英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

accomplice [accomplice 词源字典]: accomplice: [15] This word was borrowed into English (from French) as complice (and complice stayed in common usage until late in the 19th century). It comes from Latin complex, which is related to English complicated, and originally meant simply ‘an associate’, without any pejorative associations. The form accomplice first appears on the scene in the late 15th century (the first record of it is in William Caxton’s Charles the Great), and it probably arose through a misanalysis of complice preceded by the indefinite article (a complice) as acomplice. It may also have been influenced by accomplish or accompany.
=> complicated[accomplice etymology, accomplice origin, 英语词源]
campaign: campaign: [17] Ultimately, campaign and champagne are the same word. Both go back to late Latin campānia, a derivative of Latin campus ‘open field’ (source of English camp). This passed into Old French as champagne and into Italian as campagna ‘open country’, and both words have subsequently come to be used as the designation of regions in France and Italy (whence English champagne [17], wine made in the Champagne area of eastern France).

The French word was also borrowed into English much earlier, as the now archaic champaign ‘open country’ [14]. Meanwhile, in Italian a particular military application of campagna had arisen: armies disliked fighting in winter because of the bad weather, so they stayed in camp, not emerging to do battle in the open countryside (the campagna) until summer. Hence campagna came to mean ‘military operations’; it was borrowed in to French as campagne, and thence into English.
=> camp, champagne
clean: clean: [OE] Etymologically, clean and German klein ‘small’ are the same word. Both go back to West Germanic *klainoz, which meant ‘clear, pure’, but whereas the English adjective has stayed fairly close to the original meaning, the German one has passed via ‘clean’, ‘neat’, ‘dainty’, and ‘delicate’ to ‘small’. It has been speculated that *klainiz was based on *klai-, which connoted ‘stickiness’ (it was the source of English clay and clammy).

The reasoning is that something sticky, perhaps from a coating of oil, would have been perceived as having a clear or shiny surface, and there may also have been a suggestion of the purity conferred by a ceremonial anointing with oil. The derivatives cleanse and cleanly (whence cleanliness) are both Old English formations.
=> clammy, clay, cleanse
equerry: equerry: [16] Nowadays in Britain simply royal attendants, equerries’ long and traditional association with the royal stables has led to association of the word equerry with Latin equus ‘horse’, but in fact the two are quite unrelated. Equerry originally meant ‘stable’, and was borrowed from the obsolete French escuirie (now écurie). It is not clear where this came from: some etymologists have linked it with Old High German scūr ‘barn, shed’, while others have derived it from Old French escuier ‘groom’ (source of English esquire and squire), according to which view it would mean ‘place where a groom stayed or worked’. (Escuier itself came ultimately from Latin scūtārius ‘shieldbearer’.) Forms such as escurie remained current in English up until the 18th century, but already by the 17th century equus-influenced spellings had begun to appear.

The person in charge of such a stable was formerly termed in French escuier d’escuirie ‘squire of the stable’, and in English groom of the equerry, and there are records from quite early in the 16th century indicating that equerry was being used on its own as the term for such a groom.
=> esquire, squire
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
guinea: guinea: [17] Guinea first emerged as the name of a section of the West Africa continent in the late 16th century (its origins are not known, but presumably it was based on an African word). In 1663 the Royal Mint began to produce a gold coin valued at 20 shillings ‘for the use of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England trading with Africa’. It had the figure of an elephant on it.

Straightaway it became known as a guinea, both because its use was connected with the Guinea coast and because it was made from gold obtained there. And what is more, the coins soon came to be much in demand for domestic use: on 29 October 1666 Samuel Pepys recorded ‘And so to my goldsmith to bid him look out for some gold for me; and he tells me that Ginnys, which I bought 2000 of not long ago, and cost me but 18½d. change, will now cost me 22d., and but very few to be had at any price.

However, some more I will have, for they are very convenient – and of easy disposal’. Its value fluctuated, and was not fixed at 21 shillings until 1717. The last one was minted in 1813, but guinea as a term for the amount 21 shillings stayed in use until the early 1970s, when the decimalization of British currency dealt it the deathblow. The guinea pig [17], incidentally, comes from South America, and its name probably arose from a confusion between Guinea and Guiana, on the northern coast of South America.
inn: inn: [OE] An inn was originally literally a place one lived or stayed ‘in’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *innam, which was a derivative of the ancestor of the modern English adverb in, and in Old English it meant simply ‘house where one lives, abode, home’. This sense survived into the 17th century (‘Queen Mary gave this House to Nicholas Heth, Archbishop of York, and his successors for ever, to be their Inne or Lodging for their Repair to London’, James Howell, Londinopolis 1657), and a memory of it remains in London’s Inns of Court, which originated as lodgings for lawyers.

The later sense ‘public house, tavern’ developed towards the end of the 14th century.
=> in
spring: spring: [OE] The noun spring and the verb spring come from the same source: the Indo-European base *sprengh-, which denoted ‘rapid movement’. Of its Germanic verbal descendants, German and Dutch springen, like English spring, have moved on semantically to ‘jump’, but Swedish springa ‘run’ has stayed closer to its roots. The noun spring in Old English times denoted the place where a stream ‘rises’ from the ground, which soon evolved metaphorically into ‘source, origin’ in general.

