英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

a [a 词源字典]: a: [OE] The indefinite article in English is ultimately identical with the word one (as is the case, even more obviously, in other European languages – French un, German ein, and so on). The ancestor of both a(n) and one was ān, with a long vowel, but in the Old English period it was chiefly used for the numeral; where we would use a(n), the Anglo-Saxons tended not to use an article at all. Ān begins to emerge as the indefinite article in the middle of the 12th century, and it was not long before, in that relatively unemphatic linguistic environment, its vowel became weakened and shortened, giving an.

And at about the same time the distinction between an and a began to develop, although this was a slow process; until 1300 an was still often used before consonants, and right up to 1600 and beyond it was common before all words beginning with h, such as house.
=> one[a etymology, a origin, 英语词源]
an: an: [OE] The indefinite article in English is ultimately identical with the word one (as is the case, even more obviously, in other European languages – French un, German ein, and so on). The ancestor of both a(n) and one was ān, with a long vowel, but in the Old English period it was chiefly used for the numeral; where we would use a(n), the Anglo-Saxons tended not to use an article at all. Ān begins to emerge as the indefinite article in the middle of the 12th century, and it was not long before, in that relatively unemphatic linguistic environment, its vowel became weakened and shortened, giving an.

And at about the same time the distinction between an and a began to develop, although this was a slow process; until 1300 an was still often used before consonants, and right up to 1600 and beyond it was common before all words beginning with h, such as house.
=> one
abbot: abbot: [OE] Abbot comes ultimately from abbā, a Syriac word meaning ‘father’ (which itself achieved some currency in English, particularly in reminiscence of its biblical use: ‘And he said, Abba, father, all things are possible unto thee’, Mark 14:36). This came into Greek as abbás, and thence, via the Latin accusative abbatem, into Old English as abbud or abbod.

The French term abbé (which is much less specific in meaning than English abbot) comes from the same source. In much the same way as father is used in modern English for priests, abba was widely current in the East for referring to monks, and hence its eventual application to the head of a monastery. A derivative of Latin abbatem was abbatia, which has given English both abbacy [15] and (via Old French abbeie) abbey [13]. Abbess is of similar antiquity (Latin had abbatissa).
=> abbess, abbey
abound: abound: [14] Abound has no connection with bind or bound. Its Latin source means literally ‘overflow’, and its nearest relative among English words is water. Latin undāre ‘flow’ derived from unda ‘wave’ (as in undulate), which has the same ultimate root as water. The addition of the prefix ab- ‘away’ created abundāre, literally ‘flow away’, hence ‘overflow’, and eventually ‘be plentiful’.

The present participial stem of the Latin verb gave English abundant and abundance. In the 14th and 15th centuries it was erroneously thought that abound had some connection with have, and the spelling habound was consequently common.
=> inundate, surround, undulate, water
about: about: [OE] About in Old English times meant ‘around the outside of’; it did not develop its commonest present-day meaning, ‘concerning’, until the 13th century. In its earliest incarnation it was onbūtan, a compound made up of on and būtan ‘outside’ (this is the same word as modern English but, which was itself originally a compound, formed from the ancestors of by and out – so broken down into its ultimate constituents, about is on by out).
=> but, by, out
absolute: absolute: [14] Absolute, absolution, and absolve all come ultimately from the same source: Latin absolvere ‘set free’, a compound verb made up from the prefix ab- ‘away’ and the verb solvere ‘loose’ (from which English gets solve and several other derivatives, including dissolve and resolve). From the 13th to the 16th century an alternative version of the verb, assoil, was in more common use than absolve; this came from the same Latin original, but via Old French rather than by a direct route.

