英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

albino [albino 词源字典]: albino: [18] Like album, albino comes ultimately from Latin albus ‘white’. It was borrowed into English from the Portuguese, who used it with reference to black Africans suffering from albinism (it is a derivative of albo, the Portuguese descendant of Latin albus).
=> album[albino etymology, albino origin, 英语词源]
album: album: [17] Latin albus ‘white’ has been the source of a variety of English words: alb ‘ecclesiastical tunic’ [OE], albedo ‘reflective power’ [19], Albion [13], an old word for Britain, probably with reference to its white cliffs, albumen ‘white of egg’ [16], and auburn, as well as albino. Album is a nominalization of the neuter form of the adjective, which was used in classical times for a blank, or white, tablet on which public notices were inscribed.

Its original adoption in the modern era seems to have been in Germany, where scholars kept an album amicorum ‘album of friends’ in which to collect colleagues’ signatures. This notion of an autograph book continues in Dr Johnson’s definition of album in his Dictionary 1755: ‘a book in which foreigners have long been accustomed to insert the autographs of celebrated people’, but gradually it became a repository for all sorts of souvenirs, including in due course photographs.
=> alb, albedo, albino, albumen, auburn, daub
alma mater: alma mater: [17] Alma mater literally means ‘mother who fosters or nourishes’. The Latin adjective almus ‘giving nourishment’, derives from the verb alere ‘nourish’ (source of English alimony and alimentary). The epithet alma mater was originally applied by the Romans to a number of goddesses whose particular province was abundance, notably Ceres and Cybele.

In the 17th century it began to be used in English with reference to a person’s former school or college, thought of as a place of intellectual and spiritual nourishment (Alexander Pope was amongst its earliest users, although the reference is far from kind: ‘Proceed, great days! ’till Learning fly the shore … ’Till Isis’ Elders reel, their pupils’ sport, And Alma mater lie dissolv’d in Port!’ Dunciad 1718).

If that which nourishes is almus, those who are nourished are alumni (similarly derived from the verb alere). Alumnus was first applied in English to a pupil – and more specifically a former pupil or graduate – in the 17th century; an early reference combines the notions of alumnus and alma mater: ‘Lieutenant Governor … promised his Interposition for them, as become such an Alumnus to such an Alma Mater’, William Sewall’s Diary 12 October 1696.

The first example of the feminine form, alumna, comes in the 1880s.
=> alimentary, alimony, alumnus
aquamarine: aquamarine: [19] Aquamarine means literally ‘sea water’ – from Latin aqua marīna. Its first application in English was to the precious stone, a variety of beryl, so named because of its bluish-green colour. The art critic John Ruskin seems to have been the first to use it with reference to the colour itself, in Modern Painters 1846. (The French version of the word, aiguemarine, was actually used in English somewhat earlier, in the mid 18th century, but it did not long survive the introduction of the Latin version.) Latin aqua ‘water’ has of course contributed a number of other words to English, notably aquatic [15] (from Latin aquāticus), aqualung (coined around 1950), aquarelle [19] (via Italian acquerella ‘water colour’), aquatint [18] (literally ‘dyed water’), aqueduct [16] (from Latin aquaeductus), and aqueous [17] (a medieval Latin formation); it is related to Old English ēa ‘water’ and īg ‘island’, and is of course the source of French eau, Italian acqua, and Spanish agua.
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
bend: bend: [OE] English band, bind, bond, and bundle are closely allied: all go back to a prehistoric Germanic base *band-. The relationship in meaning was, in the case of bend, more obvious in Old English times, when bendan meant ‘tie up’ as well as ‘curve’ (a sense preserved in the modern English noun bend ‘knot’, as in carrick bend).

The rather strange-seeming meaning development appears to have come about as follows: bend in the sense ‘tie, constrain’ was used for the pulling of bow-strings, with reference to the strain or tension thereby applied to the bow; the natural consequence of this was of course that the bow curved, and hence (although not until the late 13th century) bend came to be used for ‘curve’.
=> band, bind, bond, bundle
birch: birch: [OE] Old English bi(e)rce came from a prehistoric Germanic *berkjōn, source also of German birke. The word goes back ultimately to an Indo-European *bhergo, but as is often the case with ancient tree-names, it does not denote the same type of tree in every language in which it has descendants: Latin fraxinus, for example, means ‘ash tree’. It has been speculated that the word is related to bright (whose Indo-European source was *bhereg-), with reference to the tree’s light-coloured bark.

