英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

anachronism: anachronism: [17] The Greek prefix anameant ‘up’, and hence, in terms of time, ‘back’; Greek khrónos meant ‘time’ (as in English chronicle): hence Greek anakhronismós ‘reference to a wrong time’. From the point of view of its derivation it should strictly be applied to the representation of something as happening earlier than it really did (as if Christ were painted wearing a wristwatch), but in practice, ever since the Greek term’s adoption into English, it has also been used for things surviving beyond their due time.
=> chronicle
cling: cling: [OE] The basic underlying sense of cling seems to be ‘stick, adhere’, but surviving records of the word in Old English reveal it only in the more specialized senses ‘congeal’ or ‘shrivel’ (the notion being that loss of moisture causes something to contract upon itself or adhere more closely to a surface). It is not really until the late 13th century that the more familiar ‘adhere’ (as in ‘a wet shirt clinging to someone’s back’) begins to show itself, and no hint that ‘clinging’ is something a human being can do with his or her arms emerges before the early 17th century.

The word goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base *klingg-, whose variant *klengk- is the source of English clench [13] and clinch [16].
=> clench, clinch
den: den: [OE] Related forms such as German tenne ‘threshing floor’ and possibly Greek thenar ‘palm of the hand’ suggest that the underlying meaning of den may be ‘flat area’. Old English denn denoted ‘wild animal’s lair’, perhaps with reference to animals’ flattening an area of vegetation to form a sleeping place. Dean [OE], a word for ‘valley’ now surviving only in placenames, comes from the same source.
dimple: dimple: [13] Dimple originally meant ‘pothole’, and was not applied to an ‘indentation in the flesh’ until the 14th century. There is no surviving record of the word in Old English, but it probably existed, as *dympel; Old High German had the cognate tumphilo, ancestor of modern German tümpel ‘pool, puddle’. Both go back to a Germanic *dump-, which may be a nasalized version of *d(e)up-, source of English deep and dip.
=> deep, dip
fang: fang: [11] Fang originally meant ‘prey, spoils’ – a sense which survived well into the 18th century (‘Snap went the sheers, then in a wink, The fang was stow’d behind a bink [bench]’, Morrison, Poems 1790). It was related to a verb fang ‘take, capture’ which was very common in the Old and Middle English period, and which, like its surviving cousins German fangen, Dutch vangen, and Swedish fånga, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *fangg- (English newfangled [15] is a memory of it).

The application of the word to an animal’s tooth does not emerge until as late as the 16th century, and although the broad semantic connection between ‘seizing’ and ‘sharp canine tooth’ is clear, the precise mechanism behind the development is not known.
=> newfangled
gauntlet: gauntlet: The gauntlet of ‘run the gauntlet’ has no etymological connection with gauntlet ‘glove’ [15]. The latter was borrowed from Old French gantelet, a diminutive form of gant ‘glove’. This was originally a Germanic loanword, with surviving relatives in Swedish and Danish vante ‘glove’. As for ‘running the gauntlet’, it was to begin with ‘running the gantlope’, in which gantlope signified ‘two lines of people armed with sticks, who attacked someone forced to run between them’.

This was borrowed in the 17th century from Swedish gatlopp, a descendant of Old Swedish gatulop ‘passageway’; this was a compound noun formed from gata ‘way’ (related to English gate, gait) and lop ‘course’ (related to English leap and lope). Under the influence of gauntlet ‘glove’, English changed gatlopp to gantlope, and thence to gantlet (now restricted in use to an ‘overlapping section of railway track’) and gauntlet (as in ‘run the gauntlet’).
=> gait, gate, leap, lope
haberdasher: haberdasher: [14] No one is too sure what Anglo-Norman hapertas meant – perhaps ‘piece of cloth’, perhaps ‘small goods’ – but it is the nearest we can come to the origin of that curious word haberdasher. The theory is that it had an Anglo-Norman derivative, *habertasser or *haberdasser, never actually recorded, which passed into Middle English as haberdassher.

