英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

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
annual: annual: [14] Annual comes, via Old French annuel, from annuālis, a late Latin adjective based on annus ‘year’ (perhaps as a blend of two earlier, classical Latin adjectives, annuus and annālis – ultimate source of English annals [16]). Annus itself may go back to an earlier, unrecorded *atnos, probably borrowed from an ancient Indo-European language of the Italian peninsula, such as Oscan or Umbrian.

It appears to be related to Gothic athnam ‘years’ and Sanskrit átati ‘go, wander’. The medieval Latin noun annuitās, formed from the adjective annuus, produced French annuité, which was borrowed into English as annuity in the 15th century.
=> annals, anniversary, annuity
average: average: [15] The word average has a devious history. It began in Arabic, as ‘awārīya, the plural of ‘awār, a noun derived from the verb ‘āra ‘mutilate’; this was used as a commercial term, denoting ‘damaged merchandise’. The first European language to adopt it was Italian, as avaria, and it passed via Old French avarie into English (where in the 16th century it acquired its -age ending, probably by association with the then semantically similar damage).

Already by this time it had come to signify the ‘financial loss incurred through damage to goods in transit’, and this passed in the 17th century to the ‘equal sharing of such loss by those with a financial interest in the goods’, and eventually, in the 18th century, to the current (mathematical and general) sense of ‘mean’.
badminton: badminton: [19] The game of ‘battledore and shuttlecock’ has been around for some time (it appears to go back to the 16th century; the word battledore, which may come ultimately from Portuguese batedor ‘beater’, first turns up in the 15th century, meaning ‘implement for beating clothes when washing them’, but by the 16th century is being used for a ‘small racket’; while shuttlecock, so named because it is hit back and forth, first appears in the early 16th century, in a poem of John Skelton’s).

This was usually a fairly informal, improvised affair, however, and latterly played mainly by children; the modern, codified game of badminton did not begin until the 1860s or 1870s, and takes its name from the place where it was apparently first played, Badminton House, Avon, country seat of the dukes of Beaufort. (A slightly earlier application of the word badminton had been to a cooling summer drink, a species of claret cup.)
bat: bat: Bat as in ‘cricket bat’ [OE] and bat the animal [16] come from entirely different sources. Bat the wooden implement first appears in late Old English as batt ‘cudgel’, but it is not clear where it ultimately came from. Some have postulated a Celtic source, citing Gaulish andabata ‘gladiator’, which may be related to English battle and Russian bat ‘cudgel’, but whatever the word’s origins, it seems likely that at some point it was influenced by Old French batte, from battre ‘beat’.

The flying bat is an alteration of Middle English backe, which was borrowed from a Scandinavian language. The word is represented in Old Swedish natbakka ‘night bat’, and appears to be an alteration of an earlier -blaka, as in Old Norse lethrblaka, literally ‘leatherflapper’. If this is so, bat would mean etymologically ‘flapper’, which would be of a piece with other names for the animal, particularly German fledermaus ‘fluttermouse’ and English flittermouse, which remained a dialectal word for ‘bat’ into the 20th century.

It is unusual for the name of such a common animal not to go right back to Old English; in this case the Old English word was hrēremūs, which survived dialectally into the 20th century as rearmouse.
=> battle
bitter: bitter: [OE] Old English biter appears to have come from *bit-, the short-vowel version of *bīt-, source of bite. Its original meaning would thus have been ‘biting’, and although there do not seem to be any traces of this left in the historical record, the sense development to ‘acrid-tasting’ is fairly straightforward (compare the similar case of sharp).

It seems likely that the bitter of ‘bitter end’ comes from a different source altogether, although in its current meaning it appears to have been influenced by the adjective bitter. A bitter was originally a ‘turn of a cable round the bitts’, and a bitt was a ‘post on the deck of a ship for fastening cables to’. It is not clear where bitt came from, although it was probably originally a seafarer’s term from the north German coast, and it may be related to English boat.

