quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- acquire



[acquire 词源字典] - acquire: [15] The original source of acquire, Latin acquīrere, meant literally ‘get something extra’. It was formed from the verb quaerere ‘try to get or obtain’ (from which English gets query, the derivatives enquire and require, and, via the past participial stem, quest and question) plus the prefix ad-, conveying the idea of being additional. English borrowed the word via Old French acquerre, and it was originally spelled acquere, but around 1600 the spelling was changed to acquire, supposedly to bring it more into conformity with its Latin source.
=> query, quest, question[acquire etymology, acquire origin, 英语词源] - acre




- acre: [OE] Acre is a word of ancient ancestry, going back probably to the Indo-European base *ag-, source of words such as agent and act. This base had a range of meanings covering ‘do’ and ‘drive’, and it is possible that the notion of driving contributed to the concept of driving animals on to land for pasture. However that may be, it gave rise to a group of words in Indo- European languages, including Latin ager (whence English agriculture), Greek agros, Sanskrit ájras, and a hypothetical Germanic *akraz.
By this time, people’s agricultural activities had moved on from herding animals in open country to tilling the soil in enclosed areas, and all of this group of words meant specifically ‘field’. From the Germanic form developed Old English æcer, which as early as 1000 AD had come to be used for referring to a particular measured area of agricultural land (as much as a pair of oxen could plough in one day).
=> act, agent, agriculture, eyrie, onager, peregrine, pilgrim - catch




- catch: [13] Originally catch meant ‘chase, hunt’ (and in fact it is etymologically related to the English word chase). However, it remarkably quickly moved on to be applied to the next logical step in the procedure, ‘capture’, and by the early 16th century ‘chase’ was becoming obsolete (although it remains the only sense of related words in other languages, such as French chasser and Italian cacciare).
Looked at from another point of view, however, catch might be said to be harking back to its ultimate roots in Latin capere ‘take’, source of English capture. Its past participle, captus, provided the basis for a new verb captāre ‘try to seize, chase’. In Vulgar Latin this became altered to *captiāre, source of Old French chacier (whence English chase) and the corresponding Anglo-Norman cachier (whence English catch).
=> capture, chase - cater




- cater: [16] Cater is related to French acheter ‘buy’, and originally meant ‘buy provisions’. It comes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *accaptāre, a compound verb formed from the Latin prefix ad- ‘to’ and the verb captāre ‘try to seize’ (source of English catch and chase). This provided the basis for the Anglo-Norman agent noun acatour ‘buyer, purveyor’, which gave English the now obsolete acater.
Losing its a-, this became cater, which until the early 17th century was the word for what we would now call a ‘caterer’. At around the same time cater began to be used as a verb; the first known example of this is in Shakespeare’s As You Like It II, iii: ‘He that doth the ravens feed, yea providently caters for the sparrow’.
=> capture, catch, chase - chase




- chase: There are two distinct words chase in English, although they may come from the same ultimate source. The commoner, and older, ‘pursue’ [13], comes via Old French chacier from Vulgar Latin *captiāre (which also produced Anglo-Norman cachier, source of English catch). This was an alteration of Latin captāre ‘try to seize’, which was formed from captus, the past participle of capere ‘take’ (source of a wide range of English words, including capture, capable, and cater, and distantly related to heave).
The other, ‘engrave’ [14], may come from Old French chas ‘enclosure’, which in turn came from Latin capsa ‘box’ (source of English case and related ultimately to Latin capere). The semantic connection would seem to be between putting a jewel in its setting, or ‘enclosure’, and decorating jewellery or precious metal by other means such as engraving or embossing.
=> capable, capture, case, catch, cater, heave, purchase - corollary




- corollary: [14] Latin corolla was a ‘little crown or garland’, typically made from flowers (the word was a diminutive form of corōna ‘crown’, source of English crown). Hence a corollārium was ‘money paid for such a garland’, and by extension ‘gratuity’. Later it developed the meaning ‘deduction’, applied in geometry to a subsidiary proposition dependent on a previous proof, the sense in which it was first borrowed into English. (English acquired corolla itself in the 17th century.)
=> coronary, crown - hunt




- hunt: [OE] Hunt is an ancient word, probably traceable back to an Indo-European *kend-, which also produced Swedish hinna ‘reach’. Its original Old English descendant was hentan ‘seize’, of which huntian (source of modern English hunt) was a derivative. Etymologically, therefore, hunt means ‘try to seize’.
=> hand - milk