The t of absolute and absolution comes from the past participial stem of the Latin verb – absolūt-. The noun, the adjective, and the verb have taken very different routes from their common semantic starting point, the notion of ‘setting free’: absolve now usually refers to freeing from responsibility and absolution to the remitting of sins, while absolute now means ‘free from any qualification or restriction’.
=> dissolve, resolve, solve
accept: accept: [14] Accept comes ultimately from Latin capere, which meant ‘take’ (and was derived from the same root as English heave). The addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’ produced accipere, literally ‘take to oneself’, hence ‘receive’. The past participle of this, acceptus, formed the basis of a new verb, acceptāre, denoting repeated action, which made its way via Old French into English.
=> heave
accoutre: accoutre: [16] Accoutre is related to both couture and sew. English borrowed it from French accoutrer, which meant ‘equip with something, especially clothes’. A stage earlier, Old French had acoustrer, formed from cousture (whence couture) and the prefix a-. This came from Vulgar Latin *consūtūra, literally ‘sewn together’, from con- ‘together’ and sūtūra ‘sewn’ (whence English suture); sūtūra in turn came from the past participial stem of Latin suere, which derived from the same Indo- European root as English sew.
=> couture, sew, suture
ache: ache: [OE] Of the noun ache and the verb ache, the verb came first. In Old English it was acan. From it was formed the noun, æce or ece. For many centuries, the distinction between the two was preserved in their pronunciation: in the verb, the ch was pronounced as it is now, with a /k/ sound, but the noun was pronounced similarly to the letter H, with a /ch/ sound.

It was not until the early 19th century that the noun came regularly to be pronounced the same way as the verb. It is not clear what the ultimate origins of ache are, but related forms do exist in other Germanic languages (Low German āken, for instance, and Middle Dutch akel), and it has been conjectured that there may be some connection with the Old High German exclamation (of pain) ah.
act: act: [14] Act, action, active, actor all go back to Latin agere ‘do, perform’ (which is the source of a host of other English derivatives, from agent to prodigal). The past participle of this verb was āctus, from which we get act, partly through French acte, but in the main directly from Latin. The Latin agent noun, āctor, came into the language at about the same time, although at first it remained a rather uncommon word in English, with technical legal uses; it was not until the end of the 16th century that it came into its own in the theatre (player had hitherto been the usual term).

Other Latin derivatives of the past participial stem āct- were the noun āctiō, which entered English via Old French action, and the adjective āctīvus, which gave English active. See also ACTUAL.
=> action, active, agent, cogent, examine, prodigal
adamant: adamant: [14] In Greek, adamas meant ‘unbreakable, invincible’. It was formed from the verb daman ‘subdue, break down’ (which came from the same source as English tame) plus the negative prefix a-. It developed a noun usage as a ‘hard substance’, specifically ‘diamond’ or ‘very hard metal’, and this passed into Latin as adamāns, or, in its stem form, adamant-. Hence Old French adamaunt, and eventually English adamant.
=> diamond, tame
adjacent: adjacent: [15] Adjacent and adjective come from the same source, the Latin verb jacere ‘throw’. The intransitive form of this, jacēre, literally ‘be thrown down’, was used for ‘lie’. With the addition of the prefix ad-, here in the sense ‘near to’, was created adjacēre, ‘lie near’. Its present participial stem, adjacent-, passed, perhaps via French, into English.

The ordinary Latin transitive verb jacere, meanwhile, was transformed into adjicere by the addition of the prefix ad-; it meant literally ‘throw to’, and hence ‘add’ or ‘attribute’, and from its past participial stem, adject-, was formed the adjective adjectīvus. This was used in the phrase nomen adjectīvus ‘attributive noun’, which was a direct translation of Greek ónoma épithetos.

