quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- bill
- bill: There are three distinct words bill in English (not counting the proper name), and of them all, the most recent is the commonest. Bill ‘note of charges’ [14] comes from Anglo-Latin billa, which is probably a variant of Latin bulla ‘_document, seal’ (as in ‘papal bull’). English billet [15], as in ‘billeting soldiers on a house’, was originally a diminutive form of billa (French billet ‘letter’ comes from the same source). Bill ‘hook-bladed weapon’ [OE], now found mainly in billhook, comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *bilja, which may be based ultimately on Indo-European *bhid-, source of English bite. Bill ‘beak’ [OE] may be related to bill ‘weapon’, but this is not clear.
The verbal sense ‘caress’, as in ‘bill and coo’, is 16th-century; it arose from the courting behaviour of doves stroking each other’s beaks.
=> billet - milk
- milk: [OE] Far back into prehistory, milk traces its ancestry to an Indo-European base *melg-, which denoted ‘wiping’ or ‘stroking’. The way of obtaining milk from animals is to pull one’s hand down their teats, and so *melg- came in due course to be used for ‘milk’. It passed into Germanic as *melk-, which formed the basis of the noun *meluks, and this over the centuries has become German milch, Dutch and Danish melk, Swedish mjölk, and English milk.
The now virtually obsolete adjective milch ‘giving milk’ [OE] (as in milch cow) goes back to a Germanic derivative of *meluks. Another derivative of Indo-European *melgwas the Latin verb mulgēre ‘milk’, which has given English emulsion and promulgate.
=> emulsion, promulgate - keystroke (n.)
- 1902, from key (n.1) + stroke (n.). Not in common use until the rise of computers. As a verb, by 1966 (implied in keystroking).
- palpation (n.)
- late 15c., from Middle French palpation, from Latin palpationem (nominative palpatio) "stroking, flattering, flattery," noun of action from past participle stem of palpare "to touch" (see feel (v.)). Used in English in literal sense.
- stroke (v.)
- "pass the hand gently over," Old English stracian "to stroke," related to strican "pass over lightly," from Proto-Germanic *straik-, from PIE root *streig- "to stroke, rub, press" (see strigil). Figurative sense of "soothe, flatter" is recorded from 1510s. The noun meaning "a stroking movement of the hand" is recorded from 1630s. Related: Stroked; stroking.