Thus in the first instance ‘to the bitter end’ probably meant ‘to the very end, as far as it is possible to go’.
=> bite
blind: blind: [OE] The connotations of the ultimate ancestor of blind, Indo-European *bhlendhos, seem to have been not so much ‘sightlessness’ as ‘confusion’ and ‘obscurity’. The notion of someone wandering around in actual or mental darkness, not knowing where to go, naturally progressed to the ‘inability to see’. Related words that fit this pattern are blunder, possibly from Old Norse blunda ‘shut one’s eyes’, blunt, and maybe also blend.

By the time the word entered Old English, as blind, it already meant ‘sightless’, but ancestral associations of darkness and obscurity were retained (Pepys in his diary, for instance, writes of a ‘little blind [that is, dark] bed-chamber’ 1666), and traces of them remain in such usages as ‘blind entrance’.
=> blend, blunder, blunt
bloomer: bloomer: [19] Bloomers, long loose trousers worn by women, were not actually invented by someone called Bloomer – the credit for that seems to go to a Mrs Elizabeth Smith Miller of New York – but their first advocate was Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–94), a US feminist who strongly promoted their use in the early 1850s as a liberated garment for women. The extent to which this became a cause célèbre can be gauged by the fact that it gave rise to so-called Bloomerism, a movement for ‘rationalizing’ women’s dress; in 1882 Lady Harberton wrote in Macmillan’s Magazine ‘“Bloomerism” still lurks in many a memory’. Bloomer ‘mistake’ is late 19th-century, and apparently originally Australian.

Early commentators derived it, not altogether convincingly, from ‘blooming error’.
bolshevik: bolshevik: [20] Russian bol’ shévik is a derivative of ból’ shiy, the comparative form of the adjective ból’ shoy ‘big’. It was originally applied, at the 1903 congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party, to those party members who wished to go for a ‘big’, or extreme, socialist programme (in contrast with the more moderate Mensheviks – from Russian mén’ shij ‘less’); but since the Bolsheviks outnumbered the Mensheviks, the word soon became interpreted as ‘those in the majority in the party’. The transferred use of the English abbreviation bolshy to mean ‘stubbornly uncooperative’ dates from around 1918.
=> debility
boor: boor: [15] Boor was borrowed into English either from Low German hūr or from Dutch boer (Boer ‘Dutch colonist in South Africa’ is a later, 19thcentury borrowing). When first acquired it meant ‘peasant farmer’, and did not develop its modern explicit connotations of coarseness and rudeness until the 16th century. Its ultimate source was the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’, so its original meaning was something like ‘person who lives in a particular place’ (the related neighbour was literally ‘someone who lives nearby’).

Other English words from the same source include be, booth, bound ‘intending to go’, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre, and the -band of husband.
=> be, boer, booth, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre, husband, neighbour
bound: bound: English has no fewer than four separate words bound. The only one which goes back to Old English is the adjective, meaning ‘obliged’ or ‘destined’, which comes from the past participle of bind (in Old English this was bunden, which survives partially in ‘bounden duty’). Next oldest is the adjective meaning ‘going or intending to go’ [13]. Originally meaning ‘ready’, this was borrowed from Old Norse búinn, the past participle of búa ‘prepare’, which derived from the same ultimate source (the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell, cultivate’) as be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, bye-law, and byre.

The final -d of bound, which appeared in the 16th century, is probably due to association with bound ‘obliged’. Virtually contemporary is the noun bound ‘border, limit’ [13]. It originally meant ‘landmark’, and came via Anglo-Norman bounde from early Old French bodne (source also of Old French borne, from which English got bourn, as in Hamlet’s ‘undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’).

Its ultimate source was medieval Latin bodina, perhaps from a prehistoric Gaulish *bodina. Boundary [17] seems to have been formed from the dialectal bounder, an agent noun derived from the verb bound ‘form the edge or limit of’. Finally, bound ‘leap’ [16] comes from Old French bondir. It originally meant ‘rebound’ in English (rebound [14] began as an Old French derivative of bondir), but this physical sense was a metaphorical transference from an earlier sense related to sound.

