英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

advance [advance 词源字典]: advance: [13] Advance originated in the Latin adverb abante ‘before’ (source of, among others, French avant and Italian avanti), which in turn was based on ab ‘from’ and ante ‘before’. In post-classical times a verb, *abantiāre, seems to have been formed from the adverb. It developed into Old French avancer, and passed into English as avaunce, initially with the meaning ‘promote’.

A new form, advancer, started life in Old French, on the mistaken association of avancer with other av- words, such as aventure, which really did derive from Latin words with the ad- prefix; over the 15th and 16th centuries this gradually established itself in English. The noun advance did not appear until the 17th century.
[advance etymology, advance origin, 英语词源]
arrive: arrive: [13] When speakers of early Middle English ‘arrived’, what they were literally doing was coming to shore after a voyage. For arrive was originally a Vulgar Latin compound verb based on the Latin noun rīpa ‘shore, river bank’ (as in the English technical term riparian ‘of a river bank’; and river comes from the same source). From the phrase ad rīpam ‘to the shore’ came the verb *arripāre ‘come to land’, which passed into English via Old French ariver. It does not seem to have been until the early 14th century that the more general sense of ‘reaching a destination’ started to establish itself in English.
=> riparian, river
beam: beam: [OE] In Old English times the word bēam (like modern German baum) meant ‘tree’ – a signification preserved in tree-names such as hornbeam and whitebeam. But already before the year 1000 the extended meanings we are familiar with today – ‘piece of timber’ and ‘ray of light’ – had started to develop. Related forms in other Germanic languages (which include, as well as German baum, Dutch boom, from which English gets boom ‘spar’ [16]) suggest a West Germanic ancestor *bauma, but beyond that all is obscure.
=> boom
boil: boil: Boil ‘large spot’ [OE] and boil ‘vaporize with heat’ [13] are distinct words. The former comes from Old English byl or byle, which became bile in Middle English; the change to boil started in the 15th century, perhaps from association with the verb. The Old English word goes back ultimately to a West Germanic *būlja, whose central meaning element was ‘swelling’; from it also comes German beule ‘lump, boil’.

The verb’s source, via Anglo-Norman boiller, is Latin bullīre, a derivative of bulla ‘bubble’, a word which also gave us bull (as in ‘Papal bull’), bullion, bowl (as in the game of ‘bowls’), budge, bullet, bulletin and bully (as in ‘bully beef’), as well, perhaps, as bill.
=> bill, bowl, budge, bull, bullet, bulletin, bullion, bully, ebullient
bond: bond: English has two distinct words bond, which started life very differently but have gradually grown together. Bond ‘something that binds’ [13] was originally the same word as band (from Old Norse band), and only gradually diverged from it in pronunciation, spelling, and meaning. The key modern legal and financial senses began to develop in the 16th century, the underlying notion being of something one is ‘bound’ or ‘tied’ to by a promise. Bond ‘bound in slavery’ [14], as in bondservant, is an adjectival use of the late Old English noun bonda ‘householder’, which came from Old Norse bóndi (the second element of húsbóndi, from which English gets husband).

This represented an earlier bóandi, which was originally the present participle of east Norse bóa ‘dwell’, a derivative of the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’, (from which English also gets be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, byelaw, and byre). The semantic association of ‘tying up’ and ‘servitude’ has led to the merging of the two words, as shown in the derivative bondage.
=> band; be, boor, booth, build, byelaw, neighbour
brook: brook: [OE] There are two distinct words brook in English. The one meaning ‘stream’ is comparatively isolated; it apparently has relatives in other Germanic languages (such as German bruch), but they mean ‘swamp’, and there the story ends. The now rather archaic verb brook, however, meaning ‘stand for, tolerate’, can be traced right back to an Indo-European base *bhrug-, from which English also gets fruit and frugal.

Its Germanic descendant was *brūk- ‘use’, which has given rise to a range of current verbs in the Germanic languages, including German brauchen ‘use, need’. The Old English version was brūcan, which also meant ‘use’. A particular application to food (‘use’ in the sense ‘eat’, and later ‘be able to digest’) started to develop in the late Old English period, and by the 16th century this had come to be used more generally (rather like stomach) for ‘tolerate’.
=> frugal, fruit
climax: climax: [16] Etymologically, a climax is a series of steps by which a goal is achieved, but in the late 18th century English, anticipating the culmination, started using it for the goal itself. It comes, via late Latin, from Greek klimax ‘ladder’, which was ultimately from the same source (the Indo-European base *kli-) as produced English lean. This came to be used metaphorically as a rhetorical term for a figure of speech in which a series of statements is arranged in order of increasing forcefulness, and hence for any escalating progression: ‘the top of the climax of their wickedness’, Edmund Burke 1793.

