英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

autograph: autograph: [17] Greek auto- was a prefixal use of the adjective autós, meaning ‘same, self’. Many of the commonest auto- words in English, including autograph itself and also autocrat [19], automatic [18] (a derivative of automaton [17], which was formed from a hypothetical base *men- ‘think’ related to mental and mind), autonomy [17], and autopsy [17] (originally meaning ‘eye-witness’, and derived from Greek optós ‘seen’, source of English optic), are original Greek formations.

But the 19th and particularly the 20th century have seen a mass of new coinages, notably in scientific and technical terminology, including such familiar words as autism, autobiography, autoerotic, autofocus, autogiro, autoimmune, automotive, autosuggestion, and of course automobile (originally a French formation of the 1870s). Automobile has itself, of course, given rise to a completely new use for the auto- prefix, with the general connotation of ‘motorized transport’, as in autobus, autocar, autocycle, and the German autobahn.
beast: beast: [13] Beast replaced deer as the general word for ‘animal’ in the 13th century (deer of course remained in use for antlered animals of the family Cervidae), and was itself replaced by animal in the 17th century. It entered English via Old French beste from Latin bēstia (source of English bestial [14]).
=> bestial
brothel: brothel: [14] Originally, brothel was a general term of abuse for any worthless or despised person (John Gower, in his Confessio Amantis 1393, writes: ‘Quoth Achab then, there is one, a brothel, which Micheas hight [who is called Micheas]’); it was a derivative of the Old English adjective brothen ‘ruined, degenerate’, which was originally the past participle of the verb brēothan ‘deteriorate’ (possibly a relative of brēotan ‘break’, which may be connected with brittle).

In the late 15th century we have the first evidence of its being applied specifically to a ‘prostitute’. Thence came the compound brothel-house, and by the late 16th century this had been abbreviated to brothel in its current sense.
castor: castor: There are two distinct words castor in English. The older originally meant ‘beaver’ [14], and was early used with reference to a bitter pungent substance secreted by glands near the beaver’s anus, employed in medicine and perfumery. The term castor oil [18] probably comes from the use of this oil, derived from the seed of a tropical plant, as a substitute for castor in medicine.

The more recent castor [17] is simply a derivative of the verb cast; it was originally (and still often is) spelled caster. Its use for sprinkling or ‘throwing’ sugar is obvious (the term castor sugar dates back to the mid 19th century), but its application to a ‘small swivelling wheel’ is less immediately clear: it comes from a now obsolete sense of the verb, mainly nautical, ‘veer, turn’: ‘Prepare for casting to port’, George Nares, Seamanship 1882.
=> cast
commerce: commerce: [16] Commerce is etymologically related to market, merchandise, merchant, and mercury. It comes, perhaps via French commerce, from Latin commercium ‘trade’, a compound noun formed from the collective prefix com- ‘together’ and merx ‘merchandise’. The adjective commercial is 17th-century, its nominal use for ‘broadcast advertisement’ 20thcentury.
=> market, merchant, mercury
concrete: concrete: [14] In origin, something concrete is something that has ‘grown together’. The word comes, via Old French concret, from Latin concrētus, the past participle of concrēscere ‘grow together’, hence ‘harden’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and crēscere ‘grow’ (source also of English crescent, increase, and accrue). Its original application in English was fairly general – referring to that which is solid or material; its use for the building material did not emerge until the early 19th century.
=> accrue, crescent, decrease, increase
cool: 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
country: country: [13] Etymologically, the meaning of country is virtually ‘surroundings’. It originated in medieval Latin contrātus ‘lying on the opposite side’, an adjective formed from the proposition contrā ‘against, opposite’. This was used in the phrase terra contrāta ‘land opposite or before one, spread out around one’, and soon broke free to act as a noun in its own right.

In Old French it became cuntree, the form in which it was borrowed into English. Its original notion of ‘area of land’ had quickly become narrowed down to ‘district controlled or occupied by a particular people’, hence ‘nation’, but its use for ‘rural areas as opposed to cities’ does not seem to have developed until the 16th century. The compound countryside originated in Scotland and northern England, probably in the 17th century.
decimate: decimate: [17] Decimate is a cause célèbre amongst those who apparently believe that words should never change their meanings. The original general signification of its Latin source, the verb decimāre, was the removal or destruction of one tenth (it was derived from Latin decem ‘ten’), and it may perhaps strike the 20th century as odd to have a particular word for such an apparently abstruse operation.

