英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

accolade [accolade 词源字典]: accolade: [17] Accolade goes back to an assumed Vulgar Latin verb *accollāre, meaning ‘put one’s arms round someone’s neck’ (collum is Latin for ‘neck’, and is the source of English collar). It put in its first recorded appearance in the Provençal noun acolada, which was borrowed into French as accolade and thence made its way into English. A memory of the original literal meaning is preserved in the use of accolade to refer to the ceremonial striking of a sword on a new knight’s shoulders; the main current sense ‘congratulatory expression of approval’ is a later development.
=> collar[accolade etymology, accolade origin, 英语词源]
ague: ague: [14] In its origins, ague is the same word as acute. It comes from the Latin phrase febris acuta ‘sharp fever’ (which found its way into Middle English as fever agu). In the Middle Ages the Latin adjective acuta came to be used on its own as a noun meaning ‘fever’; this became aguē in medieval French, from which it was borrowed into English. From the end of the 14th century ague was used for ‘malaria’ (the word malaria itself did not enter the language until the mid 18th century).
=> acute
along: along: [OE] The a- in along is related to the prefix anti-, and the original notion contained in the word is of ‘extending a long way in the opposite direction’. This was the force of Old English andlang, a compound formed from and- ‘against, facing’ (whose original source was Greek anti- ‘against’) and lang ‘long’. The meaning gradually changed via simply ‘extending a long way’, through ‘continuous’ and ‘the whole length of something’ to ‘lengthwise’.

At the same time the and- prefix was gradually losing its identity: by the 10th century the forms anlong and onlong were becoming established, and the 14th century saw the beginnings of modern English along. But there is another along entirely, nowadays dialectal. Used in the phrase along of ‘with’ (as in ‘Come along o’me!’), it derives from Old English gelong ‘pertaining, dependent’.

This was a compound formed from the prefix ge-, suggesting suitability, and long, of which the notions of ‘pertaining’ and ‘appropriateness’ are preserved in modern English belong.
=> long
ambassador: ambassador: [14] Appropriately enough, ambassador is a highly cosmopolitan word. It was borrowed back and forth among several European languages before arriving in English. Its ultimate source appears to be the Indo- European root *ag- ‘drive, lead’, whose other numerous offspring include English act and agent. With the addition of the prefix *amb- ‘around’ (as in ambidextrous), this produced in the Celtic languages of Gaul the noun ambactos, which was borrowed by Latin as ambactus ‘vassal’.

The Latin word then found its way into the Germanic languages – Old English had ambeht ‘servant, messenger’, Old High German ambaht (from which modern German gets amt ‘official position’) – from which it was later borrowed back into medieval Latin as ambactia. This seems to have formed the basis of a verb, *ambactiāre ‘go on a mission’ (from which English ultimately gets embassy), from which in turn was derived the noun *ambactiātor.

This became ambasciator in Old Italian, from which Old French borrowed it as ambassadeur. The word had a be wildering array of spellings in Middle English (such as ambaxadour and inbassetour) before finally settling down as ambassador in the 16th century.
=> embassy
beech: beech: [OE] Like many other tree-names, beech goes back a long way into the past, and is not always what it seems. Among early relatives Latin fāgus meant ‘beech’ (whence the tree’s modern scientific name), but Greek phāgós, for example, referred to an ‘edible oak’. Both come from a hypothetical Indo-European *bhagos, which may be related to Greek phagein ‘eat’ (which enters into a number of English compounds, such as phagocyte [19], literally ‘eating-cell’, geophagy [19], ‘earth-eating’, and sarcophagus).

If this is so, the name may signify etymologically ‘edible tree’, with reference to its nuts, ‘beech mast’. The Old English word bēce’s immediate source was Germanic *bōkjōn, but this was a derivative; the main form bōkō produced words for ‘beech’ in other Germanic languages, such as German buche and Dutch beuk, and it survives in English as the first element of buckwheat [16], so named from its three-sided seeds which look like beech nuts.

