英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

female [female 词源字典]: 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[female etymology, female origin, 英语词源]
honeysuckle (n.): mid-13c., from Old English hunigsuge, meaning perhaps honeysuckle, clover, or privet, literally "honey-suck" (see honey (n.) + suck) + diminutive suffix -el (2). So called because "honey" can be sucked from it. In Middle English sometimes a confused rendering of Latin locusta, taken as the name of a plant.
matzoh (n.): also matzo, flat piece of unleavened bread eaten by Jews during the Passover, 1846, from Hebrew matztzah (plural matztzoth) "unleavened bread," literally "juiceless," from stem of matzatz "he sucked out, drained out."
straw (n.): Old English streaw (rare) "stems or stalks of certain species of grains," apparently literally "that which is scattered or strewn," related to streowian (see strew), from Proto-Germanic *strawam "that which is scattered" (cognates: Old Norse stra, Danish straa, Swedish strå, Old Saxon stro, Old Frisian stre, Old Dutch, Old High German stro, Dutch stroo, German Stroh "straw"), from PIE *stere- "to spread" (see structure (n.)). The notion perhaps is of dried grain stalks strewn on a floor as carpeting or bedding.

As a type of what is trifling or unimportant, attested from late 13c. Meaning "hollow tube through which a drink is sucked" is recorded from 1851. To draw straws as a means of deciding something is recorded from 1779 (the custom probably is older). As an adjective, "made of straw," mid-15c.; hence "false, sham." Straw poll is from 1932; earlier straw vote (1866). Straw hat first attested mid-15c. To clutch (or grasp or catch) at straws (1748) is what a drowning man proverbially would do. The last straw (1836 apart from the full phrase) is from the proverbial image: "it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back" (or, less often, the mare's, the horse's, or the elephant's), an image in use in English by 1755.
Let it not, however, be inferred that taxation cannot be pushed too far : it is, as the Oriental proverb says, the last straw that overloads the camel ; a small addition, if ill-timed, may overturn the whole. ["The Scots Magazine," April 1799]
suck (v.): Old English sucan "to suck," from a Germanic root of imitative origin (cognates: Old Saxon, Old High German sugan, Old Norse suga, Danish suge, Swedish suga, Middle Dutch sughen, Dutch zuigen, German saugen "to suck"), possibly from the same source as Latin sugere "to suck," succus "juice, sap;" Old Irish sugim, Welsh sugno "to suck;" see sup (v.2). As a noun from c. 1300.

Meaning "do fellatio" is first recorded 1928. Slang sense of "be contemptible" first attested 1971 (the underlying notion is of fellatio). Related: Sucked; sucking. Suck eggs is from 1906. Suck hind tit "be inferior" is American English slang first recorded 1940.
The old, old saying that the runt pig always sucks the hind teat is not so far wrong, as it quite approximates the condition that exists. ["The Chester White Journal," April 1921]
pooter: "A bottle for collecting small insects and other invertebrates, having one tube through which they are sucked into the bottle and another, protected by muslin or gauze, which is sucked", 1930s: said to be from the name of William Poos (1891–1987), American entomologist.