It does, however, arise out of two very specific procedures in the ancient world: the exaction of a tax of one tenth (for which indeed English has the ultimately related word tithe), and the practice in the Roman army of punishing a body of soldiers guilty of some crime such as mutiny by choosing one in ten of them by lot to be put to death. Modern English does not perhaps have much use for a verb with such specialized senses, but the general notion of impassive and indiscriminate slaughter implied in the Roman military use led, apparently as early as the mid- 17th century, to the modern sense ‘kill or destroy most of’.
=> decimal, ten
ellipse: ellipse: [18] Greek élleipsis meant literally ‘defect, failure’. It was a derivative of elleípein, literally ‘leave in’, hence ‘leave behind, leave out, fall short, fail’, a compound verb formed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and leípein ‘leave’ (which is related to English loan and relinquish). It was borrowed into English in the 17th century as ellipsis in the grammatical sense ‘omission of a word or words’, but its mathematical use for an ‘oval’ (enshrined in the form ellipse, borrowed via French ellipse and Latin ellīpsis) comes from the notion that a square drawn on lines passing vertically and laterally through the centre of an ellipse ‘falls short’ of the entire length of the lateral line.
=> loan, relinquish
engine: engine: [13] The underlying etymological meaning of engine is ‘natural talent’. It comes ultimately from Latin ingenium (source also of English ingenious) which was formed from the base *gen- (as in genetic) denoting ‘reproduction’ and meant literally ‘skill or aptitude one was born with’. Abstract meanings related to this (such as ‘ingenuity’ and ‘genius’) have now died out in English (which acquired the word via Old French engin), but what remains is a more specific strand of meaning in the Latin word – ‘clever device, contrivance’.

Originally this was an abstract concept (often used in a bad sense ‘trick, cunning ruse’), but as early as about 1300 there is evidence of a more concrete application in English to a ‘mechanical device’. The word’s modern use for ‘machine producing motion’ originates in its early 19thcentury application to the steam engine. Engineer [14] comes via Old French engigneor from medieval Latin ingeniātōr, a derivative of the verb ingeniāre ‘contrive’, which in turn came from ingenium.
=> gin, ingenious
enigma: enigma: [16] Enigma comes, via Latin, from Greek aínigma ‘riddle, obscure statement’. This was a derivative of the verb ainíssesthai ‘talk in riddles’, which in turn came from the noun ainos ‘tale, story’. Its modern English use for ‘something puzzling’ dates from the early 17th century.
exploit: exploit: [14] Latin explicāre (source of English explicate and explicit) meant ‘unfold’. A Vulgar Latin descendant of its past participle was *explictum ‘something unfolded’, which passed into Old French as exploit or esplait. In the process, the original sense of ‘unfolding’ had developed through ‘bringing out, development’ and ‘advantage, success’ to ‘achievement’.

In the case of the English noun, it is the latter meaning which has survived, and in fact originally the verb too denoted ‘achieve, accomplish’. This seems to have died out in the 18th century, however, and when the verb reappears in the 19th century it is closer to the earlier ‘develop’ in meaning, particularly as applied to ‘getting the most out of’ natural resources. The modern derogatory sense ‘use for one’s own selfish ends’ emerged from this.
=> explicit, fold, ply
fact: fact: [16] A fact is literally ‘something that is done’. It comes from Latin factum ‘deed’, a noun based on the past participle of facere ‘do’. This verb, a distant relative of English do, has contributed richly to English vocabulary, from obvious derivatives like factitious [17] and factitive [19] to more heavily disguised forms such as difficult, effect, fashion, feasible, feature, and fetish, not to mention the -fic suffix of words like horrific and pacific, and the related verbal suffix -fy.