It is thought that book may come ultimately from bōk- ‘beech’, on the grounds that early runic inscriptions were carved on beechwood tablets.
=> book, buckwheat, phagocyte, sarcophagus
behave: behave: [15] To ‘behave oneself’ originally meant literally to ‘have oneself in a particular way’ – have being used here in the sense ‘hold’ or ‘comport’. The be- is an intensive prefix. Of particular interest is the way in which the word preserves in aspic the 15th-century pronunciation of have in stressed contexts. For much of its history behave has been used with reference to a person’s bearing and public dignity (‘He was some years a Captain, and behaved himself with great gallantry in several engagements’, Richard Steele, Spectator Number 2, 1711), and the modern connotations of propriety, of ‘goodness’ versus ‘naughtiness’, are a relatively recent, 19th-century development.

The noun behaviour [15] was formed on analogy with the verb from an earlier haviour, a variant of aver ‘possession’ [14], from the nominal use of the Old French verb aveir ‘have’.
=> have
bizarre: bizarre: [17] Bizarre can probably be traced back to Italian bizzarro, of unknown origin, which meant ‘angry’. It passed into Spanish as bizarro, meaning ‘brave’, and then found its way into French, where its meaning gradually mutated from ‘brave’ to ‘odd’ – which is where English got it from. It used to be thought that the French word might have come from Basque bizarra ‘beard’ (the reasoning being that a man with a beard must be a brave, dashing fellow), which would have made bizarre almost unique as a word of Basque origin in English (the only genuine one in everyday use now is the acronymic name ETA, standing for Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna ‘Basque Homeland and Liberty’), but this is now not thought likely.
body: body: [OE] For a word so central to people’s perception of themselves, body is remarkably isolated linguistically. Old High German had potah ‘body’, traces of which survived dialectally into modern times, but otherwise it is without known relatives in any other Indo- European language. Attempts have been made, not altogether convincingly, to link it with words for ‘container’ or ‘barrel’, such as medieval Latin butica. The use of body to mean ‘person in general’, as in somebody, nobody, got fully under way in the 14th century.
caribou: caribou: [17] Caribou is the name of a close North American relative of the reindeer, and it refers literally to the way in which the animal scratches at the snow with its hooves to find the grass, moss, etc that it eats. It comes from Mi’kmaq galipu (Mi’kmaq is an Algonquian language of eastern Canada), meaning ‘snowshoveller’, which in Canadian French became caribou.
dirge: dirge: [16] Dirge is an anglicization of Latin dīrige, the imperative singular of dīrigere ‘guide’ (source of English direct). It is the first word in the Latin version of Psalm 5, verse 8: Dirige, Domīne, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam ‘Direct, O Lord, my God, my way in thy sight’ (the Authorized Version expands this to ‘Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of my enemies; make thy way straight before thy face’). This formed an antiphon in the Office of the Dead (the funeral service) and hence came to be associated with songs of mourning, and with gloomy singing in general.
=> direct
drape: drape: [15] The verb drape originally meant ‘weave wool into cloth’. It was borrowed from Old French draper, which was a derivative of drap ‘cloth’ (source of English drab). This in turn came from late Latin drappus, which was ultimately of Celtic origin. Other offspring of drap which found their way into English are draper [14], drapery [14], and trappings. The use of drapery for ‘loose voluminous cloth covering’ eventually fed back into the verb drape, producing in the 19th century its current sense ‘cover loosely with cloth’.
=> drab, draper, trappings
espresso: espresso: [20] Etymologically, espresso is coffee that has been ‘pressed out’. The word comes from Italian caffè espresso, literally ‘pressed-out coffee’, which refers to the way in which the coffee is made by forcing pressurized steam or boiling water through the finely ground beans. Espresso is the past participle of esprimere ‘press out’, from Latin exprimere – which is also the source of English express.
feature: feature: [14] Feature comes ultimately from Latin factūra, a derivative of the verb facere ‘do, make’ which meant literally ‘making, formation’. Elements of this original sense remained when the word reached English via Old French faiture – when John Dymmok wrote in 1600 of ‘horses of a fine feature’, for example, he was referring to their shape or general conformation – but already a semantic narrowing down to the ‘way in which the face is shaped’ had taken place.