Old French bondir ‘resound’ came from Vulgar Latin *bombitīre ‘hum’, which itself was a derivative of Latin bombus ‘booming sound’ (source of English bomb).
=> band, bend, bind, bond, bundle; be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, byre, neighbour; boundary, bourn; bomb, rebound
bower: bower: [OE] A bower was originally simply a place where one lived; the modern connotation of a ‘secluded arbour’ did not become fully established until the 16th century. Old English būr came from West and North Germanic *būraz or *būram, a derivative of the prolific base *bü- ‘dwell’, which also produced be, boor, booth, bound ‘intending to go’, build, burly, byelaw, byre, and the -bour of neighbour.
=> be, boor, booth, build, burly, byre, neighbour
byelaw: byelaw: [13] Although nowadays often subconsciously thought of as being a ‘secondary or additional law’, in fact byelaw has no connection with by. The closest English relatives of its first syllable are be, boor, bower, both, bound ‘about to go’, build, burly, byre, and the second syllable of neighbour. It comes ultimately from the Germanic base *bu- ‘dwell’, and is assumed to have reached English via an unrecorded Old Norse *býlagu ‘town law’, a compound of býr ‘place where people dwell, town, village’, and lagu, source of English law.

It thus originally meant ‘law or regulation which applied only to a particular local community’, rather than the whole country.
=> be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, byre, neighbour
carriage: carriage: [14] Carriage is literally ‘carrying’. It is an Old Northern French derivative of the verb carier, in the sense ‘transport in a vehicle’. At first it meant simply ‘conveyance’ in the abstract sense, but in the 15th century more concrete meaning began to emerge: ‘load, luggage’ (now obsolete) and ‘means of conveyance, vehicle’. By the 18th century the latter had become further specialized to ‘horse-drawn wheeled vehicle for carrying people’ (as opposed to goods).
=> carry
cock: cock: [OE] The word cock is probably ultimately of onomatopoeic origin, imitative of the male fowl’s call (like the lengthier English cock-adoodle- doo [16], French coquerico, and German kikeriki). Beyond that it is difficult to go with any certainty; it reflects similar words in other languages, such as medieval Latin coccus and Old Norse kokkr, but which if any the English word was borrowed from is not clear.

It has been suggested that it goes back to a Germanic base *kuk-, of which a variant was the source of chicken, but typical Old English spellings, such as kok and kokke, suggest that it may have been a foreign borrowing rather than a native Germanic word – perhaps pointing to Germanic coccus. The origin of the interconnected set of senses ‘spout, tap’, ‘hammer of a firearm’, and ‘penis’ is not known; it is possible that it represents an entirely different word, but the fact that German hahn ‘hen’ has the same meanings suggests otherwise.

