英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

absorb [absorb 词源字典]: absorb: [15] Absorb comes, via French absorber, from Latin absorbēre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ab- ‘away’ and sorbēre ‘suck up, swallow’. Words connected with drinking and swallowing quite often contain the sounds s or sh, r, and b or p – Arabic, for instance, has surāb, which gave us syrup – and this noisy gulping seems to have been reflected in an Indo- European base, *srobh-, which lies behind both Latin sorbēre and Greek ropheín ‘suck up’.
[absorb etymology, absorb origin, 英语词源]
accelerate: accelerate: [16] Accelerate comes from Latin accelerāre, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix ad- (ac- before /k/ sounds) and celerāre ‘hurry’. Celerāre, in turn, derived from the adjective celer ‘fast’ (which gave English celerity [15] and is ultimately related to hold).
ask: ask: [OE] The Old English ancestor of ask existed in two main forms: āscian and ācsian. The first produced descendants such as asshe, which died out in the 16th century; the second resulted in axe (still extant in some dialects), which by metathesis – the reversal of the consonant sounds k and s – became modern English ask. Ultimately the word comes from a prehistoric West Germanic verb *aiskōjan (source of German heischen, a poetical term for ‘ask’); cognates in other, non-Germanic, Indo- European languages include Latin aeruscāre ‘beg’ and Sanskrit iccháti ‘seek’.
babel: babel: [14] According to Genesis 11: 1–9, the tower of Babel was built in Shinar by the descendants of Noah in an attempt to reach heaven. Angered at their presumption, God punished the builders by making them unable to understand each other’s speech: hence, according to legend, the various languages of the world. Hence, too, the metaphorical application of babel to a ‘confused medley of sounds’, which began in English in the 16th century.

The word has no etymological connection with ‘language’ or ‘noise’, however. The original Assyrian bāb-ilu meant ‘gate of god’, and this was borrowed into Hebrew as bābel (from which English acquired the word). The later Greek version is Babylon.
=> babylon
cart: cart: [13] Old English had a word cræt ‘carriage’, which may, by the process known as metathesis (reversal of speech sounds), have produced the word which first appeared at the beginning of the 13th century as karte or carte. But a part must certainly also have been played by Old Norse kartr ‘cart’, and some have also detected the influence of Anglo-Norman carete, a diminutive form of car (source of English car).
=> car
consonant: consonant: [14] Etymologically, consonant means ‘sounding together’. It comes via Old French consonant from Latin consonāns, the present participle of consonāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and sonāre ‘sound’. Its application to particular speech sounds, contrasted with ‘vowels’, comes from the notion that they were ‘pronounced together with’ vowels, rather than independently.
=> sonorous, sound
curd: curd: [14] Curd began life as crud, a word which has survived in its own right. In the 15th century it underwent a process known as metathesis, by which the sounds r and u became transposed, producing curd. A derivative of this, dating from the 16th century, is curdle. The word’s ultimate ancestry is not known, although some consider that Gaelic gruth may be related.
curl: curl: [14] Curl seems to have been borrowed from Middle Dutch krul ‘curly’, and indeed the original English forms of the word were crolle and crulle. The present-day form arose in the 15th century by a process known as metathesis, whereby the sounds r and u were transposed. The Middle Dutch word came from a Germanic *krusl-, source also of German kraus ‘curly’. Modern Dutch krul, meanwhile, has given English cruller ‘small cake of twisted shape’ [19].
=> cruller
cutlass: cutlass: [16] Appropriate as the name sounds, cutlass has no etymological connection with cut. It comes from Old French cutelas, a derivative (denoting large size) of coutel ‘knife’. This in turn goes back to Latin cultellus, a diminutive of culter ‘knife, ploughshare’ (source of English coulter [OE] and cutler [14], whence cutlery [14]).
=> coulter, cutlery
dirt: dirt: [13] Dirt was originally drit, and meant ‘excrement’ (it was borrowed from Old Norse drit, which goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base *drit- that also produced Dutch dreet ‘excrement’). The toned-down sense ‘soiling substance’ is of equal antiquity with ‘excrement’ in English, and the modern English form dirt first appeared in the 15th century, by a process known as metathesis in which two sounds are reversed.
form: form: [13] Form comes via Old French forme from Latin forma ‘shape, contour’, a word whose origins have never been satisfactorily explained. Its semantic similarity to Greek morphé ‘form, shape’ (source of English morphology [19]) is striking, and has led some etymologists to suggest that the Latin word may be an alteration of the Greek one, presumably by metathesis (the reversal of sounds, in this case /m/ and /f/).