This meaning was then distributed, as it were, to the individual components of the face, and hence (in the 17th century) to any distinctive or characteristic part.
=> difficult, fact, factory, fashion, feasible, feat
fix: fix: [15] Fix comes ultimately from Latin fīgere ‘fasten’. Its past participle fīxus made its way into English along two distinct routes, partly via the Old French adjective fix ‘fixed’, and partly via the medieval Latin verb fīxāre. Derived forms in English include affix [15], prefix [17], suffix [18], and transfix [16], and also fichu ‘scarf’ [19]: this came from the past participle of French ficher ‘attach’, which is descended from Vulgar Latin *figicāre, another derivative of figere.
=> affix, prefix, suffix, transfix
form: form: [13] Form comes via Old French forme from Latin forma ‘shape, contour’, a word whose origins have never been satisfactorily explained. Its semantic similarity to Greek morphé ‘form, shape’ (source of English morphology [19]) is striking, and has led some etymologists to suggest that the Latin word may be an alteration of the Greek one, presumably by metathesis (the reversal of sounds, in this case /m/ and /f/).

Another possibility, however, is that it comes from ferīre ‘strike’, from the notion of an impression, image, or shape being created by beating. Of the word’s wide diversity of modern senses, ‘school class’, a 16th-century introduction, was inspired by the late Latin usage forma prima, forma secunda, etc for different orders of clergy, while ‘bench’ may go back to the Old French expression s’asseoir en forme ‘sit in a row’.

Amongst forma’s derivatives that have found their way into English are formal [14], format [19], formula [17] (from a Latin diminutive form), and uniform.
=> formal, format, formula, inform, uniform
gash: gash: [16] Greek kharássein meant ‘sharpen, engrave, cut’ (it gave English character). It was borrowed into Latin as charaxāre, which appears to have found its way into Old Northern French as garser ‘cut, slash’. English took this over as garse, which survived, mainly as a surgical term meaning ‘make incisions’, into the 17th century. An intermediate form garsh, recorded in the 16th century, suggests that this was the source of modern English gash.
=> character
handicap: handicap: [17] The word handicap originally denoted a sort of game of chance in which one person put up one of his or her personal possessions against an article belonging to someone else (for example one might match a gold watch against the other’s horse) and an umpire was appointed to adjudicate on the respective values of the articles. All three parties put their hands into a hat, together with a wager, and on hearing the umpire’s verdict the two opponents had to withdraw them in such a way as to indicate whether they wished to proceed with the game.

If they agreed, either in favour of proceeding or against, the umpire took the money; but if they disagreed, the one who wanted to proceed took it. It was the concealing of the hands in the hat that gave the game its name hand in cap, hand i’ cap, source of modern English handicap. In the 18th century the same term was applied to a sort of horse race between two horses, in which an umpire decided on a weight disadvantage to be imposed on a superior horse and again the owners of the horses signalled their assent to or dissent from his adjudication by the way in which they withdrew their hands from a hat.