And when it first appeared in English (in the 14th century, via Old French adjectif) it was in noun adjective, which remained the technical term for ‘adjective’ into the 19th century. Adjective was not used as a noun in its own right until the early 16th century.
=> adjective, easy, reject
admire: admire: [16] Admire has rather run out of steam since it first entered the language. It comes originally from the same Latin source as marvel and miracle, and from the 16th to the 18th centuries it meant ‘marvel at’ or ‘be astonished’. Its weaker modern connotations of ‘esteem’ or ‘approval’, however, have been present since the beginning, and have gradually ousted the more exuberant expressions of wonderment. It is not clear whether English borrowed the word from French admirer or directly from its source, Latin admīrārī, literally ‘wonder at’, a compound verb formed from ad- and mīrārī ‘wonder’.
=> marvel, miracle
admonish: admonish: [14] In Middle English times this verb was amoneste. It came, via Old French amonester, from an assumed Vulgar Latin verb *admonestāre, an alteration of Latin admonēre (monēre meant ‘warn’, and came from the same source as English mind). The prefix ad- was reintroduced from Latin in the 15th century, while the -ish ending arose from a mistaken analysis of -este as some sort of past tense inflection; the t was removed when producing infinitive or present tense forms, giving spellings such as amonace and admonyss, and by the 16th century this final -is had become identified with and transformed into the more common -ish ending.
=> mind
affect: affect: There are two distinct verbs affect in English: ‘simulate insincerely’ [15] and ‘have an effect on’ [17]; but both come ultimately from the same source, Latin afficere. Of compound origin, from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and facere ‘do’, this had a wide range of meanings. One set, in reflexive use, was ‘apply oneself to something’, and a new verb, affectāre, was formed from its past participle affectus, meaning ‘aspire or pretend to have’.

Either directly or via French affecter, this was borrowed into English, and is now most commonly encountered in the past participle adjective affected and the derived noun affectation. Another meaning of afficere was ‘influence’, and this first entered English in the 13th century by way of its derived noun affectiō, meaning ‘a particular, usually unfavourable disposition’ – hence affection.

The verb itself was a much later borrowing, again either through French or directly from the Latin past participle affectus.
=> fact
aftermath: aftermath: [16] Originally, and literally, an aftermath was a second crop of grass or similar grazing vegetation, grown after an earlier crop in the same season had been harvested. Already by the mid 17th century it had taken on the figurative connotations of ‘resulting condition’ which are today its only living sense. The -math element comes from Old English mǣth ‘mowing’, a noun descended from the Germanic base *mǣ, source of English mow.
=> mow
age: age: [13] Age has undergone considerable transmutations and abbreviations since its beginnings in Latin. Its immediate source in English is Old French aage, which was the product of a hypothetical Vulgar Latin form *aetāticum (the t is preserved in Provençal atge). This was based on Latin aetāt- (stem of aetās), which was a shortening of aevitās, which in turn came from aevum ‘lifetime’.

This entered English in more recognizable form in medieval, primeval, etc; it is related to Greek aión ‘age’, from which English gets aeon [17], and it can be traced back to the same root that produced (via Old Norse eí) the now archaic adverb ay(e) ‘ever’ (as in ‘will aye endure’).
=> aeon, aye
agony: agony: [14] Agony is one of the more remote relatives of that prolific Latin verb agere (see AGENT). Its ultimate source is the Greek verb ágein ‘lead’, which comes from the same Indo- European root as agere. Related to ágein was the Greek noun agón, originally literally ‘a bringing of people together to compete for a prize’, hence ‘contest, conflict’ (which has been borrowed directly into English as agon, a technical term for the conflict between the main characters in a work of literature).

Derived from agón was agōníā ‘(mental) struggle, anguish’, which passed into English via either late Latin agōnia or French agonie. The sense of physical suffering did not develop until the 17th century; hitherto, agony had been reserved for mental stress. The first mention of an agony column comes in the magazine Fun in 1863.
=> antagonist
ague: ague: [14] In its origins, ague is the same word as acute. It comes from the Latin phrase febris acuta ‘sharp fever’ (which found its way into Middle English as fever agu). In the Middle Ages the Latin adjective acuta came to be used on its own as a noun meaning ‘fever’; this became aguē in medieval French, from which it was borrowed into English. From the end of the 14th century ague was used for ‘malaria’ (the word malaria itself did not enter the language until the mid 18th century).
=> acute
aid: aid: [15] Aid comes ultimately from the same source as adjutant (which originally meant simply ‘assistant’). Latin juvāre became, with the addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’, adjuvāre ‘give help to’; from its past participle adjutus was formed a new verb, adjūtāre, denoting repeated action, and this passed into Old French as aïdier, the source of English aid.
=> adjutant, jocund
alchemy: alchemy: [14] Alchemy comes, via Old French alkemie and medieval Latin alchimia, from Arabic alkīmīā. Broken down into its component parts, this represents Arabic al ‘the’ and kīmīā, a word borrowed by Arabic from Greek khēmíā ‘alchemy’ – that is, the art of transmuting base metals into gold. (It has been suggested that khēmīā is the same word as Khēmīā, the ancient name for Egypt, on the grounds that alchemy originated in Egypt, but it seems more likely that it derives from Greek khūmós ‘fluid’ – source of English chyme [17] – itself based on the verb khein ‘pour’).