Another possibility, however, is that it comes from ferīre ‘strike’, from the notion of an impression, image, or shape being created by beating. Of the word’s wide diversity of modern senses, ‘school class’, a 16th-century introduction, was inspired by the late Latin usage forma prima, forma secunda, etc for different orders of clergy, while ‘bench’ may go back to the Old French expression s’asseoir en forme ‘sit in a row’.

Amongst forma’s derivatives that have found their way into English are formal [14], format [19], formula [17] (from a Latin diminutive form), and uniform.
=> formal, format, formula, inform, uniform
gargoyle: gargoyle: [15] The ancient root *garg-, *gurgoriginated as an imitation of throat sounds. From it were derived such guttural words as Greek gargaraaizein ‘gargle’ (whence Latin gargarizāre ‘gargle’) and Latin gurguliō ‘gullet’ (Latin gurges, source of English gorge and regurgitate, had moved further figuratively to ‘whirlpool’).

Among the offspring of gurguliō are Vulgar Latin *gurguliāre, source of English gurgle [16], and Old French gargouille ‘throat’. Roof spouts carved in the shape of grotesque creatures had the term gargouille applied to them from the notion that the rain-water was coming out of their throats – hence English gargoyle. Gargouille also formed the basis of the verb gargouiller ‘gargle, gurgle’, from which English gets gargle [16].
=> gargle, gurgle
marble: marble: [12] Greek mármaros, a word of unknown origin, denoted to begin with ‘any hard stone’, but association with the verb marmaírein ‘shine’ led to a particular application to ‘marble’. Latin took it over as marmor, and it passed into Old French as marbre. Here, by a process known as dissimilation, in which one of two similar sounds is replaced by a different one, marbre became marble – whence English marble. The use of the word for the little ball with which the game of ‘marbles’ is played dates from the late 17th century.
omelette: omelette: [17] The omelette seems to have been named for its thinness, like a sheet of metal. The word was borrowed from French omelette, the modern descendant of Old French amelette. This meant literally ‘thin sheet of metal’, and was an alteration, by metathesis (the reversal of sounds) of alumette. This in turn was a variant of alumelle, which arose through the mistaking of la lemelle ‘the blade’ as l’alemelle. And lemelle goes back to Latin lāmella ‘thin sheet of metal’, a diminutive form of lāmina ‘plate, layer’ (from which English gets laminate [17]).
=> laminate
pink: pink: English has three distinct words pink. The colour term [18] appears to have come, by a bizarre series of twists, from an early Dutch word meaning ‘small’. This was pinck (source also of the colloquial English pinkie ‘little finger’ [19]). It was used in the phrase pinck oogen, literally ‘small eyes’, hence ‘half-closed eyes’, which was borrowed into English and partially translated as pink eyes.

It has been speculated that this was a name given to a plant of the species Dianthus, which first emerged in the abbreviated form pink in the 16th century. Many of these plants have pale red flowers, and so by the 18th century pink was being used for ‘pale red’. Pink ‘pierce’ [14], now preserved mainly in pinking shears, is probably of Low German origin (Low German has pinken ‘peck’).