Such a race became known as a handicap race, and in the 19th century the term handicap first broadened out to any contest in which inequalities are artificially evened out, and was eventually transferred to the ‘disadvantage’ imposed on superior contestants – whence the main modern meaning, ‘disadvantage, disability’.
howitzer: howitzer: [17] Czech houfnice denotes a ‘large catapult’ for hurling stones at the enemy. It was borrowed into German as houfenitz, and this made its way into English as howitz at the end of the 17th century. This had died out within a hundred years, but at around the same time English acquired howitzer, probably via Dutch houwitser, which has stood the test of time.
hurricane: hurricane: [16] European voyagers first encountered the swirling winds of the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and they borrowed a local word to name it – Carib huracan. This found its way into English via Spanish. (An early alternative form was furacano, which came from a Carib variant furacan.)
hut: hut: [17] Etymologically, a hut is probably a ‘covering structure’. The word has plausibly been traced back to Germanic *khūd-, which also produced English hide and probably hoard, house, and huddle. This would have been the source of Middle High German hütte, which eventually found its way into French as hutte – whence English hut.
=> hide, hoard, house, huddle
kilo: kilo: [19] Khílioi was Greek for a ‘thousand’. It was adopted in French in the 1790s as the prefix for ‘thousand’ in expressions of quantity under the new metric system, and various compound forms (kilogram, kilolitre, kilometre, etc) began to find their way into English from the first decade of the 19th century onwards. The first recorded instance of kilo being used in English for kilogram dates from 1870.
lobe: lobe: [16] Greek lobós denoted ‘something round’, such as the circular part of the ear or the liver, or a round seed pod. It came from a prehistoric *logwós, a close relative of which produced Latin legūmen ‘seed pod’ (source of English legume [17]). Lobós was borrowed into late Latin as lobus, and from there made its way into English.
=> legume
machine: machine: [16] The ultimate source of both machine and mechanic [14] was makhos, a Greek word meaning ‘contrivance, means’, and related distantly to English may ‘be able’ and might. From it was derived mēkhané, whose Doric dialect form mākhaná passed into Latin as māchina ‘engine, contrivance’. English acquired the word via Old French machine. Meanwhile mēkhané had spawned an adjectival derivative mēkhanikós, which was in due course to find its way into English through Latin mēchanicus.
=> mechanic
mantle: mantle: [13] Mantle comes via Old French mantel from Latin mantellum ‘cloak’, a word of uncertain (possibly Celtic) origin. Related forms to find their way into English from other languages include mantilla [18] (a Spanish diminutive of manta ‘cape’, which came from Latin mantus, a shortened form of mantellum) and mantua, a term used in the 17th and 18th centuries for a woman’s loose gown, which arose from the association of modern French manteau with the name of the Italian city of Mantua, once famous for its silks. And the mantel [15] of mantelpiece is a variant spelling of mantle.
=> mantel
mat: mat: English has two distinct words mat. The one meaning ‘small carpet’ [OE] is ultimately of Latin origin (matta), but it found its way into the West Germanic group of languages in prehistoric times, and has produced German matte and Dutch mat as well as English mat. Mat (or matt) meaning ‘dull’ [17] comes from French mat ‘dead’, which is also the source of the chess term mate.
=> mate
moss: moss: [OE] The prehistoric Germanic ancestor of moss was *musam. This had two distinct meanings: ‘swamp’ and ‘moss’. It is not altogether clear which was primary, but it seems more probable than not that ‘moss’ (a plant which frequents damp places) was derived from ‘swamp’. The only meaning recorded for its Old English descendant mos was ‘swamp’ (which survives in place-names), but no doubt ‘moss’ (not evidenced before the 14th century) was current too.

Words from the same ultimate source to have found their way into English include mire [14] (borrowed from Old Norse mýrr ‘swamp’), mousse [19] (borrowed from French, which got it from Middle Low German mos ‘moss’), and litmus [16] (whose Old Norse source litmosi meant literally ‘dye-moss’ – litmus is a dye extracted from lichens).
=> litmus, mire, mousse
motor: motor: [16] The most direct English descendant of Latin movēre ‘move’ is of course move, but several more have found their way into the language via derivatives. From mōtiō ‘movement’ comes motion [15] (and its collateral forms commotion [15], emotion, and promotion [15]); from mōtīvus ‘causing to move’ come motivate [19], motive [14], and (via modern French) motif [19]; and mōtor ‘mover’ has given motor.

Originally this was used for the rather generalized notion of a ‘moving force’; the modern application to an ‘engine’ did not emerge until the mid-19th century. Also from movēre come English moment and mutiny.
=> commotion, emotion, moment, motif, motion, motive, move, mutiny, promotion
mountain: mountain: [13] Latin mōns ‘mountain’ could well go back ultimately to a variant of the base *min- ‘jut’ which produced English eminent, imminent, menace, and prominent. English acquired it originally direct from Latin as a noun, mount [OE], which is now used only in the names of mountains. The verb mount followed in the 14th century, via Old French munter.

