英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

balance [balance 词源字典]: balance: [13] The underlying etymological meaning of balance is of a weighing apparatus with ‘two pans’ for holding things. In Latin this was a lībra bilanx, literally ‘scales with two pans’ – bilanx being compounded from bi- ‘two’ and lanx ‘plate, pan’. Bilanx passed, in its stem from bilanc-, via Vulgar Latin *bilancia into Old French balance, the source of the English word.
[balance etymology, balance origin, 英语词源]
dance: dance: [13] The history of the word dance, now widespread amongst European languages (French dansir, Spanish danzar, Italian danzare, German tanzen, Swedish dansa, Russian tancovat’), is disappointingly obscure. All these forms, including the English word, stem from an original Old French danser. This developed from an assumed Vulgar Latin *dansāre, which may have been borrowed from a Frankish *dintjan (Frisian dintje ‘tremble’ has been compared).
amnesia (n.): "loss of memory," 1786 (as a Greek word in English from 1670s), Modern Latin, coined from Greek amnesia "forgetfulness," from a-, privative prefix, "not" (see a- (3)) + stem from mnasthai "to recall, remember," related to mnemnon "mindful," mneme "memory;" from PIE root *men- "to think, remember" (see mind (n.)).
French (adj.): c. 1200, frensh, frenche, "pertaining to France or the French," from Old English frencisc "French," originally "of the Franks," from franca, the people name (see Frank). A similar contraction of -ish is in Dutch, Scotch, Welsh, suggesting the habit applies to the names of only the intimate neighbors.

In some provincial forms of English it could mean simply "foreign." Used in many combination-words, often dealing with food or sex: French dressing (by 1860); French toast (1630s); French letter "condom" (c. 1856, perhaps on resemblance of sheepskin and parchment), french (v.) "perform oral sex on," and French kiss (1923) all probably stem from the Anglo-Saxon equation of Gallic culture and sexual sophistication, a sense first recorded 1749 in the phrase French novel. (In late 19c.-early 20c., a French kiss was a kiss on each cheek.) French-Canadian is from 1774; french doors is by 1847. To take French leave, "depart without telling the host," is 1771, from a social custom then prevalent. However, this is said to be called in France filer à l'anglaise, literally "to take English leave."
goon (n.): 1921, in U.S. humorist Frederick J. Allen's piece "The Goon and His Style" (Harper's Monthly Magazine, December 1921), which defines it as "a person with a heavy touch," one who lacks "a playful mind;" perhaps a made-up word, or from gony "simpleton" (1580s), which was applied by sailors to the albatross and similar big, clumsy birds. The goons were characters in the "Thimble Theater" comic strip (starring Popeye) by U.S. cartoonist E.C. Segar (1894-1938); they appeared in Segar's strips from mid-1930s and, though they reportedly gave children nightmares, enjoyed a burst of popularity when they appeared in animated cartoons in 1938. The most famous was Alice the Goon, slow-witted and muscular (but gentle-natured) character who began as the Sea Hag's assistant. Segar might have got the word directly from sailors' jargon.

Later 20c. senses of the word all probably stem from this: Sense of "hired thug" is first recorded 1938 (in reference to union "beef squads" used to cow strikers in the Pacific Northwest). She also was the inspiration for British comedian Spike Milligan's "The Goon Show." Also used among American and British POWs in World War II in reference to their German guards. What are now "juvenile delinquents" were in the 1940s sometimes called goonlets.
donga: "A dry gully, formed by the eroding action of running water", sense 1 from Xhosa and Zulu udonga; sense 2 is said to stem from an extended usage of the term in the Boer War.