And pink (of an engine) ‘make knocking sounds’ [20] is presumably imitative in origin.
pipe: pipe: [OE] The etymological notion underlying pipe is of a ‘piping’ sound. The word goes back to a Common Romance *pīpa, a derivative of the Latin verb pīpāre ‘chirp’. This was formed from the base *pīp-, imitative of the sounds made by young birds, which also lies behind English pigeon. Prehistoric Germanic took over *pīpa, and it has since evolved to German pfeife, Dutch pijp, Swedish pipa, and English pipe. By the time it reached English it had broadened out semantically from its original ‘tubular wind instrument which makes a piping sound’ to ‘tube’ in general.
=> pigeon
purple: purple: [OE] Greek porphúrā, a word of Semitic origin, denoted a sort of shellfish from which a reddish dye was obtained (known as Tyrian purple, because it was produced around Tyre, in what is now Lebanon, it was highly prized in ancient times, and used for dyeing royal garments). It hence came to be used for the dye itself, and for cloth coloured with it, and it passed in this latter sense (with the particular connotation of ‘royal cloth’) via Latin purpura into Old English as purpura. Its derived adjective purpuran became purple by a process known as dissimilation, by which one of two similar speech sounds (here /r/) is altered.
reverberate: reverberate: [16] Latin verbera meant ‘whips, rods’ (it was related to Greek rhábdos ‘stick’). From it was derived the verb verberāre ‘whip, beat’, which with the addition of the prefix re- ‘back’ produced reverberāre ‘beat back’. When this first arrived in English it was used literally (Thomas Coryat, for instance, in his Crudities 1611, wrote of ‘a strong wall to repulse and reverberate the furious waves of the sea’), but it was not long before the metaphorical application to the re-echoing of sounds took over.
siren: siren: [14] The Seirēnes were sea nymphs who, according to Greek mythology, sat on rocks luring impressionable sailors to their doom with the sweetness of their singing. Latin took the word over as sīrēna, and it passed into English via Old French sereine. The term was applied to an acoustical instrument invented in 1819 by Cagniard de la Tour, that produced musical sounds and was used for measuring the frequency of sound waves, and it was this that formed the basis of its later use (in the 1870s) for a device for giving loud warning signals.
skirmish: skirmish: [14] English adapted skirmish from eskermiss-, the present stem of Old French eskermir ‘fight with a sword’. This in turn went back to a Frankish *skirmjan, a relative of modern German schirmen. A variant of skirmish arose with the i and r sounds reversed, giving scrimish, which is the source of modern English scrimmage [15] and also of scrummage [19] and its abbreviation scrum [19].
=> scrimmage, scrummage
sphinx: sphinx: [16] The original Sphinx was a monster, half woman and half lion, which terrorized the country around Thebes in ancient Greece. According to legend, it would waylay travellers and ask them a riddle; and if they could not solve it, it killed them. One of its favoured methods was strangulation, and its name supposedly means ‘the strangler’ – as if it were derived from Greek sphíggein ‘bind tight’ (source of English sphincter [16]).

However, this account of its name sounds as mythological as the account of its existence, and a more likely explanation is perhaps that the word was derived from the name of Mount Phikion, not far from ancient Thebes. One of the first yachts to carry a spinnaker sail, in the mid-1860s, was the Sphinx, and it has been conjectured that its name (or rather a mispronunciation /spingks/) formed the basis of the term spinnaker [19], perhaps as a partial blend with spanker, the name of another type of sail.
=> spinnaker
stretch: stretch: [OE] Stretch comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *strakkjan (source also of German strecken and Dutch strekken). This was formed from a base *strak-, which probably also produced English straggle [14]. It is not certain where *strak- came from, but probably it was an alteration of *strak- ‘rigid’ (source of English starch and stark).