The notion of ‘rising’ was also applied figuratively to the ‘beginning of the day’ and to the ‘emergence of new growth’, and the latter led in the 16th century, via the expression spring of the year, to the use of spring for the ‘season following winter’ (replacing the previous term Lent).
stroke: stroke: The verb stroke [OE] and the noun stroke [13] are different words, but they come ultimately from the same source – the prehistoric Germanic base *strīk-, *straik- ‘touch lightly’ (from which English also gets streak and strike). The verb has stayed very close semantically to its source, whereas the noun has followed the same path as its corresponding verb strike.
=> streak, strike
whole: whole: [OE] Whole is at the centre of a tightlyknit family of English words descended from prehistoric Germanic *khailaz ‘undamaged’ (the other members – hail ‘salute’, hale, hallow, heal, health, and holy – have have branched off in different semantic directions, but whole has stayed fairly close to its source). The Germanic form, which also produced German heil, Dutch heel, and Swedish and Danish hel, went back to an Indo-European *qoilos, source also of Russian celyj ‘whole’ and Welsh coel ‘good omen’. Hale [13] originated as a northern variant of whole (whose wh- spelling emerged in the 16th century).

The compound wholesome was probably formed in Old English, but it is not recorded until the 12th century.
=> hail, hale, hallow, heal, health, holy
Argonaut (n.): "sailor of the Argo," 1580s (implied in argonautic), from Argo + Greek nautes "sailor" (see naval). Adventurers in the California Gold Rush of 1848 were called argonauts (because they sought the golden fleece) by those who stayed home.
bivouac (n.): 1702, from French bivouac (17c.), ultimately from Swiss/Alsatian biwacht "night guard," from bei- "double, additional" + wacht "guard" (see wait (v.)). Original meaning was an army that stayed up on night watch; sense of "outdoor camp" is 1853. Not a common word in English before the Napoleonic Wars. Italian bivacco is from French. As a verb, 1809, "to post troops in the night;" meaning "camp out of doors" is from 1814.
feisty (adj.): 1896, "aggressive, exuberant, touchy," American English, with -y (2) + feist "small dog," earlier fice, fist (American English, 1805); short for fysting curre "stinking cur," attested from 1520s, with present participle of now-obsolete Middle English fysten, fisten "break wind" (mid-15c.), from Proto-Germanic *fistiz "a fart," said to be from PIE *pezd- (see fart), but there are difficulties.

The 1811 slang dictionary defines fice as "a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs." Compare also Danish fise "to blow, to fart," and obsolete English aske-fise, "fire-tender," literally "ash-blower" (early 15c.), from an unrecorded Norse source, used in Middle English for a kind of bellows, but originally "a term of reproach among northern nations for an unwarlike fellow who stayed at home in the chimney corner" [OED].
mossback (n.): "conservative," 1874, especially of poor whites from Carolina, originally (1872) in reference to those who hid out to avoid service in the Confederate army (and would have stayed out till the moss grew on their backs); from moss + back (n.).
Saxon (n.): c. 1200, from Late Latin Saxonem (nominative Saxo; also source of French Saxon, Spanish Sajon, Italian Sassone), usually found in plural Saxones, from a Germanic source (Old English Seaxe, Old High German Sahsun, German Sachse "Saxon"), with a possible literal sense of "swordsmen" (compare Old English seax, Old Frisian, Old Norse sax "knife, short sword, dagger," Old High German Saxnot, name of a war-god), from Proto-Germanic *sahsam "knife," from PIE *sek- "to cut" (see section (n.)).

The word figures in the well-known story, related by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who got it from Nennius, of the treacherous slaughter by the Anglo-Saxons of their British hosts:
Accordingly they all met at the time and place appointed, and began to treat of peace; and when a fit opportunity offered for executing his villany, Hengist cried out, "Nemet oure Saxas," and the same instant seized Vortigern, and held him by his cloak. The Saxons, upon the signal given, drew their daggers, and falling upon the princes, who little suspected any such design, assassinated them to the number of four hundred and sixty barons and consuls ....
The OED editors helpfully point out that the correct Old English (with an uninflected plural) would be nimað eowre seax. For other Germanic national names that may have derived from characteristic tribal weapons, see Frank, Lombard. As an adjective from 1560s. Still in 20c. used by Celtic speakers to mean "an Englishman" (Welsh Sais, plural Seison "an Englishman;" Seisoneg "English").

In reference to the modern German state of Saxony (German Sachsen, French Saxe) it is attested from 1630s. Saxon is the source of the -sex in Essex, Sussex, etc. (compare Middlesex, from Old English Middel-Seaxe "Middle Saxons"). Bede distinguished the Anglo-Saxons, who conquered much of southern Britain, from the Ealdesaxe "Old Saxons," who stayed in Germany.
staid (adj.): 1540s, "fixed, permanent," adjectival use of stayed, past participle of stay (v.). Meaning "sober, sedate" first recorded 1550s. Related: Staidly.
stay (v.1): mid-15c., "cease going forward, come to a halt," also (transitive) "detain, hold back," from Old French estai-, stem of estare "to stay or stand," from Latin stare "to stand, stand still, remain standing; be upright, be erect; stand firm, stand in battle; abide; be unmovable; be motionless; remain, tarry, linger; take a side," (source also of Italian stare, Spanish estar "to stand, to be"), from PIE root *sta- "to stand" (see stet). Sense of "remain" is first recorded 1570s; that of "reside as a guest for a short period" is from 1550s. Related: Stayed; staying.

Of things, "remain in place," 1590s. Stay put is first recorded 1843, American English. "To stay put is to keep still, remain in order. A vulgar expression" [Bartlett]. Phrase stay the course is originally (1885) in reference to horses holding out till the end of a race. Stay-stomach was (1800) "a snack."
stay (v.2): "support, sustain," early 15c., from Middle French estayer (Modern French étayer), originally in nautical use, "secure by stays," from estaie (see stay (n.1)). The nautical sense in English is from 1620s. Related: Stayed; staying.