Modern English chemistry comes not directly from Greek khēmíā, but from alchemy, with the loss of the first syllable.
=> chemistry, chyme
alder: alder: [OE] Alder is an ancient tree-name, represented in several other Indo-European languages, including German erle, Dutch els, Polish olcha, Russian ol’khá, and Latin alnus (which is the genus name of the alder in scientific classification). Alder is clearly the odd man out amongst all these forms in having a d, but it was not always so; the Old English word was alor, and the intrusive d does not begin to appear until the 14th century (it acts as a sort of connecting or glide consonant between the l and the following vowel, in much the same way as Old English thunor adopted a d to become thunder). The place-name Aldershot is based on the tree alder.
alien: alien: [14] The essential notion contained in alien is of ‘otherness’. Its ultimate source is Latin alius ‘other’ (which is related to English else). From this was formed a Latin adjective aliēnus ‘belonging to another person or place’, which passed into English via Old French alien. In Middle English an alternative version alient arose (in the same way as ancient, pageant, and tyrant came from earlier ancien, pagin, and tyran), but this died out during the 17th century.

The verb alienate ‘estrange’ or ‘transfer to another’s ownership’ entered the language in the mid 16th century, eventually replacing an earlier verb alien (source of alienable and inalienable).
=> alibi, else
alliteration: alliteration: [17] Alliteration is an anglicization of alliterātiō, a modern Latin coinage based on the prefix ad- ‘to’ and litera ‘letter’ – from the notion of an accumulation of words beginning with the same letter. The verb alliterate is an early 19th-century back-formation from alliteration.
=> letter
along: along: [OE] The a- in along is related to the prefix anti-, and the original notion contained in the word is of ‘extending a long way in the opposite direction’. This was the force of Old English andlang, a compound formed from and- ‘against, facing’ (whose original source was Greek anti- ‘against’) and lang ‘long’. The meaning gradually changed via simply ‘extending a long way’, through ‘continuous’ and ‘the whole length of something’ to ‘lengthwise’.

At the same time the and- prefix was gradually losing its identity: by the 10th century the forms anlong and onlong were becoming established, and the 14th century saw the beginnings of modern English along. But there is another along entirely, nowadays dialectal. Used in the phrase along of ‘with’ (as in ‘Come along o’me!’), it derives from Old English gelong ‘pertaining, dependent’.

This was a compound formed from the prefix ge-, suggesting suitability, and long, of which the notions of ‘pertaining’ and ‘appropriateness’ are preserved in modern English belong.
=> long
ancestor: ancestor: [13] Ultimately, ancestor is the same word as antecedent [14]: both come from the Latin compound verb antecēdere ‘precede’, formed from the prefix ante- ‘before’ and the verb cēdere ‘go’ (source of English cede and a host of related words, such as proceed and access). Derived from this was the agent noun antecessor ‘one who precedes’, which was borrowed into Old French at two distinct times: first as ancessour, and later as ancestre, which subsequently developed to ancêtre. Middle English had examples of all three of these forms. The modern spelling, ancestor, developed in the 16th century.
=> access, antecedent, cede, precede, proceed
ancient: ancient: [14] Like antique, ancient was originally, in Latin, an adjectivized version of the adverb and preposition ‘before’: to ante ‘before’ was added the adjective suffix -ānus, to produce the adjective *anteānus ‘going before’. In Old French this became ancien, and it passed into English via Anglo-Norman auncien. The final -t began to appear in the 15th century, by the same phonetic process as produced it in pageant and tyrant. The now archaic use of ancient as ‘standard, flag’ and as ‘standard-bearer’ (as most famously in Shakespeare’s ‘ancient Pistol’) arose from an alteration of ensign.
=> antique
angle: angle: There have been two distinct words angle in English. The older is now encountered virtually only in its derivatives, angler and angling, but until the early 19th century an angle was a ‘fishing hook’ (or, by extension, ‘fishing tackle’). It entered the language in the Old English period, and was based on Germanic *angg- (source also of German angel ‘fishing tackle’).