Of derived words, cocker [19], as in ‘cocker spaniel’, comes from cocking, the sport of shooting woodcock, and cocky [18] is probably based on the notion of the cock as a spirited or swaggering bird, lording it over his hens (there may well be some connection with cock ‘penis’, too, for there is an isolated record of cocky meaning ‘lecherous’ in the 16th century). Cockerel [15] was originally a diminutive form.
=> chicken, cocky
convey: convey: [13] Etymologically, to convey something is to go with it on its way. It comes via Old French conveier from medieval Latin conviāre ‘accompany, escort’, a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and via ‘way’. The verb’s Latin meaning was carried through into English, and though it died out in convey in the 18th century it survives in convoy [14], borrowed from a later French version of the word.
=> convoy, via
dingy: dingy: [18] Nobody is quite sure where dingy comes from, but the very occasional occurrence of ding or dinge as Middle English forms of dung suggests that it may originally have signified ‘dung-coloured’ (although if it came from such a source it might have been expected to rhyme with springy rather than stingy). Dung [OE] itself appears to go back ultimately to an Indo-European base *dhengh- denoting ‘covering’ (relatives include the Lithuanian verb dengti ‘cover’), so its etymological significance is ‘material spread over the earth (for fertilization)’ rather than ‘excrement’.
=> dung
dock: dock: English has no fewer than four distinct words dock. The oldest is the plant-name, which comes from Old English docce. Dock for ships [14] was borrowed from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch docke, which may have come from Vulgar Latin *ductia ‘duct, conduit’, a hypothetical derivative of Latin dūcere ‘lead’ (source of English, duke, educate, etc). Dock ‘cut off’ [14] was originally a verbal application of the noun dock ‘horse’s short tail’, which appears to go back to a Germanic *dukk- ‘bundle’; it may be the source of docket [15]. Dock for prisoners [16] was originally thieves’ slang, borrowed from Flemish dok ‘cage’.
=> duke, educate, induce; docket
elixir: elixir: [14] Although nowadays we think of an elixir as liquid, it probably originated in the Greek word for ‘dry’, xērós (whence English xerox). From this was derived a term for a ‘dry’ powder for treating wounds, xérion, and it has been speculated that this was borrowed by Arabic as (with the definite article al) aliksīr. Medieval alchemists used this as a word for a substance which could change base metals into gold, and also for a substance (according to some the same substance) which could confer immortality (known more fully as the elixir of life).
=> xerox
expedition: expedition: [15] The Latin verb expedīre originally had the rather mundane meaning ‘free one’s feet’ – from a snare, for example It was formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and pēs ‘foot’ (source of English pedal, pedestrian, etc and related to English foot). Its literal meaning was soon lost sight of, progressing via ‘extricate, liberate’ to ‘bring out, make ready’ and ‘put in order, arrange, set right’.

The notion of ‘freeing’ something, enabling it to go forward without hindrance, is reflected in the verb’s English descendant expedite [17]. It also survives in the derived noun expedition, as ‘promptness, dispatch’; in the main, however, this has taken a different semantic route, via ‘sending out a military force’ to ‘long organized journey for a particular purpose’.
=> expedite, foot, pedal, pedestrian
express: express: [14] Something that is expressed is literally ‘pressed out’. The word comes via Old French from Vulgar Latin *expressāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and pressāre ‘press’. Its meaning developed metaphorically from ‘press out’ to ‘form by pressure’ (presumably applied originally to modelling in clay or some similar substance, and subsequently to sculpture and then painting), and finally to ‘make known in words’.

The Vulgar Latin verb was in fact moving in on territory already occupied by its classical Latin forerunner exprimere (source of French exprimer ‘express’ and perhaps of English sprain [17]). The past participle of this was expressus, used adjectivally for ‘prominent, distinct, explicit’. Old French took it over as expres and passed it on to English in the 14th century.

By now its meaning was moving towards ‘intended for a particular purpose’, and in the 19th century it was applied to ‘special’ trains (as in ‘football specials’). It did not take long, however, for this to slip via ‘train for people wanting to go to a particular place, and therefore not stopping anywhere else’ to ‘fast train’. Hence the modern sense of express, ‘fast’, was born.
=> espresso, press, sprain
flake: flake: [14] Flake appears to go back to a prehistoric Germanic source which denoted the splitting of rocks into strata. This was *flak-, a variant of which produced English flaw [14] (which originally meant ‘flake’), the second syllable of whitlow [14] (which probably means etymologically ‘white fissure’), floe [19], and probably flag ‘stone slab’.
=> flag, flaw, floe, whitlow
gammon: gammon: Gammon ‘bacon’ [15] is not related to the gammon [18] of backgammon. It comes from Old Northern French gambon (source also of modern French jambon ‘ham’), which was a derivative of gambe ‘leg’ – hence etymologically ‘leg meat’. This seems to go back ultimately to Greek kampé ‘bend’, which was used particularly as an anatomical term for joints of the body.