Reversal of speech sounds (here a and r) is quite common; the process is known as metathesis. The notions of ‘rigidity’ and ‘stretching’ do not appear very compatible at first sight, but it is thought that the original application of stretch was to ‘stretching the limbs’, in the sense of making them straight or ‘stiff’. Straight comes from a former past participle of stretch.
=> straggle, straight
swarm: swarm: Swarm ‘group of insects’ [OE] and swarm ‘climb’ [16] are distinct words. The former comes from a prehistoric Germanic *swarmaz, which also produced German schwarm, and is closely related to Dutch swerm, Swedish svärm, and Danish sværm. It may go back ultimately to an Indo-European base which also lay behind Latin susurrus ‘hum’ and Sanskrit svárati ‘it sounds’. The origins of swarm ‘climb’ are not known.
taper: taper: [OE] Taper is ultimately the same word as paper. Both go bach to Latin papyrus ‘papyrus’. This was used among other things for a ‘candlewick made from papyrus’, and hence for a ‘candle’. It seems to have been borrowed in this sense into Old English as *papur, and by a process known as dissimilation (in which one of a pair of similar speech sounds is changed, so as to break up the pair) it became tapur. The verb taper ‘become narrower’, which emerged in the 16th century, is an allusion to the shape of the candle.
=> paper, papyrus
tinker: tinker: [13] Etymologically, a tinker is probably a ‘worker in tin’. It could well be descended from an unrecorded Old English *tinecere, a plausible derivative of tin. There is an alternative possibility, however: it may have been derived from the now obsolete verb tink ‘tinkle’ (which, like tinkle [14] itself, was of imitative origin), in allusion to the metallic sounds made by tinkers repairing pots (northern and Scottish dialects had the word tinkler for ‘tinker’).
tit: tit: English has three separate words tit. The oldest, ‘breast’ [OE], belongs to a West Germanic family of terms for ‘breast’ or ‘nipple’ that also includes German zitze and Dutch tit: it presumably originated in imitation of a baby’s sucking sounds. From Germanic it was borrowed into the Romance languages, giving Italian tetta, Spanish teta, Romanian tata, and French tette.

The Old French ancestor of this, tete, gave English teat [13], which gradually replaced tit as the ‘polite’ term. (Titillate [17] may be ultimately related). Tit the bird [18] is short for titmouse [14]. This in turn was formed from an earlier and now defunct tit, used in compounds denoting ‘small things’ and probably borrowed from a Scandinavian language, and Middle English mose ‘titmouse’, which came from a prehistoric Germanic *maisōn (source also of German meise and Dutch mees ‘tit’).

And the tit [16] of tit for tat (which produced British rhyming slang titfer ‘hat’ [20]) originally denoted a ‘light blow, tap’, and was presumably of onomatopoeic origin. (The tit- of titbit [17], incidentally, is probably a different word. It was originally tid- – as it still is in American English – and it may go back ultimately to Old English tiddre ‘frail’.)
=> teat, titillate; titmouse
vowel: vowel: [14] A vowel is etymologically a ‘vocal’ sound – that is, one made by vibrating the vocal chords. The word comes via Old French vouel from Latin vōcālis. This was short for littera vōcālis ‘vocal letter, letter that sounds’, sonus vōcālis ‘vocal sound’, etc. Vōcālis (source of English vocal) was derived from vōx ‘voice’ (source of English voice).
=> voice
wafer: wafer: [14] Wafer and waffle [18] are essentially the same word. Both come ultimately from a Low German term whose underlying etymological meaning was of a ‘honeycomb’- patterned cake or biscuit – a sense wafer has since lost. The ancestral form was wāfel, which seems to have come from the prehistoric Germanic base *wab-, *web- (source of English weave) and is probably related to German wabe ‘honeycomb’.