An earlier form of the word appears to have been applied by its former inhabitants to a fishhook-shaped area of Schleswig, in the Jutland peninsula; now Angeln, they called it Angul, and so they themselves came to be referred to as Angles. They brought their words with them to England, of course, and so both the country and the language, English, now contain a reminiscence of their fishhooks. Angle in the sense of a ‘figure formed by two intersecting lines’ entered the language in the 14th century (Chaucer is its first recorded user).

It came from Latin angulus ‘corner’, either directly or via French angle. The Latin word was originally a diminutive of *angus, which is related to other words that contain the notion of ‘bending’, such as Greek ágkūra (ultimate source of English anchor) and English ankle. They all go back to Indo-European *angg- ‘bent’, and it has been speculated that the fishhook angle, with its temptingly bent shape, may derive from the same source.
=> english; anchor, ankle
answer: answer: [OE] Etymologically, the word answer contains the notion of making a sworn statement rebutting a charge. It comes from a prehistoric West and North Germanic compound *andswarō; the first element of this was the prefix *and- ‘against’, related to German ent- ‘away, un-’ and to Greek anti-, source of English anti-; and the second element came from the same source as English swear.

In Old English, the Germanic compound became andswaru (noun) and andswarian (verb) ‘reply’, which by the 14th century had been reduced to answer. The synonymous respond has a similar semantic history: Latin respondēre meant ‘make a solemn promise in return’, hence ‘reply’. And, as another element in the jigsaw, Swedish ansvar means ‘responsibility’ – a sense echoed by English answerable.
=> swear
apogee: apogee: [17] In its original, literal sense, a planet’s or satellite’s apogee is the point in its orbit at which it is furthest away from the Earth; and this is reflected in the word’s ultimate source, Greek apógaios or apógeios ‘far from the Earth’, formed from the prefix apo- ‘away’ and gē ‘earth’ (source of English geography, geology, and geometry).

From this was derived a noun, apógaion, which passed into English via Latin apogeum or French apogée. The metaphorical sense ‘culmination’ developed in the later 17th century. The opposite of apogee, perigee [16], contains the Greek prefix peri- ‘around’, in the sense ‘close around’, and entered English at about the same time as apogee.
=> geography, perigee
apparel: apparel: [13] Apparel has the same source as apparatus, and originally it had the same meaning, too: until as late as the start of the 18th century, it was used for ‘equipment needed for performing a particular function’. But the sense ‘clothing’ is of equal antiquity in English, and by the 16th century it had become established as the central meaning of the word. Its immediate source was Old French apareil (modern French appareil means chiefly ‘apparatus’), which came from a hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb *appariculāre, an irregular formation based on Latin apparāre ‘make ready’ (see APPARATUS).
=> parent, prepare
archetype: archetype: [17] Archetype comes, via Latin archetypum, from Greek arkhétupon, a nominal use of the adjective arkhétupos, literally ‘firstmoulded’, from túpos ‘mould, model, type’. The Greek prefix arkhe- was based on the noun arkhos ‘chief, ruler’, a derivative of the verb arkhein ‘begin, rule’ (see ARCHIVES). It first entered our language (via Latin archi-) in the Old English period, as arce- (archbishop was an early compound formed with it); and it was reborrowed in the Middle English period from Old French arche-.

Its use has gradually extended from ‘highest in status’ and ‘first of its kind’ to ‘the ultimate – and usually the worst – of its kind’, as in archcraitor. Its negative connotations lie behind its eventual development, in the 17th century, into an independent adjective, first as ‘cunning, crafty’, later as ‘saucy, mischievous’. The same Greek root has provided English with the suffixes -arch and -archy (as in monarch, oligarchy); but here the original meaning of ‘ruling’ has been preserved much more stably.
=> archaic, archives
archives: archives: [17] The Greek verb arkhein meant originally ‘begin’ – and hence ‘be in first place, rule’. This sense development lies behind the diversity in meaning of the words ultimately derived from it in English. Greek arkheion was the official residence of a ruler, a ‘public office’, and its plural, arkheia, was used for ‘public records’; it passed into English via Latin archīa, later archīva, and French archives.