- milk: [OE] Far back into prehistory, milk traces its ancestry to an Indo-European base *melg-, which denoted ‘wiping’ or ‘stroking’. The way of obtaining milk from animals is to pull one’s hand down their teats, and so *melg- came in due course to be used for ‘milk’. It passed into Germanic as *melk-, which formed the basis of the noun *meluks, and this over the centuries has become German milch, Dutch and Danish melk, Swedish mjölk, and English milk.
The now virtually obsolete adjective milch ‘giving milk’ [OE] (as in milch cow) goes back to a Germanic derivative of *meluks. Another derivative of Indo-European *melgwas the Latin verb mulgēre ‘milk’, which has given English emulsion and promulgate.
=> emulsion, promulgate - ombudsman




- ombudsman: [20] The word ombudsman, denoting an ‘investigator of public complaints’, was introduced into English from Swedish, and was first used as a quasi-official term in the 1960s: New Zealand was the first Englishspeaking country to introduce such a post, in 1962, and Britain followed four years later. The Swedish word is a descendant of Old Norse umbothsmathr, literally ‘administration-man’; and umboth was originally a compound of um ‘about’ and both ‘command’ (a relative of English bid).
=> bid - purchase




- purchase: [13] To purchase something is etymologically to ‘hunt it down’. It comes from Old French pourchacier ‘pursue’, hence ‘try to obtain’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix pour- and chacier ‘pursue’ (source of English chase). It arrived in English meaning ‘obtain’. This sense had virtually died out by the end of the 17th century, but not before it had evolved in the 14th century to ‘buy’.
=> chase - -al (3)




- word-forming element in chemistry to indicate "presence of an aldehyde group" (from aldehyde). The suffix also is commonly used in forming the names of drugs, often narcotics (such as barbital), a tendency that apparently began in German and might have been suggested by chloral (n.).
- acetone (n.)




- colorless volatile liquid, 1839, literally "a derivative of acetic acid," from Latin acetum "vinegar" (see acetic) + Greek-based chemical suffix -one, which owes its use in chemistry to this word.
- aid (n.)




- early 15c., "war-time tax," also "help, support, assistance," from Old French aide, earlier aiudha "aid, help, assistance" (9c.), from Late Latin adjuta, from fem. past participle of Latin adiuvare (past participle adiutus) "to give help to," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + iuvare "to help" (see adjutant). Meaning "thing by which assistance is given" is recorded from c. 1600. Meaning "material help given by one country to another" is from 1940.
- benzodiazepine (n.)




- 1934, from benzo-, word-forming element used in chemistry to indicate presence of a benzene ring fused with another ring, + di + azo- + epine, a suffix denoting a seven-membered ring, from (h)ep(ta) (see seven).
- bowery (n.)




- "farm, plantation," from Dutch bowerij "homestead farm" (from the same source as bower); a Dutch word probably little used in America outside New York, and there soon limited to one road, The Bowery, that ran from the built-up part of the city out to the plantations in middle Manhattan, attested from 1787; the city's growth soon overran it, and it was noted by 1840 as a commercial district notorious for squalor, rowdiness, and low life.
Bowery Boy, the typical New York tough of a generation or two ago, named from the street which he chiefly affected .... He rather prided himself on his uncouthness, his ignorance, and his desperado readiness to fight, but he also loved to have attention called to his courage, his gallantry to women, his patriotic enthusiasm, and his innate tenderness of heart. A fire and a thrilling melodrama called out all his energies and emotions. [Walsh, 1892]
- brinkmanship (n.)




- also brinksmanship, with parasitic -s- and construction based on salesmanship, sportsmanship, etc.; from brink (the image of the brink of war dates to at least 1840).
Associated with the policies advocated by John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), U.S. Secretary of State 1953-1959. The word springs from Dulles' philosophy as outlined in a magazine interview [with Time-Life Washington bureau chief James Shepley] early 1956:
The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.
The quote was widely criticized by the Eisenhower Administration's opponents, and the first attested use of brinkmanship seems to have been in such a context, a few weeks after the magazine appeared, by Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson criticizing Dulles for "boasting of his brinkmanship, ... the art of bringing us to the edge of the nuclear abyss." - catch (v.)




- c. 1200, "to take, capture," from Anglo-French or Old North French cachier "catch, capture" (animals) (Old French chacier "hunt, pursue, drive (animals)," Modern French chasser "to hunt;" making it a doublet of chase (v.)), from Vulgar Latin *captiare "try to seize, chase" (also source of Spanish cazar, Italian cacciare), from Latin captare "to take, hold," frequentative of Latin capere "to take, hold" (see capable).
Senses in early Middle English also included "chase, hunt," which later went with chase (v.). Of infections from 1540s; of fire from 1734; of sleep, etc., from early 14c. Related: Catched (obsolete); catching; caught.
Meaning "act as a catcher in baseball" recorded from 1865. To catch on "apprehend" is 1884, American English colloquial. To catch (someone's) eye is first attested 1813, in Jane Austen. Catch as catch can first attested late 14c. - epoxy (n.)