To begin with, English adopted the word in its original Latin sense ‘deed’, but this now survives only in legal contexts, such as ‘accessory after the fact’. There is sporadic evidence in classical Latin, however, of its use for ‘something that happens, event’, and this developed in post-classical times to produce ‘what actually is’, the word’s main modern sense in French fait and Italian fatto as well as in their English relative fact. Feat is essentially the same word as fact, filtered through Old French.
=> difficult, do, effect, fashion, feasible, feature, fetish
farrier: farrier: [16] Etymologically, a farrier is a ‘worker in iron’. The word comes via Old French ferrier from Latin ferrārius, a derivative of ferum. This meant literally ‘iron’ (it is the source of English ferrous [19], and may well have been borrowed from a Semitic source), and already in classical times was being applied metaphorically to implements made from iron, particularly ‘swords’. Its use for ‘horseshoe’, on which the meaning of farrier is based, is a medieval Latin development.
=> ferrous
fasten: fasten: [OE] Etymologically, fasten means ‘make fast’; it goes back ultimately to Germanic *fastuz, source of English fast. From this was derived a verb *fastinōjan, which passed into Old English as fæstnian. To begin with this seems only to have been used in the metaphorical sense ‘settle, establish’. The more concrete ‘attach’ is not recorded until the 12th century, and the earliest reference to its use for locking or bolting a door comes from as late as the mid-18th century.
=> fast
fiddle: fiddle: [OE] Like its distant cousin violin, fiddle comes ultimately from the name of a Roman goddess of joy and victory. This was Vītula, who probably originated among the pre-Roman Sabine people of the Italian peninsula. A Latin verb was coined from her name, vītulārī, meaning ‘hold joyful celebrations’, which in post-classical times produced the noun vītula ‘stringed instrument, originally as played at such festivals’.

In the Romance languages this went on to give viola, violin, etc, but prehistoric West and North Germanic borrowed it as *fithulōn, whence German fiedel, Dutch vedel, and English fiddle. In English, the word has remained in use for the instrument which has developed into the modern violin, but since the 16th century it has gradually been replaced as the main term by violin, and it is now only a colloquial or dialectal alternative.

The sense ‘swindle’ originated in the USA in the mid-to-late 19th century.
=> violin
grand: grand: [16] The original Latin word for ‘big’ was magnus (as in magnify, magnitude, etc). However, it also had grandis. This not only denoted great physical size; it also had connotations of moral greatness or sublimity, and in addition often carried the specialized meaning ‘full-grown’. This last, together with a possibly etymologically connected Greek brénthos ‘pride’ and Old Church Slavonic gradi ‘breast’ suggest that its underlying meaning may be ‘swelling’.

French (grand) and Italian and Spanish (grande) have taken it over as their main adjective for ‘big’, but in English it remains a more specialized word, for things or people that are ‘great’ or ‘imposing’. Its use for denoting family relationships separated by two generations, as in grandmother, was adopted from Old French, and goes back, in the case of grandame and grandsire, to the 13th century, well before the independent adjective grand itself was borrowed.

But the underlying notion is as old as the Greeks and Romans, who used mégas and magnus in the same way.
heathen: heathen: [OE] Etymologically, a heathen is ‘someone who lives on the heath’ – that is, someone who lives in a wild upcountry area, and is uncivilized and savage (the word was derived in prehistoric Germanic times from *khaithiz ‘heath’, and is also represented in German heide, Dutch heiden, and Swedish and Danish heden). Its specific use for ‘person who is not a Christian’ seems to have been directly inspired by Latin pāgānus (source of English pagan), which likewise originally meant ‘countrydweller’. (Etymologically, savages too were to begin with dwellers in ‘wild woodland’ areas, while civilized or urbane people lived in cities or towns.) The now archaic hoyden ‘high-spirited girl’ [16] was borrowed from Dutch heiden ‘heathen’.
=> heath, hoyden
henchman: henchman: [14] Early spellings such as hengestman and henxstman suggest that this word is a compound of Old English hengest ‘stallion’ and man ‘man’. There are chronological difficulties, for hengest seems to have gone out of general use in the 13th century, and henchman is not recorded until the mid-14th century, but it seems highly likely nevertheless that the compound must originally have meant ‘horse servant, groom’.

The word hengest would no doubt have remained alive in popular consciousness as the name of the Jutish chieftain Hengist who conquered Kent in the 5th century with his brother Horsa; it is related to modern German hengst ‘stallion’, and goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European kənku-, which denoted ‘jump’. Henchman remained in use for ‘squire’ or ‘page’ until the 17th century, but then seems to have drifted out of use, and it was Sir Walter Scott who revived it in the early 19th century, in the sense ‘trusty right-hand man’.
hierarchy: hierarchy: [14] Greek hierós meant ‘sacred, holy’. Combined with -arkhēs ‘ruling’ (as in English archbishop) it produced hierárkhēs ‘chief priest’. A derivative of this, hierarkhíā, passed via medieval Latin hierarchia and Old French ierarchie into Middle English as ierarchie (the modern spelling was introduced on the basis of the Latin form in the 16th century).