Old French borrowed Middle Low German wāfel as gaufre (which is where English got goffer ‘crimp’ [18] from). The Anglo-Norman version of this was wafre – whence English wafer. Waffle was borrowed direct into American English from Dutch wafel. (The verb waffle ‘speak verbosely’ [19], incidentally, is not the same word. It is a derivative of an earlier waff [17], used for the sounds a dog makes, which like woof was of imitative origin.)
=> goffer, waffle, weave, web
warble: warble: [14] The etymological notion underlying the word warble is of ‘whirling around’; its application to sounds, originally in the sense ‘whirl of notes, trill’, is a secondary development. It was borrowed from Old Northern French werbler, a derivative of the noun werble ‘trill, melody’. And this in turn came from Frankish *hwirbilōn ‘whirl, trill’, which is distantly related to English whirl. (Warble ‘swelling on an animal’s back caused by insect larva’ [16] is a completely different word. It may have been borrowed from the now obsolete Swedish compound varbulde, literally ‘pustumour’, or a related Scandinavian word.)
wasp: wasp: [OE] Etymologically, the wasp may be the ‘weaver’. The word comes ultimately from Indo- European *wobhes- or *wops-, which was probably derived from the base *webh-, *wobh- ‘weave’ (source of English weave, web, etc); the allusion is presumably to the papery nest which many species construct. West Germanic took this over as *wabis- or *waps-, and the process of metathesis (reversal of sounds) produced English wasp and German wespe. From the same Indo-European ancestor come Latin vespa (source of French guêpe, Italian vespa, and Spanish avispa) and Russian osa.
=> weave, web
xylophone: xylophone: [19] Etymologically, a xylophone makes ‘sounds’ from ‘wood’. The term was coined in the 1860s from Greek xúlon ‘wood’ (an allusion to the instrument’s tuned wooden bars) and the combining form -phone ‘sound’.
accede (v.): early 15c., from Latin accedere "approach, enter upon," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + cedere "go, move" (see cede). Latin ad- usually became ac- before "k" sounds. Related: Acceded; acceding.
accordion (n.): 1831, from German Akkordion, from Akkord "musical chord, concord of sounds, be in tune" (compare Italian accordare "to attune an instrument"); ultimately from same source as English accord (v.), with suffix on analogy of clarion, etc. Invented 1829 by piano-maker Cyrill Demian (1772-1847) of Vienna.
assonance (n.): 1727, "resemblance of sounds between words," from French assonance, from assonant, from Latin assonantem (nominative assonans), present participle of assonare "to resound, respond to," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + sonare "to sound" (see sonata). Properly, in prosody, "rhyming of accented vowels, but not consonants" (1823).
Babel: capital of Babylon, late 14c., from Hebrew Babhel (Gen. xi), from Akkadian bab-ilu "Gate of God" (from bab "gate" + ilu "god"). The name is a translation of Sumerian Ka-dingir. Meaning "confused medley of sounds" (1520s) is from the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
bad (adj.): c. 1200, "inferior in quality;" early 13c., "wicked, evil, vicious," a mystery word with no apparent relatives in other languages.* Possibly from Old English derogatory term bæddel and its diminutive bædling "effeminate man, hermaphrodite, pederast," probably related to bædan "to defile." A rare word before 1400, and evil was more common in this sense until c. 1700. Meaning "uncomfortable, sorry" is 1839, American English colloquial.

Comparable words in the other Indo-European languages tend to have grown from descriptions of specific qualities, such as "ugly," "defective," "weak," "faithless," "impudent," "crooked," "filthy" (such as Greek kakos, probably from the word for "excrement;" Russian plochoj, related to Old Church Slavonic plachu "wavering, timid;" Persian gast, Old Persian gasta-, related to gand "stench;" German schlecht, originally "level, straight, smooth," whence "simple, ordinary," then "bad").

Comparative and superlative forms badder, baddest were common 14c.-18c. and used as recently as Defoe (but not by Shakespeare), but yielded to comparative worse and superlative worst (which had belonged to evil and ill).