- 1916, in reference to certain chemical compounds, from epi- + first element of oxygen. Epoxy- is used as a prefix in chemistry to indicate an oxygen atom that is linked to two carbon atoms of a chain, thus forming a "bridge" ("intramolecular connection" is one of the chemical uses of epi-). Resins from epoxides are used as powerful glues. Hence the verb meaning "to bond with epoxy" (1965). Related: Epoxied.
- export (v.)




- by 1610s, "carrying out of a place;" perhaps from late 15c., from Latin exportare "to carry out, bring out; send away, export," from ex- "away" (see ex-) + portare "carry" (see port (n.1)). The sense of "send out (commodities) from one country to another" is first recorded in English 1660s. Related: Exported; exporting; exporter.
- fish (v.)




- Old English fiscian "to fish, to catch or try to catch fish" (cognates: Old Norse fiska, Old High German fiscon, German fischen, Gothic fiskon), from the root of fish (n.). Related: Fished; fishing.
- formulae (n.)




- plural of formula.
Men who try to speak what they believe, are naked men fighting men quilted sevenfold in formulae. [Charles Kingsley, "Letters," 1861]
- get (v.)




- c. 1200, from Old Norse geta (past tense gatum, past participle getenn) "to obtain, reach; to be able to; to beget; to learn; to be pleased with," a word of very broad meaning, often used almost as an auxilliary verb, also frequently in phrases (such as geta rett "to guess right"). This is from Proto-Germanic *getan (cognates: Old Swedish gissa "to guess," literally "to try to get"), from PIE root *ghend-, also *ghed- "seize, take" (cognates: Greek khandanein "to hold, contain," Lithuanian godetis "be eager," second element in Latin prehendere "to grasp, seize," Welsh gannu "to hold, contain," Old Church Slavonic gadati "to guess, suppose").
Old English, as well as Dutch and Frisian, had the verb almost exclusively in compounds (such as begietan, "to beget;" forgietan "to forget"). Vestiges of an Old English cognate *gietan remain obliquely in modern past participle gotten and original past tense gat, also Biblical begat.
In compound phrases with have and had it is grammatically redundant, but often usefully indicates possession, obligation, or necessity, or gives emphasis. The word and phrases built on it take up 29 columns in the OED 2nd edition; Century Dictionary lists seven distinct senses for to get up.
"I GOT on Horseback within ten Minutes after I received your Letter. When I GOT to Canterbury I GOT a Chaise for Town. But I GOT wet through before I GOT to Canterbury, and I HAVE GOT such a Cold as I shall not be able to GET rid of in a Hurry. I GOT to the Treasury about Noon, but first of all I GOT shaved and drest. I soon GOT into the Secret of GETTING a Memorial before the Board, but I could not GET an Answer then, however I GOT Intelligence from the Messenger that I should most likely GET one the next Morning. As soon as I GOT back to my Inn, I GOT my Supper, and GOT to Bed, it was not long before I GOT to Sleep. When I GOT up in the Morning, I GOT my Breakfast, and then GOT myself drest, that I might GET out in Time to GET an Answer to my Memorial. As soon as I GOT it, I GOT into the Chaise, and GOT to Canterbury by three: and about Tea Time, I GOT Home. I HAVE GOT No thing particular for you, and so Adieu." [Philip Withers, "Aristarchus, or the Principles of Composition," London, 1789, illustrating the widespread use of the verb in Modern English]
As a command to "go, be off" by 1864, American English. Meaning "to seize mentally, grasp" is from 1892. Get wind of "become acquainted with" is from 1840, from earlier to get wind "to get out, become known" (1722). To get drunk is from 1660s; to get religion is from 1772; to get better "recover health" is from 1776. To get ready "prepare oneself" is from 1890; to get going "begin, start doing something" is by 1869 in American English; get busy "go into action, begin operation" is from 1904. Get lost as a command to go away is by 1947. To get ahead "make progress" is from 1807. To get to (someone) "vex, fret, obsess" is by 1961, American English (get alone as "to puzzle, trouble, annoy" is by 1867, American English). To get out of hand originally (1765) meant "to advance beyond the need for guidance;" sense of "to break free, run wild" is from 1892, from horsemanship. To get on (someone's) nerves is attested by 1970. - globe-trotter (n.)