Whence modern English ‘high point’.
=> ladder, lean
cockatrice: cockatrice: [14] The name of the cockatrice, a mythical serpent whose glance could kill, has a bizarre history. It started life as medieval Latin calcātrix, which meant literally ‘tracker, hunter’ (it was formed from the verb calcāre ‘tread, track’, a derivative of calx ‘heel’). This was a direct translation of Greek ikhneúmōn (a derivative of ikhneúein ‘track’), a name given to a mysterious Egyptian creature in ancient times which was said to prey on crocodiles.

At one point Latin calcātrix, later caucātrix, came to be used for the crocodile itself, but this application never gained much currency in English (which adopted the word via Old French cocatris). Instead, it was adopted as another name for the basilisk, a mythical serpent. The accidental similarity of the first syllable to cock led both to the embroidering of the basilisk/cockatrice legend, so that it was said to have been born from a cock’s egg, and to the word’s 16th-century rerouting as a heraldic term for a beast with the head, wings, and body of a cock and the tail of a serpent.
cockney: cockney: [14] Etymologically, a cockney is a ‘cock’s egg’ (it comes from cokene, the old genitive plural of cock, and ey, the Middle English word for ‘egg’). This was a medieval term for a small or misshapen egg, the ‘runt’ of the clutch, supposedly laid by a cock, and it came to be applied (probably egged on by Middle English cocker ‘pamper’) to a ‘pampered child’ or ‘mother’s boy’.

In the 16th century we find that it has passed on to ‘town dweller’ (the notion being that people who lived in towns were soft and effete compared with countrymen), and by around 1600 it had started to mean more specifically ‘someone born in the city of London’. The popular definition ‘someone born within the sound of Bow bells’ is first reported by the lexicographer John Minsheu in 1617.
=> cock, egg
cravat: cravat: [17] The fashion for wearing scarves round the neck started in France in the 1650s. It was inspired by Croatian mercenaries employed there at that time, who regularly sported linen neckbands of that type. The Croats were called in French Cravates (the name comes via German Krabate from the original Serbo-Croat term Hrvat), and so their neckerchiefs came to be known as cravates too. English was quick to adopt the term.
daft: daft: [13] Daft was not always a term of reproach. It originally meant ‘mild, gentle’, and only in late Middle English slid to ‘stupid’ (in a semantic decline perhaps paralleling that of silly, which started off as ‘happy, blessed’). Middle English dafte corresponds directly to an Old English gedæfte, whose underlying sense seems to have been ‘fit, suitable’ (the sense connection was apparently that mild unassuming people were considered as behaving suitably).

There is no direct evidence of its use with this meaning, but Old English had a verb gedæftan ‘make fit or ready, prepare’ which, together with the Gothic verb gedaban ‘be suitable’, points to its origin in a Germanic base *dab- ‘fit, suitable’. This ties in with the semantic development of deft, a variant of daft, which has moved from a prehistoric ‘fit, suitable’ to ‘skilful’.
=> deft
dandy: dandy: [18] The first record of the word dandy comes in Scottish border ballads of the late 18th century, but by the early 19th century it had become a buzz term in fashionable London society. It is generally explained as being an abbreviation of jack-a-dandy ‘affected man’, a word first recorded in the 17th century which apparently incorporates Dandy, a colloquial Scottish abbreviation of the name Andrew. The word’s adjectival use started in the 19th century in close semantic relationship to the noun – ‘affectedly trim or neat’ – but American English has rehabilitated it to ‘excellent’ in the 20th century.
=> andrew
defile: defile: Defile ‘make dirty’ [14] and defile ‘narrow pass’ [17] are distinct words in English. The former has a rather complex history. It was originally acquired in the 13th century as defoul, borrowed from Old French defouler ‘trample down, injure’; this was a compound verb formed from the prefix de- ‘down’ and fouler ‘tread’, which in turn goes back via Vulgar Latin *fullāre to Latin fullō ‘person who cleans and thickens cloth by stamping on it’, source of English fuller [OE].