Latin mōns had a derived adjective montānus ‘mountainous’, which was adapted in Vulgar Latin to the noun *montānea ‘mountainous area’. This made its way into Old French as montaigne, by which time it meant simply ‘mountain’ – whence English mountain. Amount [13] comes ultimately from the Latin phrase ad montem ‘to the mountain’, hence ‘upwards’; and paramount [16] in turn derives from an Old French phrase par amont ‘by above’, hence ‘superior’.
=> amount, eminent, imminent, menace, mount, paramount, prominent, tantamount
muslin: muslin: [17] Etymologically, muslin is ‘cloth from Mosul’, a city in Iraq where fine cotton fabric was once made. The Arabic form mūslin was adopted into Italian as mussolino, and made its way into English via French mousseline.
passage: passage: [13] Passage goes back to the Latin ancestor of modern French. Here, the noun *passāticum was derived from passāre (source of English pass). This found its way into English via Old French passage. At first it simply meant ‘passing’ or ‘way along which one passes’; the sense ‘segment of music, text, etc’ did not emerge in English until the 16th century.
=> pass
pronounce: pronounce: [14] Latin nuntius meant ‘messenger’. From it was derived the verb nuntiāre ‘announce’, which has formed the basis of English announce [15], annunciation [14], denounce [13], pronounce, and renounce [14]. Pronounce itself goes back to Latin prōnuntiāre ‘proclaim’, formed with the prefix prō- ‘forth, out, in public’. Its specific application to the ‘way in which a person speaks’ emerged in English in the early 17th century.
=> announce, denounce, nuncio, renounce
quiche: quiche: [20] German kuchen ‘cake’ (a relative of English cake) is the original of quiche. In the dialect of Alsace it became küchen, which French transformed into quiche. The word found its way into English in the first half of the 20th century, but initially only as a specialist term for a somewhat recherché dish – before World War II, quiche Lorraine was exotic fare. It was the 1970s and the advent of winebar cuisine that made it much more widely familiar.
quisling: quisling: [20] Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian politician who from 1933 led the National Union Party, the Norwegian fascist party (Quisling was not his real name – he was born Abraham Lauritz Jonsson). When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940 he gave them active support, urging his fellow Norwegians not to resist them, and in 1942 he was installed by Hitler as a puppet premier. In 1945 he was shot for treason. The earliest recorded use of his name in English as a generic term for a ‘traitor’ comes from April 1940.
recognize: recognize: [15] Latin gnōscere ‘become acquainted’ came from the same prehistoric Indo-European base, *gnō-, as produced English know. Combination with the prefix co- ‘with’ gave cognōscere ‘know’ (source of English cognition, quaint, etc). And this in turn had the prefix re- ‘again’ added to it to produce recognōscere ‘know again’, which found its way into English via reconniss-, the stem of Old French reconnaistre (the -ize ending is an English introduction).