As a noun, late 14c., "evil, wickedness." In U.S. place names, sometimes translating native terms meaning "supernaturally dangerous." Ironic use as a word of approval is said to be at least since 1890s orally, originally in Black English, emerging in print 1928 in a jazz context. It might have emerged from the ambivalence of expressions like bad nigger, used as a term of reproach by whites, but among blacks sometimes representing one who stood up to injustice, but in the U.S. West bad man also had a certain ambivalence:
These are the men who do most of the killing in frontier communities, yet it is a noteworthy fact that the men who are killed generally deserve their fate. [Farmer & Henley]
*Farsi has bad in more or less the same sense as the English word, but this is regarded by linguists as a coincidence. The forms of the words diverge as they are traced back in time (Farsi bad comes from Middle Persian vat), and such accidental convergences exist across many languages, given the vast number of words in each and the limited range of sounds humans can make to signify them. Among other coincidental matches with English are Korean mani "many," Chinese pei "pay," Nahuatl (Aztecan) huel "well," Maya hol "hole."
bib (n.): linen worn over the breast while eating, 1570s, from verb bibben "to drink" (late 14c.), imitative of lip sounds, or else from Latin bibere (see imbibe), but difficult now to say whether this is because it was worn while drinking or because it "soaked up" spills.
bicker (n.): c. 1300, skirmish, battle; from the same source as bicker (v.). In modern use, often to describe the sound of a flight of an arrow or other repeated, loud, rapid sounds, in which sense it is perhaps at least partly echoic.
bishop (n.): Old English bisceop "bishop, high priest (Jewish or pagan)," from Late Latin episcopus, from Greek episkopos "watcher, overseer," a title for various government officials, later taken over in a Church sense, from epi- "over" (see epi-) + skopos "one that watches, one that looks after; a guardian, protector" (see scope (n.1)). Given a specific sense in the Church, but the word also was used in the New Testament as a descriptive title for elders, and continues as such in some non-hierarchical Christian sects.
A curious example of word-change, as effected by the genius of different tongues, is furnished by the English bishop and the French évêque. Both are from the same root, furnishing, perhaps the only example of two words from a common stem so modifying themselves in historical times as not to have a letter in common. (Of course many words from a far off Aryan stem are in the same condition.) The English strikes off the initial and terminal syllables, leaving only piscop, which the Saxon preference for the softer labial and hissing sounds modified into bishop. Évêque (formerly evesque) merely softens the p into v and drops the last syllable. [William S. Walsh, "Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities," Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1892]
Late Latin episcopus in Spanish became obispo. Cognate with Old Saxon biscop, Old High German biscof. The chess piece (formerly archer, before that alfin) was so called from 1560s.
blaring (adj.): mid-15c., from present participle of blare. Of things other than sounds, from 1866.
C: third letter of the alphabet. Alphabetic writing came to Rome via the southern Etruscan "Caeretan" script, in which gamma was written as a crescent. Early Romans made little use of Greek kappa and used gamma for both the "g" and "k" sounds, the latter more frequently, so that the "k" sound came to be seen as the proper one for gamma. To restore a dedicated symbol for the "g" sound, a modified gamma was introduced c. 250 B.C.E. as G. In classical Latin -c- has only the value "k," and thus it passed to Celtic and, via Irish monks, to Anglo-Saxon, where -k- was known but little used.

In Old French, many "k" sounds drifted to "ts" and by 13c., "s," but still were written with a -c-. Thus the 1066 invasion brought to the English language a more vigorous use of -k- and a flood of French and Latin words in which -c- represented "s" (as in cease, ceiling, circle). By 15c. native English words with -s- were being respelled with -c- for "s" (as in ice, mice, lice). In some words from Italian, meanwhile, the -c- has a "ch" sound (a sound evolution in Italian that parallels the Old French one).
clarity (n.): c. 1300, clarte "brightness," from Old French clarté "clarity, brightness," from Latin claritas "brightness, splendor," also, of sounds, "clearness;" figuratively "celebrity, renown, fame," from clarare "make clear," from clarus "clear" (see clear (adj.)). Modern form is early 15c., perhaps a reborrowing from Latin. Meaning "clearness" is from 1610s.
clear (adj.): late 13c., "bright," from Old French cler "clear" (of sight and hearing), "light, bright, shining; sparse" (12c., Modern French clair), from Latin clarus "clear, loud," of sounds; figuratively "manifest, plain, evident," in transferred use, of sights, "bright, distinct;" also "illustrious, famous, glorious" (source of Italian chiaro, Spanish claro), from PIE *kle-ro-, from root *kele- (2) "to shout" (see claim (v.)).