At first the word was used in English for the medieval categorization of angels (into cherubs and seraphs, powers and dominions, etc), and it was not until the early 17th century that it was applied to the clergy and their grades and ranks. The metaphorical use for any graded system soon followed.
hot dog: hot dog: [19] This term for a cooked sausage or frankfurter in a bun has its origins in the mid- 19th-century use of dog as an American slang term for a sausage (perhaps an allusion to the sausage’s often dubious contents). By the 1890s hot dog was Yale University slang for a cooked sausage bought at a fast-food stall, and by 1900 it was in widespread use for the whole deal, bun and all. Since then it has never looked back. (The widely repeated story that the term was invented by the US cartoonist ‘Tad’ Dorgan in the early 1900s is quite untrue.)
husk: husk: [14] Etymologically, a husk is probably a ‘little house’. It seems to have been adapted from Middle Dutch hūskijn, a diminutive form of hūs ‘house’ – the notion being, of course, that it ‘houses’ seeds or fruits. The derivative husky was coined in the 16th century; its use for ‘hoarse’ comes from the idea of having dry husks in the throat (the husky dog [19] is an entirely different word, probably an alteration of Eskimo).
=> house
iconoclast: iconoclast: [17] The original iconoclasts were members of the Eastern Orthodox church in the 8th and 9th centuries AD who were opposed to the use or worship of religious images. In more extreme cases their opposition took the form of smashing icons (the word iconoclast comes via medieval Latin from medieval Greek eikonoklástēs, a compound formed from eikón ‘icon’ and the verb klan ‘break’).

The term subsequently came to be applied to extreme Protestants in England in the 16th and 17th centuries who expressed their disapproval of graven images (and popish practices in general) in similar ways. Its general use for an ‘attacker of orthodoxy’ dates from the early 19th century.
impeach: impeach: [14] Impeach has nothing to do with peaches. In fact it is closely related to impede, and indeed originally meant ‘impede’ in English. Both verbs comes ultimately from Latin pēs ‘foot’. Impede [17] goes back to Latin impedīre, a compound verb based on pēs which originally meant literally ‘tie the feet together’. Impeach, on the other hand, comes via Old French empecher (ancestor of modern French empêcher) from late Latin impedicāre ‘fetter, entangle, ensnare’, a compound verb based on the noun pedica ‘fetter’, which itself came from the same base as pēs.

Its original meaning ‘impede, prevent’ survived in English until the late 17th century (‘a Ditch of sufficient breadth, and depth, to impeach the Assaults of an Enemy’, William Leybourn. Cursus Mathematicus 1690). Its use for ‘charge, accuse’ arose in the 14th century from an erroneous association with Latin impetere ‘attack, accuse’ (source of English impetuous).
=> foot, impede, pedal
inferno: inferno: [19] Etymologically, an inferno is that which is ‘below’. The word comes ultimately from Latin infernus, meaning ‘situated below, subterranean’. In ancient mythology, the nether regions were the abode of the dead, so inferna came to be used as the equivalent of Dis, and the Greek Hades. In Jewish and Christian belief, this basement area was the realm of evil spirits, and consequently in late Latin infernus came to cover much the same semantic ground as English hell.

In Italian this became inferno, and English adopted it (strongly under the influence of the Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy) in that form in the early 19th century. Its metaphorical use for ‘intense heat’, inspired by the stereotypical flames of hell, is a comparatively recent development. Meanwhile the related infernal [14] (from late Latin infernalis) had long since taken up residence in English, and by the 18th century was being used as an expletive (as in ‘their infernal cheek’).
introduce: introduce: [16] Introduce means etymologically ‘lead inside’. It was borrowed from Latin intrōdūcere ‘lead in’, a compound verb formed from the prefix intrō- ‘in, inside’ and dūcere ‘lead’ (source of English duct, duke, educate, produce, etc). Of its main secondary meanings, ‘use for the first time, originate’ emerged in Latin but ‘make known personally to others’ seems to have been a later development.
=> duct, duke, educate, produce
lavatory: lavatory: [14] The notion of ‘washing’ was represented in prehistoric Indo-European by *lou-, which produced Greek loúein ‘wash’, English lather, and Latin lavāre ‘wash’. This last has been a fruitful source of English words, not all of them as obvious as lavatory, which originally meant simply ‘place or vessel for washing’ (its use for a ‘room containing a water closet’ appears to date from the 19th century).