The term seems originally to have denoted a ‘seller of small fancy goods’ – and indeed in the 16th and 17th centuries it was often used synonymously with milliner, which had a similar broad meaning in those days – but gradually it passed into two more specific applications, ‘seller of hats’ (now obsolete in British English, but surviving in the American sense ‘seller of men’s hats, gloves, etc’) and ‘seller of dressmaking accessories’.
heap: heap: [OE] Heap is an ancient word, with still the odd non-Germanic relative surviving. Its immediate West Germanic ancestor was *khaupaz, which also produced Dutch hoop (the hope of English forlorn hope), and forms such as German haufen ‘heap’ and Lithuanian kaupas ‘heap’, while not in exactly the same line of descent, point to a common Indo-European source.
heron: heron: [OE] Heron may well have originated in imitation of the bird’s cry, for its source was probably Indo-European *qriq- (whence also Russian krichat’ ‘call out, shout’). From this was descended prehistoric Germanic *khaigaron (source of Swedish häger ‘heron’), which was borrowed into Old French as hairon. English took it over as heron or hern (the latter now a memory surviving in personal names and placenames, such as Earnshaw).
hill: hill: [OE] The ultimate source of hill was Indo- European *kel-, *kol-, which denoted ‘height’ and also produced English column, culminate, and excellent. A derivative *kulnís produced Germanic *khulniz, which now has no surviving descendants apart from English hill, but related words for ‘hill’ or ‘mountain’ in other Indo- European language groups include French colline, Italian colle, and Spanish and Romanian colina (all from Latin collis ‘hill’), Lithuanian kálnas, and Latvian kalns.
=> column, culminate, excellent
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’.
panel: panel: [13] Etymologically, a panel is nothing more than a ‘small pane’. It comes via Old French from Vulgar Latin *pannellus, a diminutive form of Latin pannus ‘rag’ (source of English pane [13]). Both panel and pane entered English with their original ‘cloth’ connotations intact, but they have now virtually died out, surviving only in the compound counterpane (which is actually an alteration of an earlier counterpoint), and ‘shape’ has taken over from ‘substance’ as the word’s key semantic feature.
=> pane
recognize: recognize: [15] Latin gnōscere ‘become acquainted’ came from the same prehistoric Indo-European base, *gnō-, as produced English know. Combination with the prefix co- ‘with’ gave cognōscere ‘know’ (source of English cognition, quaint, etc). And this in turn had the prefix re- ‘again’ added to it to produce recognōscere ‘know again’, which found its way into English via reconniss-, the stem of Old French reconnaistre (the -ize ending is an English introduction).

English has three noun derivatives of the verb: recognition [15], from Latin recognitiō; recognizance [14], now purely a legal term, borrowed from Old French reconnissance and remodelled on the basis of recognize; and reconnaissance [19], borrowed from modern French during the Napoleonic wars. Reconnoitre [18] comes from the now obsolete French reconnoître, which like its surviving variant reconnaître goes back to Latin recognōscere.
=> cognition, know, quaint, reconnaissance, reconnoitre
roof: roof: [OE] The antecedents of roof are far from clear. Its only surviving relative seems to be Dutch roef ‘cabin, coffin lid’, and although it also had links with Old Norse hróf ‘boat-shed’, its ultimate origins remain a mystery.
sallow: sallow: [OE] English has two distinct words sallow. The adjective goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *salwa-, which was also borrowed into French as sale ‘dirty’. The underlying meaning appears to be ‘dark-coloured’. Its only surviving relative among the mainstream Germanic languages is Icelandic sölr ‘yellow’. Sallow ‘willow’ comes from a prehistoric Germanic *salkhaz, which also produced French saule ‘willow’ and was distantly related to Latin salix ‘willow’.
sentiment: sentiment: [17] Sentiment comes via Old French sentiment from medieval Latin sentīmentum ‘feeling’, a derivative of Latin sentīre ‘feel’ (from which English gets sensation, sense, sentence, etc). It originally meant ‘feeling’ and ‘opinion’ (the former now defunct, the latter surviving with a somewhat old-fashioned air in such expressions as ‘My sentiments exactly!’). The sense ‘(excessively) refined feeling’ did not emerge until the mid-18th century.
=> sense
shake: shake: [OE] Shake is a general Germanic verb, although today its only surviving relatives are Swedish skaka and Norwegian skage. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *skakan, which goes back to the Indo-European base *skeg-, *skek- (source also of Sanskrit khajati ‘agitate, churn’ and Welsh ysgogi ‘move’).
speak: speak: [OE] The usual Old English word for ‘speak’ was sprecan, which has close living relatives in German sprechen and Dutch spreken. Specan, the ancestor of modern English speak, did not appear until around the year 1000, but already by the 12th century it had virtually replaced sprecan. It is not known how the r-less form (which has no surviving relatives in other Germanic languages) arose, but it is clearly a secondary development of the r-form.