In the 14th century defoul started to turn into defile under the influence of the synonymous (and now obsolete) befile [OE], a compound verb derived ultimately from the adjective foul. Defile ‘narrow pass’ was borrowed from French défilé, originally the past participle of défiler, a compound verb based on filer ‘march in a column’ (which is a close relative of English file).
=> fuller; file
diaper: diaper: [14] The notion underlying diaper is of extreme whiteness. It comes ultimately from Byzantine Greek díaspros, which was a compound formed from the intensive prefix diaand áspros ‘white’. (Aspros itself has an involved history: it started life as Latin asper ‘rough’ – source of English asperity – which was applied particularly to bas-relief on carvings and coins; it was borrowed into Byzantine Greek and used as a noun to designate silver coins, and their brightness and shininess led to its reconversion into an adjective, meaning ‘white’.) Díaspros appears originally to have been applied to ecclesiastical vestments, and subsequently to any shiny fabric.

When the word first entered English, via medieval Latin diasprum and Old French diapre, it referred to a rather rich silk fabric embellished with gold thread, but by the 16th century it was being used for less glamorous textiles, of white linen, with a small diamond-shaped pattern. The specific application to a piece of such cloth used as a baby’s nappy (still current in American English) seems to have developed in the 16th century.
=> asperity
district: district: [17] District started life as the past participle of the verb which gave English distrain [13] and strain. It came via French district from medieval Latin districtus; this meant literally ‘seized, compelled’, and hence was used as a noun in the sense ‘seizure of offenders’, and hence ‘exercise of justice’, and finally ‘area in which justice is so exercised (in the feudal system)’.

This was the word’s meaning when it was first borrowed into English, and it was not really until the early 18th century that its much more general modern application developed. Districtus was the past participle of Latin distringere, a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and stringere ‘pull tight’ (source of English strain, strict, stringent, stress, etc).

In classical times it meant ‘draw apart, detain, hinder’, but by the Middle Ages this had moved on to ‘seize, compel’, which were the main senses in which it entered English as distrain (via Old French destreindre). Latin districtus was also the source of a Vulgar Latin noun *districtia ‘narrowness’, which passed via Old French destresse into English as distress [13].
=> distrain, distress, strain, stress, strict, stringent
divan: divan: [16] The word divan has a long and spectacularly variegated semantic history. It started out as Persian dēvān, which originally meant ‘small book’. This came to be used specifically for ‘account book’, and eventually for ‘accountant’s office’. From this its application broadened out to cover various official chambers and the bodies which occupied them, such as tax offices, customs collectors, courts, and councils of state.

And finally it developed to ‘long seat’, of the sort which lined the walls of such Oriental chambers. The word carried these meanings with it via Arabic dīwān and Turkish divān into the European languages, and English acquired most of them as a package deal from French divan or Italian devano (it did not, however, include the ‘customs’ sense which, via the Turkish variant duwan, survives in French douane, Italian dogana, Spanish aduana, etc).

The 19th-century sense ‘smoking lounge’ seems to be an exclusively European development.
down: down: Effectively, English now has three distinct words down, but two of them are intimately related: for down ‘to or at a lower place’ [11] originally meant ‘from the hill’ – and the Old English word for hill in this instance was dūn. This may have been borrowed from an unrecorded Celtic word which some have viewed as the ultimate source also of dune [18] (borrowed by English from Middle Dutch dūne) and even of town.

Its usage is now largely restricted to the plural form, used as a geographical term for various ranges of hills (the application to the North and South Downs in southern England dates from at least the 15th century). The Old English phrase of dūne ‘from the hill’ had by the 10th century become merged into a single word, adūne, and broadened out semantically to ‘to a lower place, down’, and in the 11th century it started to lose its first syllable – hence down.