Among its relatives are deluge [14], latrine [17] (from a contraction of Latin lavātrīna), laundry, lava [18] (from Italian lava, which originally denoted a ‘stream caused by sudden rain’), lavish [15] (from the metaphorical notion of an ‘outpouring’), and lotion [14]. And from Latin luere, the form taken on by lavāre after prefixes, we get ablution [14] and dilute [16]. Lavender [15] looks as though it should belong to the same family, but no actual connection has ever been demonstrated.
=> ablution, deluge, dilute, lather, latrine, laundry, lava, lavish, lotion
maquis: maquis: [20] The French word maquis literally means ‘undergrowth, scrub’, and its use for the resistance fighters who opposed German occupation during World War II is an allusion to their hide-outs in scrubby country. It is a borrowing, via Corsica, of Italian macchia. This originally meant ‘spot’ (it came from Latin macula ‘spot, stain’, source of English immaculate and mail ‘armour’), but was transferred metaphorically to a ‘bush or thicket seen from the distance as a spot on a hillside’.
=> immaculate, mail
match: match: There are two unrelated words match in English, of which the older is ‘counterpart’ [OE]. This goes back to an Old English gemæcca ‘mate’, whose ancestry can be traced to a prehistoric *gamakjon, a word based on the collective prefix *ga- and *mak- ‘fit’ (source of English make). Its etymological meaning is thus ‘fitting well together’.

The use of the word as a verb emerged in the 14th century. Match ‘ignitable stick’ [14] originally meant ‘wick’. It comes via Old French meiche from Latin myxa ‘lamp nozzle’. The first record of its modern use for ‘ignitable stick’ comes from 1831 (the synonymous lucifer is exactly contemporary, but had virtually died out by the end of the 19th century).
=> make
miniature: miniature: [16] ‘Smallness’ is a purely secondary semantic development as far as miniature is concerned, inspired by its accidental similarity to the min- element of words like minimum and minute. It in fact comes ultimately from Latin minium ‘red lead’. Red lead was used in ancient and medieval times for making a sort of red ink with which manuscripts were decorated, and so the derived medieval Latin verb miniāre was coined for ‘illuminate a manuscript’.

Italian took this over as miniare, and derived miniatura ‘painting, illustrating’ from it. It referred particularly to the small paintings in manuscripts, and when English borrowed it as miniature it was soon broadened out to any ‘small image’. Association with minute, etc led by the early 18th century to its adjectival use for ‘small’.
minute: minute: [14] Latin minūtus ‘small’ was a derivative of the verb minuere ‘lessen’ (source of English diminish), which itself was based on the element min- ‘small’. In medieval Latin the term pars minuta prima ‘first small part’ was applied to a ‘sixtieth part of a whole’ – originally of a circle, later of an hour (likewise a second was originally a secunda minuta, a sixtieth of a sixtieth).

Hence minūta itself came to be used for the unit of time, and that was the original meaning of minute when English acquired it via Old French. Its use for ‘note, record’ may derive from the Latin expression minuta scriptura, which denoted the writing of a rough draft in ‘small’ writing. The adjective minute ‘small’ was an independent 15th-century borrowing direct from Latin.

A French descendant of minūtus is the adjective menu ‘small’; its extended sense ‘detailed’ has led to its noun use for ‘list’, and the expression menu de repas ‘meal list’ has given English menu [19]. Other members of the extended family of English words that come ultimately from Latin min- include métier, mince, minim [15], minimum [17], minister, minor, minstrel, minuet [17], minus, minuscule [18], and minutia [15].
=> menu, métier, mince, minister, minor, minstrel, minus, minuscule
nylon: nylon: [20] English has a long history of naming fabrics after their places of origin: denim from Nîmes, for instance, muslin from Mosul, and calico from Calicut in India. It is not surprising, therefore, that the popular myth has grown up that nylon took its name from New York (ny-) and London (-lon). The truth, however, is more prosaic. Du Pont, nylon’s inventors, took the element -on (as in cotton and rayon) and simply added the arbitrary syllable nyl-. The word was coined in 1938, and its plural was in use for ‘nylon stockings’ as early as 1940.
obtuse: obtuse: [16] The etymological meaning of obtuse is ‘beaten down, blunted’. It comes from Latin obtūsus, the past participle of obtundere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- ‘against’ and tundere ‘beat’ (source of English contusion and related to toil). The notion of being ‘dulled’ or ‘blunted’ led to its being used for ‘having dulled wits, stupid’, and the idea of bluntness also lies behind its geometrical use for an angle of more than 90 degrees (as contrasted with the ‘sharp’ acute angle).
=> contusion, toil
oil: oil: [12] Around the Mediterranean in ancient times the only sort of oil encountered was that produced by pressing olives, and so ‘oil’ was named after the olive. The Greek word for ‘olive’ was elaíā, and from it was derived elaíon ‘olive oil’. This passed into Latin as oleum, and reached English via Old French oile. By now it had begun to be applied to similar substances pressed from nuts, seeds, etc, but its specific modern use for the mineral oil ‘petroleum’ is a much more recent, essentially 19th-century development.
=> olive
parable: parable: [14] The etymological idea underlying parable is of ‘drawing analogies’. It comes via Old French parabole and Latin parabola from Greek parabolé, a derivative of parabállein. This was a compound verb formed from pará ‘beside’ and bállein ‘throw’ (source of English ballistic [18]). It meant ‘put beside’, hence ‘compare’.