This seems to be connected with Danish spage ‘crackle’, Lithuanian sprageti ‘crackle’, and Sanskrit sphūrj- ‘crackle, rustle’, suggesting that the English word’s use for ‘utter, say’ arose via an earlier ‘crackle, prattle, babble, chatter’ (English ‘crack on about something’, ‘not what it’s cracked up to be’, and ‘crack a joke’ are remnants of an earlier widespread use of English crack for ‘speak’).
=> speech
speed: speed: [OE] Speed originally meant ‘success, prosperity’ – and when you wish someone Godspeed, you are wishing them ‘good fortune’. Largely, though, it is the secondary sense ‘quickness’, which first emerged in the late Old English period, that has survived to the present day. It has a surviving Germanic relative in Dutch spoed ‘quickness’, and it also has possible links with Old Church Slavonic speti ‘succeed’. It was first used as a slang term for ‘amphetamine’ in the mid 1960s.
yawn: yawn: [OE] Yawn goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *ghei-, *ghi-, which also produced Greek kháskein ‘gape’ (a close relative of English chasm [17]) and Latin hiāre ‘gape, yawn’ (source of English hiatus [16]). The base passed into prehistoric Germanic as *gai-, *gi-, whose surviving descendants are German gähnen, Dutch geeuwen, and English yawn. English gap and gape probably come from an extension of the same Indo-European base.
=> chasm, gap, gape, hiatus
aback (adv.): c. 1200, from Old English on bæc "at or on the back;" see back (n.). Now surviving mainly in taken aback, originally a nautical expression in reference to a vessel's square sails when a sudden change of wind flattens them back against the masts and stops the forward motion of the ship (1754). The figurative sense is first recorded 1840.
auld (adj.): variant of old that more accurately preserves the Anglo-Saxon vowel. Surviving in northern English and Scottish; distinctly Scottish after late 14c.
awkward (adj.): mid-14c., "in the wrong direction," from awk "back-handed" + adverbial suffix -weard (see -ward). Meaning "clumsy" first recorded 1520s. Related: Awkwardly. Other formations from awk, none of them surviving, were awky, awkly, awkness.
bank (n.2): "earthen incline, edge of a river," c. 1200, probably in Old English but not attested in surviving documents, from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse banki, Old Danish banke "sandbank," from Proto-Germanic *bangkon "slope," cognate with *bankiz "shelf" (see bench (n.)).
belay (v.): "to secure or fasten," from Old English bilecgan, which, among other senses, meant "to lay a thing about" (with other objects), from be- + lecgan "to lay" (see lay (v.)). The only surviving sense is the nautical one of "coil a running rope round a cleat or pin to secure it" (also transferred to mountain-climbing), first attested 1540s; but this is possibly a cognate word, from Dutch beleggen.
bent (n.2): "stiff grass," Old English beonet, from West Germanic *binut- "rush, marsh grass" (cognates: Old Saxon binet, Old High German binuz, German Binse "rush, reed"), which is of unknown origin. An obsolete word, but surviving in place names (such as Bentley, from Old English Beonet-leah; Bentham).
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad
And fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb.