Latin took it over as a veterinary expression, gamba, denoting a ‘horse’s hoof’, and it passed in due course into Italian as gamba (whence English gambit, gambol, jamb [14], and the gamba of viola da gamba [18], played between the legs) and into French as jambe, both meaning ‘leg’. The gammon of backgammon comes from Middle English gamen, the ancestor of modern English game (see also BACKGAMMON).
=> gambit, gambol, jamb
gremlin: gremlin: [20] Gremlin originated as Royal Air Force slang, as the name of a mischievous imp that caused malfunctions and crashes. It is first recorded in 1941, but it is said to go back to the early 1920s. It is generally assumed that its latter part comes from goblin, but speculation has been rife and diverse as to the source of its first syllable: from the scholarly (Old English gremman ‘make angry’) to the inventively popular (a blend of goblin with Fremlin, the name of a well-known firm of brewers).
gymnasium: gymnasium: [16] Greek gumnós meant ‘naked’. It was customary in ancient times for athletes to train naked, and so the verb gumnázein came to mean ‘train, practise’ – particularly by doing exercises (whence English gymnast [16]). From the verb was derived the noun gumnásion, which Latin borrowed as gymnasium ‘school’. This academic sense has never caught on to any extent in English (although it is the word’s only application in German); we have preferred to go back to the original athletic connotations.
hand: hand: [OE] Hand is a widespread Germanic word (German, Dutch, and Swedish also have it), but it has no relatives outside Germanic, and no one is too sure where it comes from. Perhaps the likeliest explanation is that it is related to Gothic frahinthan ‘seize, pursue’, Swedish hinna ‘reach’, and English hunt, and that is underlying meaning is ‘body part used for seizing’. The derived adjective handsome [15] originally meant simply ‘easy to handle’. The modern sense ‘attractive’ did not develop until the late 16th century.
=> handsome, hunt
haven: haven: [11] Etymologically, a haven is probably a ‘container’ for ships. The word appears to go back ultimately to Indo-European *kap-, source also of Latin capere ‘seize’ (whence English capable, capture, etc). This produced Old Norse höfn or hafn, which lies behind the modern Scandinavian words for ‘harbour’ (such as Swedish hamn and Danish havn), and was borrowed into late Old English as hæfen, whence modern English haven. Closely related is Dutch haven, from which German borrowed hafen ‘harbour’.
=> capable, captive, capture
hog: hog: [OE] Hog generally means ‘pig’, of course, and has done so since the late Old English period, but it is also a technical term used by farmers and stockmen for a ‘young sheep before its first sheering’, a usage which seems to go back at least to the 14th century, so it could well be that originally the term hog denoted not a type of animal, but its age. Its ultimate source may have been Celtic.
husband: husband: [OE] The Anglo-Saxons used wer ‘man’ (as in werewolf) for ‘husband’, and not until the late 13th century was the word husband drafted in for ‘male spouse’. This had originally meant ‘master of a household’, and was borrowed from Old Norse húsbóndi, a compound formed from hús ‘house’ and bóndi. Bóndi in turn was a contraction of an earlier bóandi, búandi ‘dweller’, a noun use of the present participle of bóa, búa ‘dwell’, This was derived from the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’, which also produced English be, boor, booth, bound ‘intending to go’, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre, and the -bour of neighbour.

The ancient link between ‘dwelling in a place’ and ‘farming the land’ comes out in husbandman [14] and husbandry [14], reflecting a now obsolete sense of husband, ‘farmer’. The abbreviated form hubby dates from the 17th century.
=> be, boor, booth, bower, build, byre, house
lead: lead: [OE] English has two words lead, spelled the same but of course pronounced differently and with a very different history. The verb goes back to a prehistoric West and North Germanic *laithjan. This was derived from *laithō ‘way, journey’ (from which English gets load); so etymologically lead means ‘cause to go along one’s way’. Its Germanic relatives include German leiten, Dutch leiden, Swedish leda, and Danish lede. Lead the metal is probably of Celtic origin.