Greek arkhē, on the other hand, had the sense ‘beginning’, and the adjective formed from it, arkhaios, later arkhaikós, ‘ancient’, came through French archaïque into English as archaic [19] (arkhaios is also the source of archaeology [17]). The same split in meaning is evident in the prefix arch-, which comes from the same source: in archetype, for instance, it signifies ‘first’, whereas in archduke it implies ‘highest in rank’.
=> archaic, archetype
arm: arm: [OE] The two distinct senses of arm, ‘limb’ and ‘weapon’, both go back ultimately to the same source, the Indo-European base *ar- ‘fit, join’ (which also produced art and article). One derivative of this was Latin arma ‘weapons, tools’, which entered English via Old French armes in the 13th century (the singular form was virtually unknown before the 19th century, but the verb arm, from Latin armāre via Old French armer, came into the language in the 13th century).

The other strand is represented in several European languages, meaning variously ‘joint’, ‘shoulder’, and ‘arm’: Latin armus ‘shoulder’, for example, and Greek harmos ‘joint’. The prehistoric Germanic form was *armaz, from which developed, among others, German, Dutch, Swedish, and English arm.
=> art, article
armour: armour: [13] Armour comes ultimately from Latin armātūra ‘armour, equipment’, a derivative of the verb armāre ‘arm’ (the direct English borrowing armature [15] originally meant ‘armour’ or ‘weapons’, but the ‘protective’ notion of armour led to its application in the 18th century to ‘metal covering the poles of a magnet’). In Old French armātūra became armeure, and subsequently armure, the form in which it was borrowed into English (the -our ending was artificially grafted on in the 14th century on the model of other Latin-based words such as colour and odour). Armoury is French in origin: Old French armoier ‘coat of arms’ was a derivative of arme ‘weapon’; this became armoirie, which was borrowed into English in the 15th century as armory, meaning ‘heraldry’, but also, owing to their formal similarity, came to be used with the same sense as armour – ‘protective metal suit’ or ‘weapons’.

This was what armoury meant when it came into English in the 14th century (and the sense survived long enough to be used by Wordsworth in a sonnet to ‘Liberty’ 1802: ‘In our halls is hung armoury of invincible knights of old’). The meaning ‘place for keeping weapons’ developed in the 16th century.
=> armature
arrive: arrive: [13] When speakers of early Middle English ‘arrived’, what they were literally doing was coming to shore after a voyage. For arrive was originally a Vulgar Latin compound verb based on the Latin noun rīpa ‘shore, river bank’ (as in the English technical term riparian ‘of a river bank’; and river comes from the same source). From the phrase ad rīpam ‘to the shore’ came the verb *arripāre ‘come to land’, which passed into English via Old French ariver. It does not seem to have been until the early 14th century that the more general sense of ‘reaching a destination’ started to establish itself in English.
=> riparian, river
arrow: arrow: [OE] Appropriately enough, the word arrow comes from the same ultimate Indo- European source that produced the Latin word for ‘bow’ – *arkw-. The Latin descendant of this was arcus (whence English arc and arch), but in Germanic it became *arkhw-. From this basic ‘bow’ word were formed derivatives in various Germanic languages meaning literally ‘that which belongs to the bow’ – that is, ‘arrow’ (Gothic, for instance, had arhwazna).