[Cowper, "The Winter-Morning Walk," from "The Task"]
best (adj.): Old English beste, reduced by assimilation of -t- from earlier Old English betst "best, first, in the best manner," originally superlative of bot "remedy, reparation," the root word now only surviving in to boot (see boot (n.2)), though its comparative, better, and superlative, best, have been transferred to good (and in some cases well). From Proto-Germanic root *bat-, with comparative *batizon and superlative *batistaz (cognates: Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Middle Dutch best, Old High German bezzist, German best, Old Norse beztr, Gothic batists).
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

[Burns]
Best-seller as short for "best-selling book" is from 1902, apparently originally in the publishing trade; best friend was in Chaucer (late 14c.). Best girl is first attested 1881, American English; best man is 1814, originally Scottish, replacing groomsman. To be able to do something with the best of them is recorded by 1748.
bison (n.): c. 1600, from French bison (15c.), from Latin bison "wild ox," borrowed from Proto-Germanic *wisand- "aurochs" (cognates: Old Norse visundr, Old High German wisunt "bison," Old English/Middle English wesend, which is not attested after c. 1400). Possibly ultimately of Baltic or Slavic origin, and meaning "the stinking animal," in reference to its scent while rutting (see weasel). A European wild ox formerly widespread on the continent, including the British Isles, now surviving on forest reserves in Lithuania. Applied 1690s to the North American species commonly mis-called a buffalo.
brethren (n.): alternative plural of brother (q.v.); predominant c. 1200-1600s, but surviving now only in religious usage.
bump (v.): 1560s, "to bulge out;" 1610s, "to strike heavily," perhaps from Scandinavian, probably echoic, original sense was "hitting" then of "swelling from being hit." Also has a long association with obsolete bum "to make a booming noise," which perhaps influenced surviving senses such as bumper crop, for something full to the brim (see bumper). To bump into "meet" is from 1880s; to bump off "kill" is 1908 in underworld slang. Related: Bumped; bumping. Bumpsy (adj.) was old slang for "drunk" (1610s).
busk (v.): "to prepare, to dress oneself," also "to go, set out," c. 1300, probably from Old Norse buask "to prepare oneself," reflexive of bua "to prepare" (see bound (adj.2)) + contraction of Old Norse reflexive pronoun sik. Most common in northern Middle English and surviving chiefly in Scottish and northern English dialect. Related boun had the same senses in northern and Scottish Middle English. Related: Busked; busking.

The nautical term is attested from 1660s (in a general sense of "to tack, to beat to windward"), apparently from obsolete French busquer "to shift, filch, prowl," which is related to Italian buscare "to filch, prowl," Spanish buscar (from Old Spanish boscar), perhaps originally from bosco "wood" (see bush (n.)), with a hunting notion of "beating a wood" to flush game.
buy (v.): Old English bycgan (past tense bohte) "to buy, pay for, acquire; redeem, ransom; procure; get done," from Proto-Germanic *bugjan (cognates: Old Saxon buggjan, Old Norse byggja, Gothic bugjan), which is of unknown origin and not found outside Germanic.

The surviving spelling is southwest England dialect; the word was generally pronounced in Old English and Middle English with a -dg- sound as "budge," or "bidge." Meaning "believe, accept as true" first recorded 1926. Related: Bought; buying. To buy time "prevent further deterioration but make no improvement" is attested from 1946.
cheap (adj.): "low in price, that may be bought at small cost," c. 1500, ultimately from Old English noun ceap "traffic, a purchase," from ceapian (v.) "trade," probably from an early Germanic borrowing from Latin caupo "petty tradesman, huckster" (see chapman).

The sense evolution is from the noun meaning "a barter, a purchase" to "a purchase as rated by the buyer," hence adjectival meaning "inexpensive," the main modern sense, via Middle English phrases such as god chep "favorable bargain" (12c., a translation of French a bon marché).

Sense of "lightly esteemed, common" is from 1590s (compare similar evolution of Latin vilis). The meaning "low in price" was represented in Old English by undeor, literally "un-dear" (but deop ceap, literally "deep cheap," meant "high price").

The word also was used in Old English for "market" (as in ceapdæg "market day"), a sense surviving in place names Cheapside, East Cheap, etc. Related: Cheaply. Expression on the cheap is first attested 1888. Cheap shot originally was U.S. football jargon for a head-on tackle; extended sense "unfair hit" in politics, etc. is by 1970. German billig "cheap" is from Middle Low German billik, originally "fair, just," with a sense evolution via billiger preis "fair price," etc.
check (n.1): c. 1300, "a call in chess noting one's move has placed his opponent's king (or another major piece) in immediate peril," from Old French eschequier "a check at chess" (also "chess board, chess set"), from eschec "the game of chess; chessboard; check; checkmate," from Vulgar Latin *scaccus, from Arabic shah, from Persian shah "king," the principal piece in a chess game (see shah; also compare checkmate (n.)). Also c. 1300 in a generalized sense, "harmful incident or event."