The sense evolution involves an identification of the spreading of sound and the spreading of light (compare English loud, used of colors; German hell "clear, bright, shining," of pitch, "distinct, ringing, high"). Of complexion, from c. 1300; of the weather, from late 14c.; of meanings or explanations, "manifest to the mind, comprehensible," c. 1300. (An Old English word for this was sweotol "distinct, clear, evident.") Sense of "free from encumbrance," apparently nautical, developed c. 1500. Phrase in the clear attested from 1715. Clear-sighted is from 1580s (clear-eyed is from 1529s); clear-headed is from 1709.
clunker (n.): "anything inferior," 1940s, agent noun from clunk (v.), probably in imitation of the sounds made by old machinery. Specific sense of "old car" was in use by 1951 (clunk in the sense "old worn-out machine" is from 1940s).
consonance (n.): early 15c., "agreement among persons," from Old French consonance (12c.) "consonance, rhyme," from Latin consonantia "harmony, agreement," from consonantem (nominative consonans) (see consonant). Meaning "correspondence of sounds" is from 1580s.
consonant (n.): early 14c., "sound other than a vowel," from Latin consonantem (nominative consonans), present participle of consonare "to sound together, sound aloud," from com- "with" (see com-) + sonare "to sound" (see sonata). Consonants were thought of as sounds that are only produced together with vowels.
diacritic (adj.): 1690s, of sounds, from Greek diakritikos "that separates or distinguishes," from diakrinein "to separate one from another," from dia- (see dia-) + krinein "to separate, decide, judge" (see crisis). As a noun, from 1866. Related: Diacritical.
die (v.): mid-12c., possibly from Old Danish døja or Old Norse deyja "to die, pass away," both from Proto-Germanic *dawjan (cognates: Old Frisian deja "to kill," Old Saxon doian, Old High German touwen, Gothic diwans "mortal"), from PIE root *dheu- (3) "to pass away, die, become senseless" (cognates: Old Irish dith "end, death," Old Church Slavonic daviti, Russian davit' "to choke, suffer").

It has been speculated that Old English had *diegan, from the same source, but it is not in any of the surviving texts and the preferred words were steorfan (see starve), sweltan (see swelter), wesan dead, also forðgan and other euphemisms.

Languages usually don't borrow words from abroad for central life experiences, but "die" words are an exception, because they are often hidden or changed euphemistically out of superstitious dread. A Dutch euphemism translates as "to give the pipe to Maarten." Regularly spelled dege through 15c., and still pronounced "dee" by some in Lancashire and Scotland. Used figuratively (of sounds, etc.) from 1580s. Related: Died; dies.
dieresis (n.): also diaeresis, 1610s, "sign marking the division of a diphthong into two simple sounds," from Late Latin diaeresis, from Greek diairesis "division," noun of action from diairein "to divide, separate," from dia- "apart" (see dia-) + hairein "to take" (see heresy). In classical prosody, "the slight break in the forward motion of a line that is felt when the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word" [Miller Williams, "Patterns of Poetry"].
diphthong (n.): late 15c., from Middle French diphthongue, from Late Latin diphthongus, from Greek diphthongos "having two sounds," from di- "double" (see di- (1)) + phthongos "sound, voice," related to phthengesthai "utter, speak loudly."