant of Latin fātum, which was formed from the past participle of the verb fārī ‘speak’.

That which the gods say determines the destiny of human beings, and so Latin fātum came to signify ‘what is preordained, destiny’. It was used in the plural fāta to personify the Fates, the three goddesses who preside over human destiny – their direct etymological descendants in English have been diminished to fairies. The derivative fatal [14] comes from Latin fatālis, perhaps via Old French fatal.
=> confess, fable, fairy, profess
joke: joke: [17] Latin jocus meant ‘jest, joke’ (a possible link with Old High German gehan ‘say’ and Sanskrit yācati ‘he implores’ suggests that its underlying meaning was ‘word-play’). It passed into Old French as jeu, which lies behind English jeopardy and probably also jewel. But English also went direct to Latin for a set of words connected with ‘fun’ and ‘humour’, among them jocose [17] and jocular [17], both from Latin derivatives of jocus (the superficially similar jocund, incidentally, is etymologically unrelated), and joke itself, which was originally introduced in the form joque or joc (‘coming off with so many dry joques and biting repartees’, Bishop Kennett’s translation of Erasmus’s Encomium Moriae 1683). Juggler belongs to the same word family.
=> jeopardy, jewel, jocular, juggler
OK: OK: [19] Few English expressions have had so many weird and wonderful explanations offered for their origin as OK. There is still some doubt about it, but the theory now most widely accepted is that the letters stand for oll korrect, a facetious early 19th-century American phonetic spelling of all correct; and that this was reinforced by the fact that they were also coincidentally the initial letters of Old Kinderhook, the nickname of US president Martin Van Buren (who was born in Kinderhook, in New York State), which were used as a slogan in the presidential election of 1840 (a year after the first record of OK in print).
sporran: sporran: [19] English acquired sporran from Gaelic, of course, but it is not ultimately of Celtic origin. It goes back to Latin bursa ‘purse’ (source of English bursar, purse, etc), which was early on borrowed into the Celtic languages, giving Irish sparán and Welsg ysbur as well as Gaelic sporan. As with so many other Scotticisms, it was Walter Scott who introduced the word to English.
=> bursar, purse, reimburse
Aldine (n.): type font, 1837, from Aldus Manutius (1450-1515), Venetian printer who used it in his popular editions of Greek and Roman classics. His name is a Latinized form of Italian Aldo Manuzio, the first name short for Teobaldo (see Theobald), and, like so many Italian masc. given names, of Germanic origin. The device characteristic of Aldine books is a figure of a dolphin on an anchor.
arch (adj.): 1540s, "chief, principal," from prefix arch-; used in 12c. archangel, etc., but extended to so many derogatory uses (arch-rogue, arch-knave, etc.) that by mid-17c. it acquired a meaning of "roguish, mischievous," since softened to "saucy." Also found in archwife (late 14c.), variously defined as "a wife of a superior order" or "a dominating woman, virago."
few (n.): "a small number of persons" (distinguished from the many), c. 1300, fewe, from few (adj.).
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. [Winston Churchill, 1940]
flea market (n.): 1917, especially in reference to the marché aux puces in Paris, so-called "because there are so many second-hand articles sold of all kinds that they are believed to gather fleas." [E.S. Dougherty, "In Europe," 1922].
jackpot (n.): also jack-pot, "big prize," 1944, from slot machine sense (1932), from obsolete poker sense (1881) of antes that begin when no player has a pair of jacks or better; from jack (n.) in the card-playing sense + pot (n.1). Earlier, in criminal slang, it meant "trouble," especially "an arrest" (1902).
The regular Draw-Poker game is usually varied by occasional Jack-Pots, which are played once in so many deals, or when all have refused to play, or when the player deals who holds the buck, a marker placed in the pool with every jack-pot. In a jack-pot each player puts up an equal stake and receives a hand. The pot must then be opened by a player holding a hand of the value of a pair of knaves (jacks) or better. If no player holds so valuable a hand the deal passes and each player adds a small sum to the pot or pool. When the pot is opened the opener does so by putting up any sum he chooses, within the limit, and his companions must pay in the same amount or "drop." They also possess the right to raise the opener. The new cards called for are then dealt and the opener starts the betting, the play proceeding as in the regular game. ["Encyclopaedia Britannica," 11th ed., 1911, "Poker." The article notes "Jack-Pots were introduced about 1870."]
middle (adj.): Old English middel, from West Germanic *middila (cognates: Old Frisian middel, Old Saxon middil, Middle Low German, Dutch middel, Old High German mittil, German mittel), from Proto-Germanic *medjaz (see mid). Middle name attested from 1815; as "one's outstanding characteristic," colloquial, from 1911, American English.