Its derived noun parabolé was used for a ‘comparison’ or ‘analogy’, and hence in the Christian tradition for an ‘allegorical or moral narrative’. The geometrical sense of the term, acquired by English directly from Latin as parabola [16], comes from the notion of ‘comparability’ or ‘parallelism’ between the section of a cone that forms the parabola and an element in the cone’s surface.

Etymologically the same word is parole [17], which reached English via Vulgar Latin *paraula and Old French parole ‘word’. Its use for ‘conditional release’ is based on the notion of the prisoner giving his ‘word of honour’ to be of good behaviour.
=> ballistic, palaver, parabola, parliament, parole
pilot: pilot: [16] Pilot comes ultimately from a Greek word for ‘oar’, pēdón, which went back to the same Indo-European base as produced English foot. Its plural, pēdá, was used for ‘rudder’, and from this was derived medieval Greek *pēdótēs ‘rudder, helmsman’. This in turn was borrowed into medieval Latin as pedota, which was later altered to pilotus – whence, via French, English pilot.

For most of its career in English, of course, the word has been used in connection with the steering of ships, but in the middle of the 19th century it began to be applied to the steering of balloons, and the first record of its modern use for ‘flier of an aeroplane’ comes from 1907.
=> foot
plaster: plaster: [OE] Like plastic, plaster comes ultimately from the Greek verb plássein ‘mould’. Combination with the prefix en- ‘in’ produced emplássein ‘daub on, plaster’. From its past participle emplastós was derived émplastron ‘medicinal application to the skin’, which reached Latin as emplastrum. Medieval Latin shortened it to plastrum, which Old English adopted as plaster. Its use for a ‘soft substance spread on walls, etc’ was introduced via Old French plastre in the 14th century.
=> plastic
plastic: plastic: [16] Plastic is etymologically a ‘mouldable’ substance. The word comes via French plastique and Latin plasticus from Greek plastikós ‘fit for moulding’, a derivative of the verb plássein ‘mould’ (source also of English plasma [18] and plaster). Up until the 20th century its main use in English was as an adjective, meaning ‘pliable’. The first record of its use for a ‘synthetic material made from organic compounds’ comes from 1909. The trade-name Plasticine was coined from it in the 1890s.
=> plasma, plaster
prick: prick: [OE] Prick is a word of the Low German area, which English shares with Dutch (prik). Its ultimate origins, though, are not known. The earliest record of its use for ‘penis’ is from the late 16th century, and in the 16th and 17th centuries women employed it as a term of endearment – a usage which did not go down well in all quarters: ‘One word alone hath troubled some, because the immodest maid soothing the young man, calls him her Prick. He who cannot away with this, instead of “my Prick”, let him write “my Sweetheart”,’ H M, Colloquies of Erasmus 1671. Prickle [OE] is a diminutive derivative.
=> prickle
raspberry: raspberry: [17] The origins of the word raspberry are a mystery. At first, the fruit was known simply as raspes or raspis (recorded in an Anglo-Latin text as early as the 13th century), and the -berry was not tacked on until the early 17th century – but no one knows where raspes came from. Its use for a ‘rude noise made by blowing’, first recorded in the 1890s, comes from rhyming slang raspberry tart ‘fart’.
redolent: redolent: [14] Etymologically, something that is redolent of something ‘smells’ of it. The word comes ultimately from Latin olēre ‘smell’, which was derived from the same base as produced English odour. Combination with the prefix re- ‘back’ resulted in redolēre ‘emit a smell’, from whose present participle English gets redolent. The Latin word was mainly used to convey the notion ‘smelling of something’, and this lies behind the English word’s metaphorical use for ‘suggestive, reminiscent, evocative’, first recorded in the early 19th century.
=> odour
rhododendron: rhododendron: [17] A rhododendron is etymologically a ‘rose-tree’. The term comes from Greek rhodódendron, a compound formed from rhódon ‘rose’ (apparently a relative of English rose) and déndron ‘tree’ (source of English dendrite [18] and dendrochronology [20]). This denoted the ‘oleander’, an application it retained through Latin rhododendron into English. The first record of its use for the plant we now know as the rhododendron dates from the mid 17th century.
=> rose
satellite: satellite: [16] Satellite comes via French satellite from Latin satelles ‘attendant, escort’, which itself probably went back to Etruscan satnal. Its use for a ‘body orbiting a planet’ is first recorded in English in 1665, and comes from the astronomer Johannes Kepler’s application of Latin satelles to the moons of Jupiter.
scruple: scruple: [16] Latin scrūpus meant ‘sharp stone’, and the notion of something troubling the mind like a painful stone in the shoe led to its metaphorical use for ‘anxiety, doubt, particularly over a moral issue’. Both meanings were carried over into the diminutive form scrūpulus, which also came to be used for a very small unit of weight. This passed into English via French scrupule as scruple, on the way losing the literal sense ‘small stone’.
second: second: [13] Latin secundus originally meant ‘following’ – it was derived from sequī ‘follow’, source of English sequence – and only secondarily came to be used as the ordinal version of ‘two’. English acquired it via Old French second, employing it to take over part of the role of other, which until then had denoted ‘second’ as well as ‘other’.