- also globetrotter, "world traveler," especially one who goes from country to country around the world with the object of covering ground or setting records, 1871, from globe + agent noun from trot (v.). As a verb, globetrot is recorded from 1883. Related: Globe-trotting.
- rebut (v.)




- c. 1300, "to thrust back," from Old French reboter, rebuter "to thrust back," from re- "back" (see re-) + boter "to thrust, hit" (see butt (v.)). Legalese sense of "try to disprove, refute by evidence or argument" is from 1817. Related: Rebutted; rebutting.
- restrain (v.)




- mid-14c., from stem of Old French restreindre "press, push together; curb, bridle; bandage" (12c.), from Latin restringere "draw back tightly, confine, check" (see restriction). Related: Restrained; restraining.
That which we restrain we keep within limits; that which we restrict we keep within certain definite limits; that which we repress we try to put out of existence. [Century Dictionary, 1902]
- Rube Goldberg (adj.)




- 1940, from the U.S. cartoonist Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970) who devised fantastically complex gadgetry to accomplish simple tasks. His British counterpart was Heath Robinson (1872-1944).
- tackle (v.)




- mid-14c., "entangle, involve," from tackle (n.). Sense of "to furnish (a ship) with tackles" is from c. 1400; meaning "to harness a horse" is recorded from 1714. The meaning "lay hold of, come to grips with, attack" is attested from 1828, described by Webster that year as "a common popular use of the word in New England, though not elegant;" figurative sense of "try to deal with" (a task or problem) is from 1840. The verb in the sporting sense first recorded 1867, "to seize and stop." Related: Tackled; tackling.
- topaz (n.)




- colored crystalline gem, late 13c., from Old French topace (11c.), from Latin topazus (source also of Spanish topacio, Italian topazio), from Greek topazos, topazion, of obscure origin. Pliny says it was named for a remote island in the Red or Arabian Sea, where it was mined, the island so named for being hard to find (from Greek topazein "to divine, to try to locate"); but this might be folk etymology, and instead the word might be from the root of Sanskrit tapas "heat, fire." In the Middle Ages used for almost any yellow stone. To the Greeks and Romans, possibly yellow olivine or yellow sapphire. In modern science, fluo-silicate of aluminum. As a color name from 1908.
- tout (v.)




- 1700, thieves' cant, "to act as a lookout, spy on," from Middle English tuten "to peep, peer," probably from a variant of Old English totian "to stick out, peep, peer," from Proto-Germanic *tut- "project" (cognates: Dutch tuit "sprout, snout," Middle Dutch tute "nipple, pap," Middle Low German tute "horn, funnel," Old Norse tota "teat, toe of a shoe"). The sense developed to "look out for jobs, votes, customers, etc., to try to get them" (1731), then "praise highly in an attempt to sell" (1920). Related: Touted; touting.
- tribute (n.)




- mid-14c., "stated sum of money or other valuable consideration paid by one ruler or country to another in acknowledgment of submission or as the price of peace or protection," from Anglo-French tribute, Old French tribut and directly from Latin tributum "tribute, a stated payment, a thing contributed or paid," noun use of neuter of tributus, past participle of tribuere "to pay, assign, grant," also "allot among the tribes or to a tribe," from tribus (see tribe). Sense of "offering, gift, token" is first recorded 1580s.
- try (v.)




- c. 1300, "examine judiciously, discover by evaluation, test;" mid-14c., "sit in judgment of," also "attempt to do," from Anglo-French trier (13c.), from Old French trier "to pick out, cull" (12c.), from Gallo-Roman *triare, of unknown origin. The ground sense is "separate out (the good) by examination." Sense of "subject to some strain" (of patience, endurance, etc.) is recorded from 1530s. To try on "test the fit of a garment" is from 1690s; to try (something) on for size in the figurative sense is recorded by 1946. Try and instead of try to is recorded from 1680s.
- zircon (n.)




- 1794, circon, also jargon, new name given in chemistry to jacinth, from French zircone and German Zirkon (compare French jargon, Italian giargone), from Arabic zarqun "cinnabar, bright red," from Persian zargun "gold-colored," from Avestan zari- "gold-colored," from zar "gold."
- nobble




- "Try to influence or thwart by underhand or unfair methods", Mid 19th century: probably a variant of dialect knobble, knubble 'knock, strike with the knuckles'.
- mamaguy




- "Try to deceive (someone), especially with flattery or untruths", From Spanish mamar gallo 'make a monkey of'.