The prehistoric Celtic word for ‘lead’ was *loudiā, which may have come ultimately from an Indo-European source meaning ‘flow’ (a reference to the metal’s low melting point). Its modern descendants include Irish luaidhe and Gaelic luaidh. It could well have been borrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as *lauda, which would have produced modern German lot ‘solder’, Dutch lood ‘lead’, and English lead.
=> load
loaf: loaf: English has two words loaf. By far the older is ‘portion of bread’ [OE], which goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khlaibaz. This also produced German laib and Danish lev ‘loaf’, and was borrowed, originally into Gothic, from an Old Slavic chleb (source of modern Russian and Polish chleb ‘bread, loaf’). Heavily disguised, loaf forms part of both lady and lord (which etymologically mean respectively ‘loafkneader’ and ‘loaf-guardian’), and it also contributed the first syllable to Lammas [OE], literally ‘loaf-mass’.

The verb loaf ‘dawdle, mooch’ [19] seems to have been a back-formation from loafer, which was probably adapted in 19th-century American English from German landläufer ‘vagabond’, a compound of land ‘land’ and läufer ‘runner’ (to which English leap is related).
=> lady, lord; leap
magpie: magpie: [17] The original name of the magpie was simply pie, which came via Old French from Latin pīca. This is thought to go back ultimately to Indo-European *spi- or *pi-, denoting ‘pointedness’, in reference to its beak (the Latin masculine form, pīcus, was applied to a ‘woodpecker’). Pie arrived in English as long ago as the 13th century, but not until the 16th century do we begin to find pet-forms of the name Margaret applied to it (one of the earliest was maggot-pie).

By the 17th century magpie had become the institutionalized form. Some etymologists consider that the term for the edible pie comes from the bird’s name, based on a comparison of the miscellaneous contents of pies with the board of assorted stolen treasures supposedly accumulated by the magpie.
=> pie
margin: margin: [14] Margin comes from margin-, the stem form of Latin margō ‘margin’. This appears to go back to the same ultimate source as English mark (which originally meant ‘boundary’). The now archaic synonym marge [15] was borrowed from the Latin word’s French descendant.
=> march, mark
neck: neck: [OE] Neck originally meant only the ‘back or nape of the neck’ (that is what its modern German relative nacken denotes, and in Old English times the usual word for ‘neck’ in general was heals). It seems to go back to a prehistoric Indo-European base *knoksignifying ‘high point, ridge’, which also produced Irish cnoc ‘hill’. The use of the verb neck for ‘kiss and cuddle’ dates back at least to the early 19th century.
petrel: petrel: [17] The petrel, a gull-like seabird, is alleged to have been named after the apostle Peter, supposedly inspired by the resemblance between the petrel’s habit of flying close to the surface of the sea and touching it with its feet, and Peter’s reported feat of walking on the water, as reported in Matthew 14:29 – ‘And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus’
philately: philately: [19] When a Monsieur Herpin, a French stamp-collector, was looking for an impressive and learned-sounding term for his hobby, he was hampered by the fact that the Greeks and Romans did not have postage stamps, and therefore there was no classical term for them. So he decided to go back a stage beyond stamps, to the days of franking with a post-mark. In France, such letters were stamped franc de port ‘carriage-free’, and the nearest he could get to this in Greek was atelés ‘free of charge’, a compound formed from a- ‘not’ and télos ‘payment’.