Its use as a preposition dates from the 16th century. (The history of down is closely paralleled in that of French à val, literally ‘to the valley’, which also came to be used for ‘down’; it is the source of French avaler ‘descend, swallow’, which played a part in the development of avalanche.) Down ‘feathers’ [14] was borrowed from Old Norse dúnn.
=> dune
dread: dread: [12] Old English had the verb ondrǣdan ‘fear’. Its first syllable is generally taken to be the prefix *and- ‘against’, which is related to German ent- ‘away, un-’ and Greek anti- (source of English anti-) and appears also in English answer. The second part, however, remains a mystery. There are one or two related forms in other West Germanic languages, such as Old High German intrātan, but where they come from has never been established satisfactorily. By the end of the Old English period this obsolete prefix had shrunk to a- (adread survived until around 1400), and in the 12th century it started to disappear altogether.
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’).
elate: elate: [16] Elate means literally ‘lift up’, and that is how it was originally used in English: ‘Placus doth elate his shady forehead’, George Chapman, Iliad 1611. The word comes from ēlātus, the past participle of Latin efferre. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and ferre ‘carry’ (a relative of English bear). Its metaphorical extension to a ‘lifting of the spirits, exultation’ had already started in the Latin word, and had completely ousted the literal meaning in English before the end of the 18th century.
=> relate
female: female: [14] The symmetry between female and male is a comparatively recent development. Female started as Latin fēmella, a diminutive form of fēmina ‘woman’ (whence English feminine [14]). This in turn was a derivative of Latin fēlāre ‘suck’, and so etymologically signified ‘person from whom milk is sucked’ (it came ultimately from the Indo-European base *dhēi-, which also produced Latin filia ‘daughter’ and filia ‘son’, source of English filial [15]). Fēmella passed into English via Old French femelle as femele, but as early as the end of the 14th century began to change, by association with male, to female.
=> feminine, filial
fizzle: fizzle: [16] Originally, fizzle meant ‘fart silently or unobtrusively’: ‘And then in court they poisoned one another with their fizzles’, Benjamin Walsh’s translation of Aristophanes’ Knights 1837. Then in the mid-19th century it started to be used for a ‘weak spluttering hissing sound’, and hence figuratively ‘end feebly’. In the earlier sense, fizzle was probably a derivative of the now obsolete English verb fist ‘fart’ (source of feisty), which came ultimately from Indo-European *pezd- (no doubt imitative of the sound of breaking wind).

The later sense is close enough semantically to suggest that it is probably a metaphorical extension of the earlier, but it could also be a new formation, based on fizz [17] (which was also of onomatopoeic origin).
=> feisty
frame: frame: [OE] Frame comes from the preposition from, whose underlying notion is of ‘forward progress’. This was incorporated into a verb framian in Old English times, which meant ‘make progress’. Its modern meaning started to develop in the early Middle English period, from ‘prepare, make ready’, via the more specific ‘prepare timber for building’, to ‘construct, shape’ (the Middle English transitive uses may have been introduced by the related Old Norse fremija).

The noun frame was derived from the verb in the 14th century. Incidentally, if the connection between from and frame should seem at first sight far-fetched, it is paralleled very closely by furnish, which came from the same prehistoric Germanic source as from.
=> from
fraught: fraught: [14] Fraught and freight [15] are related, and share the underlying meaning ‘load’. But whereas freight has stayed close to its semantic roots, fraught, which started out as ‘laden’, has moved on via ‘supplied or filled with something’ to specifically ‘filled with anxiety or tension’. It was originally the past participle of a now obsolete verb fraught ‘load a ship’, which was borrowed from Middle Dutch vrachten.

This in turn was a derivative of the noun vracht ‘load, cargo’, a variant of vrecht (from which English gets freight). Both vracht and vrecht probably go back to a prehistoric Germanic noun *fraaikhtiz, whose second element *-aikhtiz is related to English owe and own.
=> freight
frog: frog: [OE] Frog comes from Old English frogga, which probably started life as a playful alternative to the more serious frosc or forsc. This derived from the pre-historic Germanic *fruskaz, which also produced German frosch and Dutch vorsch. Its use as a derogatory synonym for ‘French person’ goes back to the late 18th century, and was presumably inspired by the proverbial French appetite for the animals’ legs (although in fact frog as a general term of abuse can be traced back to the 14th century, and in the 17th century it was used for ‘Dutch person’).

It is not clear whether frog ‘horny wedge-shaped pad in a horse’s hoof’ [17] and frog ‘ornamental braiding’ [18] are the same word; the former may have been influenced by French fourchette and Italian forchetta, both literally ‘little fork’.
gag: gag: [15] Middle English gaggen meant ‘strangle, suffocate’, so the word started out with strong connotations that seem to have become submerged in local dialects as it came to be used more commonly in the milder sense ‘obstruct someone’s mouth’. In the 20th century, however, they have re-emerged in the intransitive sense ‘choke’. It is not clear how the 19th-century noun sense ‘joke’ is connected, if at all. As for the word’s source, it is generally said to have originated as an imitation of someone retching or choking.
grin: grin: [OE] Modern English grin and groan are scarcely semantic neighbours, but a possible common ancestor may provide the link: prehistoric Indo-European *ghrei-, which seems to have meant something like ‘be open’. It has been suggested as the source of a range of verbs which started off denoting simply ‘open the mouth’, but have since differentiated along the lines ‘make noise’ and ‘grimace’. Grin has taken the latter course, but close relatives, such as Old High German grennan ‘mutter’ and Old Norse grenja ‘howl’, show that the parting of the semantic ways was not so distant in time.