English has three noun derivatives of the verb: recognition [15], from Latin recognitiō; recognizance [14], now purely a legal term, borrowed from Old French reconnissance and remodelled on the basis of recognize; and reconnaissance [19], borrowed from modern French during the Napoleonic wars. Reconnoitre [18] comes from the now obsolete French reconnoître, which like its surviving variant reconnaître goes back to Latin recognōscere.
=> cognition, know, quaint, reconnaissance, reconnoitre
rickshaw: rickshaw: [19] Rickshaw is English’s attempt to domesticate Japanese jin-riki-sha. These small two-wheeled man-hauled vehicles were introduced in Japan around 1870, and their name, which means literally ‘man strength vehicle’, had made its way into English by 1874. By the 1880s it had been shortened to rickshaw.
sable: sable: [14] The sable, an animal like a large weasel with valuable fur, lives in northern Europe and Asia, and its name reflects where it comes from – for it is of Slavic origin, related to Russian sóbol’. It came west with the fur trade, and was borrowed into medieval Latin as sabellum. From there it made its way into English via Old French sable.
sag: sag: [15] There are several Scandinavian verbs that bear a strong resemblance to sag, including Swedish sacka and Danish sakke, and it seems likely that one of these was borrowed into Middle Low German as sacken ‘settle, subside’, and subsequently found its way into English as sag (whose original meaning was ‘subside’)
savour: savour: [13] Latin sapere meant both ‘taste’ and ‘be wise’. In the latter sense it has given English sapient, but the former only was preserved in its derived noun sapor ‘taste’. This found its way into English via Old French savour. The derivative savoury [13] originally meant ‘pleasant-tasting’. Its modern use, contrasted with sweet, dates from the 17th century.
=> sapient
scorn: scorn: [12] Scorn reached English via Old French, but it is ultimately of Germanic origin. Its immediate source was Old French escharnir, a descendant of Vulgar Latin *escarnīre. This had been borrowed from a prehistoric Germanic *skarnjan ‘mock, deride, make fun of’. A product of the same base was Middle High German scherz ‘joke, jest’, which was borrowed into Italian as scherzo and subsequently made its way into English as the musical term scherzo ‘lively passage’ [19].
=> scherzo
shemozzle: shemozzle: [19] Shemozzle is one of a number of Yiddish words beginning with sh to have found their way into English. Most are relatively recent introductions, via American English – schlemiel ‘fool, blunderer’ [19] (possibly from a Biblical character Shelumiel who came to a sticky end), schlep ‘carry, lug’ [20] (ultimately from German schleppen ‘drag’), schlock ‘trash’ [20] (originally ‘broken merchandise’, and so perhaps related to German schlagen ‘hit’), schmaltz ‘oversentimentality’ [20] (originally ‘melted fat’, and so distantly related to English smelt), schmuck ‘fool, oaf’ [19] (literally ‘penis’) – but shemozzle is of an earlier vintage, brought by Jewish immigrants to the East End of London.

It is a compound formed from Yiddish shlim ‘bad’ and mazel ‘luck’ (as in the Yiddish greeting mazel tov ‘good luck’), and was independently borrowed into American English as schlimazel ‘loser, failure’ [20].
simple: simple: [13] Etymologically, simple denotes ‘same-fold’ – that is, not multifarious. It goes back ultimately to a compound formed from prehistoric Indo-European *sm-, *sem-, *som- ‘same’ (source also of English same, similar, single, etc) and *pl- ‘fold’ (source of English fold, ply, etc). This passed into Latin as simplus ‘single’, which found its way into English via Old French simple.
=> fold, ply, same, similar
sir: sir: [13] In common with many other European terms of address for men (such as monsieur and señor), sir goes back ultimately to Latin senior ‘older’ (source also of English senior). This was reduced in Vulgar Latin to *seior, which found its way into Old French as *sieire, later sire. English borrowed this as sire [13], which in weakly-stressed positions (prefixed to names, for instance) became sir.

Other titles based on senior that have found their way into English include French monsieur [15] (literally ‘my sire’), together with its plural messieurs [17], abbreviated to messrs [18]; French seigneur [16]; Spanish señor [17]; and Italian signor [16]. Surly [16] is an alteration of an earlier sirly ‘lordly’, a derivative of sir.

The meaning ‘grumpy’ evolved via an intermediate ‘haughty’.
=> senator, senior, sire, surly
size: size: [13] The etymological notion underlying size is of ‘settling’ something, of fixing an amount. The word is a curtailed version of assize, which went back ultimately to Latin assidēre, literally ‘sit beside someone’. By the time it reached English, via Old French, it had acquired connotations of ‘sitting down to make a judgment on something’, such as a law case (hence the meaning of English assize).

Other matters decided on in this way included the standardization of amounts (of taxes, for example, or food), and this led to the word size being used for ‘dimension’. Size ‘gum’ [15] may be the same word, but the nature of the relationship between the two is unclear.
=> assize, sit
ski: ski: [19] A ski is etymologically a piece of wood ‘split’ from a tree trunk. The word was borrowed from Norwegian ski, a descendant of Old Norse skíth ‘piece of split wood, ski’. This in turn came from the prehistoric Germanic base *skīth-, *skaith- ‘divide, split’, source also of English sheath, shed, etc. The Norwegian word is pronounced /she/, and that is the way in which it was once often said (and indeed sometimes spelled) in English. (Old Norse skíth may also lie behind English skid [17], which originally meant ‘block of wood used as a support’, hence ‘wooden chock for stopping a wheel’.