Using the Greek prefix phil- ‘loving, love of’ (as in philosophy and a wide range of other English words) he created philatélie, which made its first appearance in English in 1865.
rector: rector: [14] A rector is etymologically a ‘ruler’. The word comes via Old French rectour from Latin rēctor ‘governor’, a derivative of the verb regere ‘govern, rule’ (from which English gets regent, region, etc). It carried its original meaning with it into English, with reference both to Roman governors in the ancient world and to God as ‘ruler’ of the universe (Sir Matthew Hale in 1676 referred to God as the ‘great dispenser or permitter and rector of all the events in the world’), but by the 18th century it had largely become restricted to the more specialized senses ‘clergyman in charge of a parish’ and ‘head of a college’.
=> regent, regiment, region
rise: rise: [OE] Not surprisingly, rise and raise are closely related. Both go back to a common prehistoric Germanic ancestor meaning ‘go up’. This reached English directly as rise, while its causative derivative, meaning ‘cause to go up’, has given English raise, and also rear. The derived arise is of long standing. It is not clear what the word’s ultimate ancestry may be; some have linked it with Latin rīvus ‘stream’ (source of English rivulet), from the notion of a stream ‘rising’ in a particular place.
=> raise, rear
scapegoat: scapegoat: [16] In biblical times the ritual of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, included a ceremony involving two goats: one was sacrificed to God, and the other was sent off into the wilderness as the symbolic bearer of the people’s sins. This second goat was termed ‘azāzēl. That appears to have been a proper name, said in Jewish tradition to be that of a demon to whom the goat was sent, and may be linked with Aziz, the name of a Canaanite god.

Later commentators, however, interpreted it as equivalent to Hebrew ‘ēz ōzēl, which means ‘goat that departs’. In the Latin of the Vulgate, that was rendered as caper emissarius (whence the French expression bouc émissaire, literally ‘goat sent forth’), and William Tindale, in his 1530 translation of the Bible, expressed it as scapegoat (the first part, scape, is a shortened form of escape).

The modern metaphorical application to someone who takes the blame for others’ faults dates from the early 19th century.
scoop: scoop: [14] Scoop appears to go back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic base *skap- which originally denoted ‘chop or dig out’ (it was later extended metaphorically to ‘form’, and in that sense has given English shape). It had a variant form *skōp-, amongst whose derivatives was West Germanic *skōpō. This evolved into Middle Dutch and Middle Low German schōpe, which was used for the bucket of a dredge, water-wheel, etc, and English borrowed it early in the 14th century. The journalistic sense ‘story’ reported in advance of competitors’ emerged in the USA in the 1870s.
=> shape
send: send: [OE] English shares send with the other Germanic languages – German senden, Dutch zenden, Swedish sönda, and Danish sende. These all go back to a prehistoric ancestor *santhjan, which originated as a causative derivative of a base denoting ‘go, journey’ – so etymologically send means ‘cause to go’.
sign: sign: [13] Sign comes via Old French signe from Latin signum ‘mark’. It already had the meaning ‘mark denoting something’ in Latin, and it was in this sense that it entered English, gradually ousting the native word token. The verb sign goes back ultimately to the Latin derivative signāre ‘mark’. English acquired it in the 14th century, and first used it for ‘write one’s name’ in the 15th century.

Other related forms in English include assign [14], consign [15], design, ensign [14], insignia [17], resign [14] (in which the prefix re- has the force of ‘un-’), seal ‘wax impression, fastening’, signal, signatory [17], signature [16], signet [14], significant [16], and signify [13].