Old English grennian actually meant ‘draw back the lips and bare the teeth in pain or anger’. Traces of this survive in such distinctly unfunny expressions as ‘grinning skull’, but the modern sense ‘draw back the lips in amusement’ did not begin to emerge until the 15th century. Groan [OE], on the other hand, is firmly in the ‘make noise’ camp.
=> groan
gruesome: gruesome: [16] The novels of Sir Walter Scott had an enormous influence in introducing Scotticisms into the general English language, and gruesome is a case in point. It was apparently coined in the 16th century from an earlier verb grue ‘be terrified’, which was probably of Scandinavian origin. For over 200 years it remained restricted in distribution to Scotland and northern England, but Scott started using it (‘He’s as grave and grewsome an auld Dutchman as e’er I saw’, Old Mortality 1816), immediately ensuring it an entrée into homes all over Britain thanks to Scott’s huge readership. It has never looked back.
him: him: [OE] Him was originally the dative case of Old English hē ‘he’, which in the late Old English period gradually started to take over from the original accusative hine as the general object form (the ’un or ’n still occasionally found in southern English dialects for ‘him’ may represent the last vestiges of this). The dative ending -m is also found in, for example, German ihm (dative of er ‘he’) and Dutch hem.
=> he
hope: hope: [OE] The origins of the word hope are obscure. It appears to have started life among the Low German dialects of northern Germany (whence English hope and Dutch hoop), and later spread to Scandinavia (giving Swedish hopp and Danish haab) and High German (modern German has the verb hoffen and the derived noun hoffnung ‘hope’). Where did the original Low German forms come from, though? A suggestion that has found some favour is that the word is related to hop, and that it started from the notion of ‘jumping to safety’. The theory goes that the ‘place of refuge’ thus reached gives one ‘hope’, but it has an air of desperation.
if: if: [OE] The Old English version of if was gif, but its initial g was closer to modern English y in pronunciation than to g, and the conjunction gradually evolved through Middle English yif to if. It is not known where it ultimately came from; it is evidently connected with Old High German iba ‘condition’ and Old Norse ef ‘doubt’, but whether it started life as a noun like these or was from the beginning a conjunction is not clear. Its surviving Germanic relatives are German ob ‘whether’ and Dutch of ‘if’.
influence: influence: [14] Influence began life as an astrological term. It was coined in medieval Latin as influentia from the present participle of Latin influere ‘flow in’, a compound verb based on fluere ‘flow’, and to begin with denoted a sort of fluid that was supposed to be given off by the stars and to influence human life. English originally acquired the word with this meaning, and it was not until the end of the 16th century that the main current sense ‘power to produce effects’ started to establish itself.

The more concrete notion of an ‘emanation’ that affected people also lay behind the use of Italian influenza for ‘epidemic’, from which English got influenza (see FLU). Another English acquisition from Latin influere is influx [17], which comes from its past participle.
=> flu, fluent, influx
ingenuous: ingenuous: [16] Etymologically, ingenuous means ‘inborn’. English acquired it from Latin ingenuus, which was composed of the prefix inand the element *gen-, denoting ‘production, birth’. This was originally used for ‘born in a particular place, native, not foreign’, but it soon began to take on connotations of ‘freeborn, not a slave’, and hence ‘of noble birth’.

Metaphorical transference to qualities thought characteristic of the nobility – uprightness, candour, straightforwardness, etc – soon followed, and that was the word’s semantic slant when English acquired it. By the 17th century, however, it had started to slide towards ‘artlessness, innocence’ (a sense reflected in ingénue, borrowed from French in the 19th century).
=> gene, general, generate, genital, ingénue
ingot: ingot: [14] The etymological meaning of ingot is ‘poured in’. It was formed in Middle English from in and an apparent survival of goten, the past participle of Old English geotan ‘pour’. It originally meant ‘mould for casting metal’ (the idea being that the molten metal was ‘poured into’ the mould), but towards the end of the 16th century it started being used for the lump of metal formed in this way. (When French borrowed the word in the 15th century it grafted its definite article on to it, giving modern French lingot ‘ingot’.)
insure: insure: [15] Insure and ensure [14] are ultimately the same word. And their common ancestor started out, in fact, as a variant of assure [14]. This came via Old French asseurer from Vulgar Latin *assēcūrāre, a compound verb formed from the Latin prefix ad- ‘to’ and the adjective sēcūrus ‘safe’ (source of English secure and sure).