The Old English version of this was earh, but it is recorded only once, and the commonest words for ‘arrow’ in Old English were strǣl (still apparently in use in Sussex in the 19th century, and related to German strahl ‘ray’) and fiān (which remained in Scottish English until around 1500). Modern English arrow seems to be a 9th-century reborrowing from Old Norse *arw-.
=> arc, arch
as: as: [12] Ultimately, as is the same word as also. Old English alswā ‘in just this way’ was used in some contexts in which modern English would use as, and as it was weakly stressed in such contexts it gradually dwindled to als or ase and finally to as.
=> also
astound: astound: [17] Astound, astonish, and stun all come ultimately from the same origin: a Vulgar Latin verb *extonāre, which literally meant something like ‘leave someone thunderstruck’ (it was formed from the Latin verb tonāre ‘thunder’). This became Old French estoner, which had three offshoots in English: it was borrowed into Middle English in the 13th century as astone or astun, and immediately lost its initial a, producing a form stun; then in the 15th century, in Scotland originally, it had the suffix -ish grafted on to it, producing astonish; and finally in the 17th century its past participle, astoned or, as it was also spelled, astound, formed the basis of a new verb.
=> astonish, stun
attack: attack: [16] Attack reached English via French attaquer from Italian attaccare ‘attach, join’, which, like Old French atachier (source of English attach) was based on a hypothetical Germanic *stakōn (from which English gets stake). Phrases such as attaccare battaglia ‘join battle’ led to attaccare being used on its own to mean ‘attack’. Attach and attack are thus ‘doublets’ – that is, words with the same ultimate derivation but different meanings.
=> attach, stake
attitude: attitude: [17] In origin, attitude is the same word as aptitude. Both come ultimately from late Latin aptitūdō. In Old French this became aptitude, which English acquired in the 15th century, but in Italian it became attitudine, which meant ‘disposition’ or ‘posture’. This was transmitted via French attitude to English, where at first it was used as a technical term in art criticism, meaning the ‘disposition of a figure in a painting’. The metaphorical sense ‘mental position with regard to something’ developed in the early 19th century.
=> aptitude
attorney: attorney: [14] Attorney was formed in Old French from the prefix a- ‘to’ and the verb torner ‘turn’. This produced the verb atorner, literally ‘turn to’, hence ‘assign to’ or ‘appoint to’. Its past participle, atorne, was used as a noun with much the same signification as appointee – ‘someone appointed’ – and hence ‘someone appointed to act as someone else’s agent’, and ultimately ‘legal agent’.

Borrowed into English, over the centuries the term came to mean ‘lawyer practising in the courts of Common Law’ (as contrasted with a solicitor, who practised in the Equity Courts); but it was officially abolished in that sense by the Judicature Act of 1873, and now survives only in American English, meaning ‘lawyer’, and in the title Attorney- General, the chief law officer of a government.
=> turn
autumn: autumn: [14] English acquired autumn from Latin autumnus, partly via Old French autompne. Where Latin got the word from is a mystery; it may have been a borrowing from Etruscan, a long-extinct pre-Roman language of the Italian peninsula. In Old English, the term for ‘autumn’ was harvest, and this remained in common use throughout the Middle Ages; it was not until the 16th century that autumn really began to replace it (at the same time as harvest began to be applied more commonly to the gathering of crops). Fall, now the main US term for ‘autumn’, is 16th-century too.
awe: awe: [13] Old English had the word ege, meaning ‘awe’, but modern English awe is a Scandinavian borrowing; the related Old Norse agi steadily infiltrated the language from the northeast southwards during the Middle Ages. Agi came, like ege, from a hypothetical Germanic form *agon, which in turn goes back to an Indo-European base *agh- (whence also Greek ákhos ‘pain’). The guttural g sound of the 13th-century English word (technically a voiced velar spirant) was changed to w during the Middle English period. This was a general change, but it is not always reflected in spelling – as in owe and ought, for instance, which were originally the same word.
bail: bail: There are now three distinct words bail in English, although they may all be related. Bail ‘money deposited as a guarantee when released’ [14] comes from Old French bail, a derivative of the verb baillier ‘take charge of, carry’, whose source was Latin bājulāre ‘carry’, from bājulus ‘carrier’. Bail ‘remove water’ [13], also spelled bale, probably comes ultimately from the same source; its immediate antecedent was Old French baille ‘bucket’, which perhaps went back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *bājula, a feminine form of bājulus.