According to Mr. H.A. Hamilton, in his "Quarter Sessions from Queen Elizabeth," the practice of giving children two Christian names was unknown in England before the period of the Stuarts, was rarely adopted down to the time of the Revolution, and never became common until after the Hanoverian family was seated on the throne. "In looking through so many volumes of county records," he says, "I have, of course, seen many thousands and tens of thousands of proper names, belonging to men of all ranks and degrees,--to noblemen, justices, jurymen, witnesses, sureties, innkeepers, hawkers, paupers, vagrants, criminals, and others,--and in no single instance, down to the end of the reign of Anne, have I noticed any person bearing more than one Christian name ...." [Walsh]
Middle school attested from 1838, originally "middle-class school, school for middle-class children;" the sense in reference to a school for grades between elementary and high school is from 1960. Middle management is 1957. Middle-of-the-road in the figurative sense is attested from 1894; edges of a dirt road can be washed out and thus less safe. Middle finger so called from c. 1000.
pantothenic (adj.): denoting a B-complex vitamin acid, 1933, from Greek pantothen "from all quarters, on every side," from panto-, comb. form of pantos, genitive of pan "all" (see pan-) + -ic. So called because it was found in so many sources.
rhapsodomancy (n.): "divination by means of verses," 1727, from French rhapsodomancie, from Greek rhapsodos "a rhapsodist" (see rhapsody) + -manteia (see -mancy).
There were various methods of practicing this rhapsodomancy. Sometimes they wrote several verses or sentences of a poet on so many pieces of wood, paper, or the like; shook them together in an urn; and drew out one, which was accounted the lot. Sometimes they cast dice on a table, on which verses were written; and that on which the die lodged, contained the prediction. [Rees' "Cyclopedia," London, 1819]
sett (n.): see set (n.1).
The extra t is an arbitrary addition in various technical senses, from a lawn-tennis to a granite set. Each class of persons has doubtless added it to distinguish the special sense that means most to it from all others ; but so many are the special senses that the distinction is now no more distinctive than an Esq. after a man's name, & all would do well to discard it. [Fowler]
suicide (n.): "deliberate killing of oneself," 1650s, from Modern Latin suicidium "suicide," from Latin sui "of oneself" (genitive of se "self"), from PIE *s(u)w-o- "one's own," from root *s(w)e- (see idiom) + -cidium "a killing" (see -cide). Probably an English coinage; much maligned by Latin purists because it "may as well seem to participate of sus, a sow, as of the pronoun sui" [Phillips]. The meaning "person who kills himself deliberately" is from 1728. In Anglo-Latin, the term for "one who commits suicide" was felo-de-se, literally "one guilty concerning himself."
Even in 1749, in the full blaze of the philosophic movement, we find a suicide named Portier dragged through the streets of Paris with his face to the ground, hung from a gallows by his feet, and then thrown into the sewers; and the laws were not abrogated till the Revolution, which, having founded so many other forms of freedom, accorded the liberty of death. [W.E.H. Lecky, "History of European Morals," 1869]
In England, suicides were legally criminal if of age and sane, but not if judged to have been mentally deranged. The criminal ones were mutilated by stake and given degrading burial in highways until 1823. Suicide blonde (one who has "dyed by her own hand") first attested 1921. Baseball suicide squeeze is attested from 1937.
unreal (adj.): c. 1600, "not real," from un- (1) "not" + real (adj.). Meaning "impractical, visionary" is by 1660s. Slang sense of "wonderful, great" is first recorded 1965.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.

[Eliot, "The Waste Land," 1922]
aliquot: "A portion of a larger whole, especially a sample taken for chemical analysis or other treatment", Late 16th century: from French aliquote, from Latin aliquot 'some, so many', from alius 'one of two' + quot 'how many'.
quot homines tot sententiae: "‘There are as many opinions as there are men’: expressing the fact that there is considerable diversity of opinion, and the difficulty of bringing about agreement", Mid 16th cent.; earliest use found in Richard Taverner (?1505–1575), translator and evangelical reformer. From classical Latin quot hominēs tot sententiae there are as many opinions as there are men from quot how many + hominēs, plural of homō man + tot so many + sententiae, plural of sententia.