英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

activities (n.)[activities 词源字典]: in schoolwork sense, 1923, American English, from activity.[activities etymology, activities origin, 英语词源]
amenities (n.): "creature comforts of a town, house, etc." 1908, plural of amenity. Latin amoena, plural of amoenus, also was used as a noun with a sense of "pleasant places."
cooties (n.): 1917, see cootie.
eighties (n.): 1827 as the years of someone's life between ages 80 and 89; from 1833 as the ninth decade of years in a given century; from 1854 with reference to Fahrenheit temperature. See eighty.
extremities (n.): early 15c., "hands and feet, uttermost parts of the body," plural of extremity. Meaning "a person's last moments" is from c. 1600.
facilities (n.): "opportunities," 1809, plural of facility. Sense of "physical means of doing something" is from 1872.
faculties (n.): "powers or properties of one's mind," also "physical functions," early 16c., plural of faculty.
fifties (n.): 1826 as the years of someone's life between 50 and 59; 1853 as the sixth decade of years in a given century. See fifty.
forties (n.): 1843 as the years of someone's life between 40 and 49; from 1840 as the fifth decade of years in a given century. See forty. Also a designation applied in various places and times to certain oligarchies, ruling classes, or governing bodies.
It is well known that society in the island [Guernsey] is, or perhaps we ought to say, for many years was, divided into two sets, called respectively the Sixties and the Forties, the former composed of the old families and those allied to them, the latter of families of newly-acquired wealth and position. ["The Dublin Review," October 1877]
Roaring Forties are rough parts of the ocean between 40 and 50 degrees latitude.
humanities: 1702; plural of humanity, which was used in English from late 15c. in a sense "class of studies concerned with human culture" (opposed variously at different times to divinity or sciences). Latin literae humaniores, they were those branches of literature (ancient classics, rhetoric, poetry) which tended to humanize or refine.
nineties (n.): 1857 as the years of someone's life between 90 and 99; from 1848 as the tenth decade of years in a given century; 1849 with reference to Fahrenheit temperature. See ninety.
Many still live who remember those days; if the old men cannot tell you the exact date, they will say: 'It were in the nineties;' (etc.) ["Chambers's Journal," Nov. 1, 1856]
In Britain, the naughty nineties was a popular name 1920s-30s for the 1890s, based on the notion of a relaxing of morality and mood in contrast to earlier Victorian times. In U.S., gay nineties in reference to the same decade is attested from 1927, and was the title of a regular nostalgia feature in "Life" magazine about that time.
The long, dreary blue-law Sunday afternoons were periods of the Nineties which no amount of rosy retrospect will ever be able to recall as gay, especially to a normal healthy boy to whom all activities were taboo except G. A. Henty and the bound volumes of Leslie's Weekly of the Civil War. [Life, Sept. 1, 1927]
panties (n.): 1845, "drawers for men" (derogatory), diminutive of pants; meaning "underpants for women or children" first recorded 1908. Panty raid first attested 1952.
pasties (n.): "adhesive patches worn over the nipples by exotic dancers," 1957, plural diminutive from paste (v.).
seventies (n.): 1859 as the years of someone's life between 70 and 79; from 1837 as the eighth decade of years in a given century. See seventy.
sixties (n.): 1848 as the years of someone's life between 60 and 69; 1827 as the seventh decade of years in a given century. See sixty.
thirties (n.): 1827 as the years of someone's life between 30 and 39; 1830 as the fourth decade of years in a given century. See thirty.
titties (n.): 1746, tetties (plural), a nursery or dialect diminutive variant of teats (see teat).
Margery. Come, be quite;--be quite, es zey, a grabbling o' wone's Tetties.---Es wont ha' ma Tetties a grabbled zo ; ner es wont be mullad and foulad.---Stand azide; come, gi' o'er. ["Exmoor Courtship, or, A Suitoring Discourse, in the Devonshire Dialect and Mode, near the forest of Exmoor," 1746]
twenties (n.): 1829 as the years of someone's life between 20 and 29; 1830 as the third decade of years in a given century. See twenty.