Anglo-Norman had a variant form, enseurer, which produced English ensure. From fairly early on this had been alternatively spelled insure (using the Latinate prefix in-), but it was not until the 17th century that this version became established in the sense ‘provide cover against loss, damage, etc’ (for which previously the more usual term had actually been assure).
=> assure, ensure, secure, sure
jade: jade: English has two words jade, of which by far the commoner nowadays is the name of the green stone [18]. Despite the mineral’s close association with China and Japan, the term has no Oriental connections. It is of Latin origin, and started life in fact as a description of the stone’s medical applications. Latin īlia denoted the ‘sides of the lower torso’, the ‘flanks’, the part of the body where the kidneys are situated (English gets iliac [16] from it).

In Vulgar Latin this became *iliata, which passed into Spanish as ijada. Now it was thought in former times that jade could cure pain in the renal area, so the Spanish called it piedra de ijada, literally ‘stone of the flanks’. In due course this was reduced to simply ijada, which passed into English via French. (Jade’s alternative name, nephrite [18], is based on the same idea; it comes from Greek nephrós ‘kidney’.) English’s other word jade [14] now survives really only in its derivative adjective jaded ‘tired, sated’ [16].

It originally meant ‘worn-out horse’, and was later transferred metaphorically to ‘disreputable woman’. Its origins are not known.
=> iliac; jaded
jazz: jazz: [20] Words of unknown origin always attract speculation, and it is hardly surprising that such an unusual and high-profile one as jazz (first recorded in 1913) should have had more than its fair share (one of the more ingenious and colourful theories is that it comes from the nickname of one Jasbo Brown, an itinerant black musician along the Mississippi – Jasbo perhaps being an alteration of Jasper).

Given that the word emerged in Black English (probably originally in the sense ‘copulation’), it is not surprising that attempts have been made to link it with some West African language, and picture it crossing the Atlantic with the slave ships, but there is no convincing evidence for that (the scenario seems to have got started with a 1917 article in the New York Sun, which was purely the invention of a press agent).
moult: moult: [14] The etymological meaning of moult is simply ‘change’. It comes (via an assumed but never recorded Old English *mūtian) from a prehistoric Germanic verb borrowed from Latin mūtāre ‘change’ (source of English mutate). The extreme semantic narrowing down from ‘change’ to ‘change a coat of feathers’ is shown too in the related mews, which originally denoted ‘cages for moulting hawks’. The spelling with l, which started to appear in the 16th century, is due to association with words such as fault, whose l at that time was generally not pronounced. When it began to be, moult followed suit.
=> mews, mutate
nerve: nerve: [16] Latin nervus meant ‘sinew, bowstring’. It and its Greek relative neuron (source of English neural) may belong to a wider family of words that includes Latin nēre ‘spin’ (a relative of English needle) and possibly also English narrow, perhaps with a common meaning element. The application to ‘bundle of fibres carrying sensory or other impulses’ seems to have begun in Greek, but was soon adopted into the Latin word, and was brought with it into English.

Metaphorically, the Romans used nervus for ‘strength, force’, an application perhaps lying behind the English sense ‘courage’, first recorded in the early 19th century. The use of the plural nerves for ‘agitation, apprehension’ (and of the adjective nervous [14] for ‘apprehensive’) is an English development, which probably started in the mid- 18th century.
=> needle, neural
oak: oak: [OE] Oak is an ancient Germanic tree-name, shared by German (eiche), Dutch (eik), Swedish (ek), and Danish (eg). These point back to a common Germanic ancestor *aiks. There is no conclusive evidence of any related forms outside Germanic, however, although similarities have been noted with Greek aigílops, a term for a sort of oak tree, and Latin aesculus ‘oak sacred to Jupiter’.