When the king is in check that player's choices are severely limited. Hence, "sudden stoppage" (early 14c.), and by c. 1700 to "a token of ownership used to check against, and prevent, loss or theft" (surviving in hat check) and "a check against forgery or alteration," which gave the modern financial use of "bank check, money draft" (first recorded 1798 and often spelled cheque), probably influenced by exchequer. Checking account is attested from 1897, American English. Blank check in the figurative sense attested by 1849. Checks and balances is from 1782, perhaps originally suggesting machinery.
coign (n.): archaic spelling of quoin (q.v.), surviving only in Shakespeare's coign of vantage ("Macbeth" I.vi.), popularized by Sir Walter Scott, properly "a projecting corner" (for observation).
contra-: word-forming element meaning "against, in opposition," from Latin adverb and preposition contra (see contra). The Latin word was used as a prefix in Late Latin. In French, it became contre- and passed into English as counter-. The Old English equivalent was wiðer (surviving in withers and widdershins), from wið "with, against."
coomb (n.): also combe, "deep hollow or valley, especially on flank of a hill," mainly surviving in place names, from Old English cumb, probably a British word, from Celtic base *kumbos (compare Welsh cwm in same sense). Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names says, "This is usually taken to be a Celtic loan ... but there was also OE cumb 'vessel, cup, bowl,'" which was "probably used in a transferred topographical sense reinforced in western districts by cwm."
cun (v.): "to learn to know, inquire into," from Old English cunnian "to learn to know," ultimately from the same ancient root as can (v.1). Surviving into 17c. and perhaps later in dialects.
dick (n.): "fellow, lad, man," 1550s, rhyming nickname for Rick, short for Richard, one of the commonest English names, it has long been a synonym for "fellow," and so most of the slang senses are probably very old, but naturally hard to find in the surviving records. The meaning "penis" is attested from 1891 in Farmer's slang dictionary (possibly British army slang). Meaning "detective" is recorded from 1908, perhaps as a shortened variant of detective.
die (v.): mid-12c., possibly from Old Danish døja or Old Norse deyja "to die, pass away," both from Proto-Germanic *dawjan (cognates: Old Frisian deja "to kill," Old Saxon doian, Old High German touwen, Gothic diwans "mortal"), from PIE root *dheu- (3) "to pass away, die, become senseless" (cognates: Old Irish dith "end, death," Old Church Slavonic daviti, Russian davit' "to choke, suffer").

It has been speculated that Old English had *diegan, from the same source, but it is not in any of the surviving texts and the preferred words were steorfan (see starve), sweltan (see swelter), wesan dead, also forðgan and other euphemisms.

Languages usually don't borrow words from abroad for central life experiences, but "die" words are an exception, because they are often hidden or changed euphemistically out of superstitious dread. A Dutch euphemism translates as "to give the pipe to Maarten." Regularly spelled dege through 15c., and still pronounced "dee" by some in Lancashire and Scotland. Used figuratively (of sounds, etc.) from 1580s. Related: Died; dies.
drain (v.): Old English dreahnian "to drain, strain out," from Proto-Germanic *dreug-, source of drought, dry, giving the English word originally a sense of "make dry." Figurative meaning of "exhaust" is attested from 1650s. The word is not found in surviving texts between late Old English and the 1500s. Related: Drained; draining.
-en (2): suffix added to nouns to produce adjectives meaning "made of, of the nature of" (such as golden, oaken, woolen), corresponding to Latin -anus, -inus, Greek -inos; from Proto-Germanic *-ina-, from PIE *-no-, adjectival suffix. Common in Old and Middle English (e.g. fyren "on fire; made of fire"), the few surviving uses are largely discarded in everyday use, and the simple form of the noun doubles as adjective (gold ring, wool sweater). Some are used in special contexts (brazen, wooden).
earnest (adj.1): from Old English eornoste (adj.) "zealous, serious," or from Old English noun eornost "seriousness, serious intent" (surviving only in the phrase in earnest), from Proto-Germanic *er-n-os-ti- (cognates: Old Saxon ernust, Old Frisian ernst, Old High German arnust "seriousness, firmness, struggle," German Ernst "seriousness;" Gothic arniba "safely, securely;" Old Norse ern "able, vigorous," jarna "fight, combat"), perhaps from PIE root *er- (1) "to move, set in motion." The proper name Ernest (literally "resolute") is from the same root. Related: Earnestness.
emmet (n.): "ant," from Old English æmete (see ant), surviving as a dialect word in parts of England; also, according to OED, in Cornwall a colloquial name for holiday tourists.
enough (adj.): c. 1300, from Old English genog "sufficient in quantity or number," from Proto-Germanic compound *ganoga- "sufficient" (cognates: Old Saxon ginog, Old Frisian enoch, Dutch genoeg, Old High German ginuog, German genug, Old Norse gnogr, Gothic ganohs).