The ultimate source of Latin signum is uncertain. It was once assumed to go back to the Indo-European base *sek- ‘cut’ (source of English saw, section, etc), as if it denoted etymologically a ‘cut mark’, but now Indo-European *seq- ‘point out’, hence ‘say, tell’ (source of English say) is viewed as a more likely ancestor.
=> assign, consign, design, ensign, insignia, resign, seal, signal, signature, significant
silent: silent: [16] Silent comes from the present participle of Latin silēre ‘be silent’. It is not clear what the origins of this were, although it seems likely to be related in some way to Gothic anasilan, a verb which denoted the wind dying down, and also perhaps to Latin dēsinere ‘stop’ (in which case its underlying meaning would be ‘stop speaking’). The Latin-derived noun silentium actually reached English much earlier than the adjective, as silence [13].
sink: sink: [OE] Sink is a general Germanic verb, with relatives in German sinken, Dutch zinken, Swedish sjunka, and Danish synke. But where their common Germanic ancestor came from is not known. These days, sink means both ‘go below water’ and ‘cause to go below water’, but originally it was used only for the former. There was a separate but closely related verb, sench, for ‘cause to sink’, which died out in the 14th century. The noun sink [15] originally denoted a pit ‘sunk’ in the ground for receiving water.
slope: slope: [15] The noun slope did not emerge until the 17th century. Originally it was an adverb, short for the now defunct aslope. This is generally supposed to go back to an unrecorded Old English *āslopean, an adverbial use of the past participle of āslūpan ‘slip away’. Such a scenario would appear to fit in well with the colloquial slope off ‘leave’, but in fact this usage did not emerge until the early 19th century, in America.
smell: smell: [12] Smell is something of a mystery word. It is assumed to go back to an Old English *smiellan or *smyllan, but no such verb has been recorded, nor have any related forms in other languages been pin-pointed for certain. One theory links it with English smoulder [14] and the related Dutch smeulen ‘smoulder’, as if the notion of ‘smelling’ arose from the idea of breathing vapour or smoke through the nose.
stamina: stamina: [17] Etymologically, stamina is the plural of stamen ‘male reproductive part of a flower’ [17]. The ultimate source of both is Latin stāmen ‘thread of woven cloth’, which went back to Indo-European *stāmen-, a derivative of the base *stā- ‘stand’ (source also of English stand). The application to the plant-part appears to go back to the Roman naturalist Pliny, who used stāmen for the stamens of a sort of lily, which resembled threads of cloth. The Latin plural stāmina was borrowed into English in the metaphorical sense ‘threads of human life, vital capacities’, and by the 18th century it had broadened out to ‘vigour’.
=> stamen, stand
thing: thing: [OE] The ancestral meaning of thing is ‘time’: it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *thingam, which was related to Gothic theihs ‘time’, and may come ultimately from the Indo- European base *ten- ‘stretch’ (source of English tend, tense, etc). In Germanic it evolved semantically via ‘appointed time’ to ‘judicial or legislative assembly’.

This was the meaning it originally had in English, and it survives in other Germanic languages (the Icelandic parliament is known as the Althing, literally ‘general assembly’). In English, however, it moved on through ‘subject for discussion at such an assembly’ to ‘subject in general, affair, matter’ and finally ‘entity, object’. (The ancient meaning ‘assembly’ is preserved in fossilized form in English husting, etymologically a ‘house assembly’).
=> husting
threshold: threshold: [OE] The first element of threshold is identical with English thresh [OE]. This seems to go back ultimately to a prehistoric source that denoted ‘making noise’ (the apparently related Old Church Slavonic tresku meant ‘crash’, and Lithuanian has trešketi ‘crack, rattle’). By the time it reached Germanic, as *thresk-, it was probably being used for ‘stamp the feet noisily’, and it is this secondary notion of ‘stamping’ or ‘treading’ that lies behind threshold – as being something you ‘tread’ on as you go through a door. Thresh by the time it reached English had specialized further still, to mean ‘separate grains from husks by stamping’, and this later evolved to simply ‘separate grains from husks’. Thrash [OE], which originated as a variant of thresh, has taken the further semantic step to ‘beat, hit’.

It is not known where the second element of threshold came from.
=> thrash, thresh
twelve: twelve: [OE] Etymologically, twelve probably means ‘two over’ (just as eleven means ‘one over’). It appears to go back to a prehistoric Germanic compound formed from *twa- ‘two’ and *lif- (a relative of English leave), which also produced German zwölf, Dutch twaalf, Swedish tolf, and Danish tolv. If so, its underlying meaning is ‘two left (over ten)’, hence ‘ten plus two’.
=> leave, two