Despite its passing similarity, acorn is not etymologically related. The oak was one of the commonest trees in the ancient European forests, and many terms that started out as names for it became generalized to simply ‘tree’: English tree, for instance, comes from an Indo-European ancestor that probably originally meant ‘oak’.
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
parson: parson: [13] Parson and person started off as the same word (both come from Latin persōna) but split into two. It is not altogether clear why parson came to be used for a ‘priest’. It may simply have been a specialized application of an extended post-classical sense of Latin persōna, ‘person of rank, important person, personage’ – hence ‘person of high position within the church’. But it has also been speculated that it originated in the notion of the priest as the ‘person’ who legally embodied the parish (who could for example sue or be sued on behalf of the parish).
=> person
pea: pea: [17] Pea is the mirror-image of dice. Dice started off as the plural of die, but has become a singular form; the singular form of pea was originally pease, but it came to be regarded as plural, and so a new singular pea was created. The word was originally acquired in the Old English period from Latin pisa, which in turn got it from Greek píson. The old singular form survives in pease pudding. Relatives of the word include French pois, Italian pisello, and Welsh pysen.
perform: perform: [14] If the word perform had carried on as it started out, it would now be perfurnish (as indeed it was in northern and Scottish English from the 14th to the 16th centuries). For it comes ultimately from Old French parfournir, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix par- and fournir ‘accomplish’ (source of English furnish). By association with forme ‘form’, this was altered in Anglo-Norman to parformer – whence English perform.
=> furnish
piss: piss: [13] Piss probably originated in imitation of the sound of urinating. It has been traced back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *pisāre, which passed into English via Old French pisser. It has become widely distributed throughout the other European languages (Italian pisciare, for instance, German and Dutch pissen, and Welsh piso). Pee [18] started life as a euphemism for piss.
=> pee
placebo: placebo: [13] Placebo started life as the first person future singular of the Latin verb placēre ‘please’ (source of English please), and hence meant originally ‘I will please’. It was the first word of the antiphon to the first psalm in the Roman Catholic service for the dead, Placēbo Dominō in rēgiōne vivōrum ‘I will please the Lord in the land of the living’. The word’s medical use emerged at the end of the 18th, and arose from the notion of a medicine ‘pleasing’ the patient rather than having any direct physiological effect.
=> please
please: please: [14] Please is at the centre of a small family of English words that go back to Latin placēre ‘please’ (a derivative of the same base as produced plācāre ‘calm, appease’, source of English implacable [16] and placate [17]). Related English words that started life in Latin include complacent, placebo, and placid [17]. It reached English via Old French plaisir, and other derivatives picked up via Old French or Anglo-Norman are plea, plead, pleasant [14], and pleasure [14] (originally a noun use of the verb plaisir).
=> complacent, implacable, placate, placebo, placid, plea, plead, pleasant, pleasure
poem: poem: [16] A poem is etymologically ‘something created’. The word comes via Old French poeme and Latin poēma from Greek póēma, a derivative of poeín ‘make, create’. The original sense ‘something created’ developed metaphorically via ‘literary work’ to ‘poem’. From the same Greek verb was derived poētés ‘maker’, hence ‘poet’, which produced Latin poēta and in due course English poet [13] (the Old English word for ‘poet’ had been scop, a relative of modern English scoff). Poetry [14] originated as a medieval Latin derivative of poēta. Poesy ‘poetry, poems’ [14], like poem originally a derivative Greek poeín, now has an archaic air, but it has a living descendant in posy [16], which started life as a contraction of poesy.
=> poesy, poet, poetry, posy
pose: pose: [16] Pose and pause come ultimately from the same source. This was late Latin pausāre ‘stop, pause’. In Vulgar Latin it came to be associated with pōnere ‘put’, and particularly, owing to the similarity of form, with its past participle positum (source of English position), and gradually started to take over its meaning. Hence Old French poser, source of the English word, meant ‘put, place’. The noun pose is a modern acquisition from French, dating from the early 19th century.
=> pause
psyche: psyche: [17] Like Latin animus (source of English animal), Greek psūkhé started out meaning ‘breath’ and developed semantically to ‘soul, spirit’. English adopted it via Latin psychē in the mid-17th century, but it did not really begin to come into its own until the middle of the 19th century, when the development of the sciences of the mind saw it pressed into service in such compound forms as psychology (first recorded in 1693, but not widely used until the 1830s) and psychiatry (first recorded in 1846), which etymologically means ‘healing of the mind’.
=> psychiatry, psychology