First element is Old English ge- "with, together" (also a participial, collective, intensive, or perfective prefix), making this word the most prominent surviving example of the Old English prefix, the equivalent of Latin com- and Modern German ge- (from PIE *kom- "beside, near, by, with;" see com-). Second element is from PIE *nok-, from root *nek- (2) "to reach, attain" (cognates: Sanskrit asnoti "reaches," Hittite ninikzi "lifts, raises," Lithuanian nešti "to bear, carry," Latin nancisci "to obtain").

As an adverb, "sufficiently for the purpose," in Old English; meaning "moderately, fairly, tolerably" (good enough) was in Middle English. Understated sense, as in have had enough "have had too much" was in Old English (which relied heavily on double negatives and understatement). As a noun in Old English, "a quantity or number sufficient for the purpose." As an interjection, "that is enough," from c. 1600. Colloquial 'nough said is attested from 1839.
explode (v.): 1530s (transitive), "to reject with scorn," from Latin explodere "drive out or off by clapping, hiss off, hoot off," originally theatrical, "to drive an actor off the stage by making noise," hence "drive out, reject, destroy the repute of" (a sense surviving in an exploded theory), from ex- "out" (see ex-) + plaudere "to clap the hands, applaud," which is of uncertain origin. Athenian audiences were highly demonstrative. clapping and shouting approval, stamping, hissing, and hooting for disapproval. The Romans seem to have done likewise.
At the close of the performance of a comedy in the Roman theatre one of the actors dismissed the audience, with a request for their approbation, the expression being usually plaudite, vos plaudite, or vos valete et plaudite. [William Smith, "A First Latin Reading Book," 1890]
English used it to mean "drive out with violence and sudden noise" (1650s), later "cause to burst suddenly and noisily" (1794). Intransitive sense of "go off with a loud noise" is from 1790, American English; figurative sense of "to burst with destructive force" is by 1882; that of "burst into sudden activity" is from 1817; of population by 1959. Related: Exploded; exploding.
fidget (n.): 1670s, as the fidget "uneasiness," later the fidgets, from a verb fidge "move restlessly" (16c., surviving longest in Scottish), perhaps from Middle English fiken "to fidget, hasten" (see fike (v.)).
fike (v.): Middle English fyken "move about restlessly" (early 13c.), from Old Norse fikjask "to desire eagerly," fika (in fika sig upp "climb up nimbly," of a spider), probably from a general North Sea Germanic word related to the source of German ficken "to move about briskly." Later as "give trouble, vex" (1570s), a sense surviving especially in Scottish. Hence also fikery "vexatious trouble" (1823); fiky "causing trouble about trifles" (1768).
gau (n.): ancient German territorial and administrative division, originally comprising several villages, surviving in place names such as Breisgau and Oberammergau; also in gauleiter (with leiter "leader"), title of the local political leaders under the Nazi system. Compare the first element in yeoman.
-head: word-forming element meaning "state or condition of being," Middle English -hede, from a variant of Old English -had, the source of -hood. The only surviving words with it are maidenhead and godhead.