The bail on top of cricket stumps [18] has been connected with Latin bājulus too – this could have been the source of Old French bail ‘cross-beam’ (‘loadcarrying beam’), which could quite plausibly have been applied to cricket bails; on the other hand it may go back to Old French bail, baille ‘enclosed court’ (source of English bailey [13]), which originally in English meant the ‘encircling walls of a castle’ but by the 19th century at the latest had developed the sense ‘bar for separating animals in a stable’.
=> bailey
balm: balm: [13] In origin, balm and balsam are the same word. Both come via Latin balsamum from Greek bálsamon, an ‘aromatic oily resin exuded from certain trees’. Its ultimate source may have been Hebrew bāśām ‘spice’. Latin balsamum passed into Old French, and thence into English, as basme or baume (hence the modern English pronunciation), and in the 15th to 16th centuries the Latin l was restored to the written form of the word. The new borrowing balsam, direct from Latin, was made in the 15th century.
=> balsam
baluster: baluster: [17] Etymologically, baluster and banister are the same word. Both come ultimately from Greek balāustion ‘pomegranate flower’, which reached English via Latin balaustium, Italian balaustro, and French balustre. The reason for the application of the term to the uprights supporting a staircase handrail is that the lower part of a pomegranate flower has a double curve, inwards at the top and then bulging outwards at the bottom, similar to the design of some early balusters.

A balustrade [17], from Italian balaustrata via French, is a row of balusters. Already by the mid 17th century a transformation of the l to an n had taken place, producing the parallel banister.
=> balustrade, banister
bamboozle: bamboozle: [18] Bamboozle is a mystery word. It first appears in 1703, in the writings of the dramatist Colly Cibber, and seven years later it was one of a list of the latest buzzwords cited by Jonathan Swift in the Tatler (others included bully, mob, and sham). It is probably a ‘cant’ term (a sort of low-life argot), and may perhaps be of Scottish origin; there was a 17th-century Scottish verb bombaze ‘perplex’, which may be the same word as bombace, literally ‘padding, stuffing’, but metaphorically ‘inflated language’ (the variant form bombast has survived into modern English).
=> bombast
band: band: There are two distinct words band in English, but neither of them goes back as far as Old English. The one meaning ‘group of people’ [15] comes from Old French bande, but is probably Germanic in ultimate origin; the specific sense ‘group of musicians’ developed in the 17th century. Band ‘strip’ [13] comes from Germanic *bindan, source of English bind, but reached English in two quite separate phases.

It first came via Old Norse band, in the sense ‘something that ties or constrains’; this replaced Old English bend, also from Germanic *bindan (which now survives only as a heraldic term, as in bend sinister), but is now itself more or less obsolete, having been superseded by bond, a variant form. But then in the 15th century it arrived again, by a different route: Old French had bande ‘strip, stripe’, which can be traced back, perhaps via a Vulgar Latin *binda, to the same ultimate source, Germanic *bindan.
=> bend, bind, bond, bundle, ribbon
bank: bank: [12] The various disparate meanings of modern English bank all come ultimately from the same source, Germanic *bangk-, but they have taken different routes to reach us. Earliest to arrive was ‘ridge, mound, bordering slope’, which came via a hypothetical Old Norse *banki. Then came ‘bench’ [13] (now obsolete except in the sense ‘series of rows or tiers’ – as in a typewriter’s bank of keys); this arrived from Old French banc, which was originally borrowed from Germanic *bangk- (also the source of English bench).

Finally came ‘moneylender’s counter’ [15], whose source was either French banque or Italian banca – both in any case deriving ultimately once again from Germanic *bangk-. The current sense, ‘place where money is kept’, developed in the 17th century. The derived bankrupt [16] comes originally from Italian banca rotta, literally ‘broken counter’ (rotta is related to English bereave and rupture); in early times a broken counter or bench was symbolic of an insolvent moneylender.

The diminutive of Old French banc was banquet ‘little bench’ (perhaps modelled on Italian banchetto), from which English gets banquet [15]. It has undergone a complete reversal in meaning over the centuries; originally it signified a ‘small snack eaten while seated on a bench (rather than at table)’.
=> bench