英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

cool [cool 词源字典]: cool: [OE] Cool comes from the same source as cold, namely Indo-European *gel-, *gol- (from which English also gets congeal, gel, and jelly). The Germanic descendants of this Indo- European base were *kal-, *kōl-. From these were derived the Germanic adjective *kōluz, which passed into Old English as cōl. Its use for ‘fashionable, hip’ is mid-20th-century, but its nonchalant application to large sums of money is of surprisingly long standing: ‘I just made a couple of bets with him, took up a cool hundred, and so went to the King’s Arms’, John Vanbrugh and Colly Cibber, The Provok’d Husband 1728.
=> cold, congeal, gel, jelly[cool etymology, cool origin, 英语词源]
barbarian (adj.): mid-14c., from Medieval Latin barbarinus (source of Old French barbarin "Berber, pagan, Saracen, barbarian"), from Latin barbaria "foreign country," from Greek barbaros "foreign, strange, ignorant," from PIE root *barbar- echoic of unintelligible speech of foreigners (compare Sanskrit barbara- "stammering," also "non-Aryan," Latin balbus "stammering," Czech blblati "to stammer").

Greek barbaroi (n.) meant "all that are not Greek," but especially the Medes and Persians. Originally not entirely pejorative, its sense darkened after the Persian wars. The Romans (technically themselves barbaroi) took up the word and applied it to tribes or nations which had no Greek or Roman accomplishments. The noun is from late 14c., "person speaking a language different from one's own," also (c. 1400) "native of the Barbary coast;" meaning "rude, wild person" is from 1610s.
brake (n.1): mid-15c., "instrument for crushing or pounding," from Middle Dutch braeke "flax brake," from breken "to break" (see break (v.)). The word was applied to many crushing implements and to the ring through the nose of a draught ox. It was influenced in sense by Old French brac, a form of bras "an arm," thus "a lever or handle," which was being used in English from late 14c., and applied to "a bridle or curb" from early 15c. One or the other or both took up the main modern meaning of "stopping device for a wheel," first attested 1772.
hers: c. 1300, hires, from her; a double possessive. Possessive pronouns in Modern English consist of the predicative (mine, thine, his, ours, yours, theirs) that come after the subject, and the attributive (my, thy, his, her, our, your, their) that come before it. In Old English and early Middle English, they were identical. To keep speech fluid, speakers began to affix an -n to the end of my and thy before words that began with vowels. This began late 13c. in the north of England, and by 1500 was standard.

Then the predicative and attributive pronouns split, and the pronouns in that class usually took up -s, the regular affix of possession. But the non-standard speech of the Midlands and south of England extended -n throughout (hisn, hern, yourn), a habit attested from 14c. and more regular than the standard speech, which mixes -s and -n.
Spitalfields: district east of London, famed for the work of refugee Huguenot weavers who took up residence there, from St. Mary Spital, from spital, a Middle English shortened form of hospital, sometimes also spittle, hence spittle-man "one who lives in a hospital."
spout (n.): late 14c., from spout (v.). Cognate with Middle Dutch spoit, North Frisian spütj. It was the slang term for the lift in a pawnbroker's shop, the device which took up articles for storage, hence figurative phrase up the spout "lost, hopeless, gone beyond recall" (1812).