Its noun use for ‘sixtieth of a minute’, first recorded in English in the 14th century, comes from medieval Latin secunda minuta, literally ‘second minute’ – a minute was a ‘sixtieth part’, and so a ‘second minute’ was a ‘sixtieth of a sixtieth’. Latin secundus was also used for ‘favourable’, and in this sense the verb secundāre was formed from it, meaning ‘favour’.

English acquired it via French seconder as second ‘support’ [16]. (The differently pronounced second ‘transfer to a different job’ [19] comes from the French phrase en second ‘in second rank’.)
=> sect, sequal, sequence, sue, suit
shift: shift: [OE] Old English sciftan meant ‘arrange’ (it came from a prehistoric Germanic base *skip-, which also produced German schichten ‘arrange in layers, pile up’, and traces of its original meaning survive in make-shift [16], denoting something arranged or contrived for lack of anything better). Its modern meaning ‘move’ emerged in the 14th century, via an intermediate ‘change’. The notion of ‘change’ underlies the use of the noun shift for ‘woman’s slip’, which evolved from an earlier ‘change of clothing’, and also its use for a ‘particular working period’, marked by a ‘change’ of workers at beginning and end.
shrimp: shrimp: [14] The shrimp’s name appears to echo its small size. It was probably borrowed from some Low German source, and its possible relatives include Middle Low German schrempen ‘shrink, wrinkle’ and modern German schrumpfen ‘shrivel, shrink’. Its use for a ‘tiny person’ is virtually as old in English as its application to the crustacean, and probably goes right back to its original source.
singular: singular: [14] Singular comes ultimately from Latin singulāris ‘alone of its kind’, a derivative of singulus ‘single’. It reached English via Old French singuler as singuler (the modern spelling singular is a 17th-century relatinization). The word’s grammatical application, and its use for ‘remarkable, extraordinary’, both developed in Latin.
=> single
soil: soil: Soil ‘ground’ [14] and soil ‘make dirty’ [13] are distinct words. The former comes from Anglo-Norman soil ‘land’. This was the formal descendant of Latin solium ‘seat’, but its use for ‘land’ appears to have arisen from confusion with Latin solum ‘ground’. Etymologically, to soil something virtually amounts to making a pigsty of it. The verb comes via Old French souiller from Vulgar Latin *suculāre ‘make dirty’, a derivative of Latin suculus ‘little pig’. This was a diminutive form of sūs ‘pig’, a relative of English sow. French souiller may also be the source of English sully [16].
=> sow, sully