The modern sense only emerged in the 19th century, from the notion of a wheel slipping when it is prevented from revolving.)
=> sheath, shed, skid
sugar: sugar: [13] The ultimate source of sugar is Sanskrit, where the substance was named with a term that originally meant ‘gravel, grit’ – sharkarā. This was borrowed into Arabic as sukkar, which made its way into English via medieval Latin succarum, Italian zucchero, and Old French sukere. The Sanskrit word was also acquired by Greek as sákkharon, which passed into English through medieval Latin saccharum as saccharin.
=> saccharin
temple: temple: Temple for worship [OE] and temple at the side of the head [14] are distinct words. The former was borrowed from Latin templum, which originated as a term relating to divination, used by priests in ancient times. It denoted a space marked out or ‘cut’ out as suitable for making observations on which auguries were based – some say a space marked out on the ground, others a section of the night sky.

It probably came ultimately from the base *tem- ‘cut’, which also produced Greek témein ‘cut’ and the English suffix -tomy ‘surgical cutting’. It has found its way into most western European languages, including German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish tempel and Welsh teml as well as the Romance languages. Temple ‘area at the side of the head’ comes via Old French temple from Vulgar Latin *tempula, an alteration of tempora, the plural of Latin tempus.

This of course originally meant ‘time’ (English gets temporary from it), and it seems that the sense ‘area at the side of the head’ arose via an intermediate ‘appropriate time, proper period’, hence ‘right place (for dealing someone a fatal blow)’.
=> tome; temporary
treasure: treasure: [12] Treasure comes ultimately from Greek thēsaurós ‘treasure’, a word of unknown origin. This was borrowed into Latin as thēsaurus (acquired directly by English as thesaurus [19] with the metaphorical sense ‘treasury of knowledge, words, etc’), and it made its way into English via Vulgar Latin *tresaurus and Old French tresor.
=> thesaurus
tulip: tulip: [16] Tulip and turban [16] are ultimately the same word. Both come from Persian dulband, and the name was applied to the plant because of its flower’s supposed resemblance to a turban. Dulband was borrowed into Turkish as tuliband, and this made its way into English via early modern French tulipan and modern Latin tulipa, acquiring its botanical meaning along the way (relatives that preserve the link with turban slightly more closely include Swedish tulpan, Danish tulipan, Italian tulipano, and Russian tjul’pan). Meanwhile Turkish tuliband evolved to tülbend, and this passed into English via Italian turbante and French turbant as turban.
=> turban
tumble: tumble: [13] Tumble was borrowed from Middle Low German tummelen, which has other relatives in modern German tummeln ‘bustle, hurry’ and taumeln ‘reel, stagger’. All were formed from a base that also found its way into the Romance languages, producing French tomber ‘fall’ (source of English tumbrel [14], which in Old French denoted a ‘chute’ or ‘cart that could be tipped up’) and Italian tombolare ‘tumble, turn somersaults’ (source of English tombola [19]).

The derivative tumbler [14] originally denoted an ‘acrobat’; the application to a ‘drinking glass’, which emerged in the mid 17th century, comes from the fact that such glasses were originally made with rounded bottoms, so that they could not be put down until they were empty.
=> tombola
turpentine: turpentine: [14] Turpentine is nowadays used for an oil obtained from pine trees, but it originally denoted the ‘resin of the terebinth’, a small European tree of the sumach family. The name of the terebinth is probably of non-Indo- European origin. It was borrowed into Greek as térbinthos, which made its way into Latin as terbinthus. Its resin was called terbenthina rēsīna. The adjective terbenthina came to be used as a noun, and this passed into English via Old French terbentine.