It could also be that the word bark [13] itself is related. The verb birch ‘flog’ (originally with a birch rod or bunch of birch twigs) is early 19th-century.
=> bark, bright
bumpkin: bumpkin: [16] Originally, bumpkin seems to have been a humorously disparaging epithet for a Dutch person: in the first known record of the word, in Peter Levins’s Dictionary of English and Latin words 1570, it is glossed batavus (Batavia was the name of an island at the mouth of the Rhine in ancient times, and was henceforth associated with the Netherlands). It was probably a Dutch word, boomken ‘little tree’ (from boom ‘tree’, related to German baum ‘tree’ and English beam), used with reference to Netherlanders’ supposedly dumpy stature. The phrase ‘country bumpkin’ is first recorded from the later 18th century.
=> beam
bust: bust: There are two different words bust in English. The one meaning ‘break’ [18] is simply an alteration of burst. Bust ‘sculpture of head and chest’ [17] comes via French buste from Italian busto ‘upper body’, of uncertain origin (Latin had the temptingly similar bustum ‘monument on a tomb’, but this does not seem to fit in with the word’s primary sense ‘upper body’).

In English, application of the word to the human chest probably developed in the 18th century (one of the earliest examples is from Byron’s Don Juan 1819: ‘There was an Irish lady, to whose bust I ne’er saw justice done’), although as late as the early 19th century it could still be used with reference to men’s chests, and had not become particularized to female breasts: ‘His naked bust would have furnished a model for a statuary’, Washington Irving, A tour on the prairies 1835.
caste: caste: [16] Caste has no etymological connection with cast. It is borrowed from Spanish and Portuguese casta ‘race, breed’, a nominal use of the adjective casta ‘pure’, from Latin castus (source of English chaste). The notion underlying the word thus appears to be ‘racial purity’. Use of casta by the Portuguese in India with reference to the Hindu social groupings led to its being adopted in this sense by English in the 17th century.
=> chaste, incest
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
charge: charge: [13] The notion underlying the word charge is of a ‘load’ or ‘burden’ – and this can still be detected in many of its modern meanings, as of a duty laid on one like a load, or of the burden of an expense, which began as metaphors. It comes ultimately from Latin carrus ‘two-wheeled wagon’ (source also of English car). From this was derived the late Latin verb carricāre ‘load’, which produced the Old French verb charger and, via the intermediate Vulgar Latin *carrica, the Old French noun charge, antecedents of the English words.

The literal sense of ‘loading’ or ‘bearing’ has now virtually died out, except in such phrases as ‘charge your glasses’, but there are reminders of it in cargo [17], which comes from the Spanish equivalent of the French noun charge, and indeed in carry, descended from the same ultimate source. The origins of the verb sense ‘rush in attack’ are not altogether clear, but it may have some connection with the sense ‘put a weapon in readiness’.

This is now familiar in the context of firearms, but it seems to have been used as long ago as the 13th century with reference to arrows. The Italian descendant of late Latin carricāre was caricare, which meant not only ‘load’ but also, metaphorically, ‘exaggerate’. From this was derived the noun caricatura, which reached English via French in the 18th century as caricature.
=> car, cargo, caricature
cuttlefish: cuttlefish: [11] The cuttlefish probably gets its name from its resemblance to a bag when its internal shell is removed. Its earliest recorded designation is cudele (the compound cuttlefish does not appear until the 16th century), which is generally taken to be a derivative of the same base as produced cod ‘pouch’ (as in codpiece and peascod). In the 16th century the variant scuttlefish arose, perhaps partly with reference to the creature’s swift movements.
=> cod
dark: dark: [OE] Dark comes ultimately from a Germanic base *derk-, *dark-, which also produced Old High German tarchanjan ‘hide’ and Middle Low German dork ‘place where dirt collects’ (outside Germanic, Lithuanian dargus has been compared). In Old English the word usually denoted absence of light, particularly with reference to ‘night’; the application to colours did not develop until the 16th century.
delta: delta: [16] Delta was the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding to English d. Its capital form was written in the shape of a tall triangle, and already in the ancient world the word was being applied metaphorically to the triangular deposit of sand, mud, etc which forms at the mouth of rivers (the Greek historian Herodotus, for instance, used it with reference to the mouth of the Nile). Greek acquired the word itself from some Semitic language; it is related to dāleth, the name of the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
den: den: [OE] Related forms such as German tenne ‘threshing floor’ and possibly Greek thenar ‘palm of the hand’ suggest that the underlying meaning of den may be ‘flat area’. Old English denn denoted ‘wild animal’s lair’, perhaps with reference to animals’ flattening an area of vegetation to form a sleeping place. Dean [OE], a word for ‘valley’ now surviving only in placenames, comes from the same source.
dip: dip: [OE] Like deep, dip comes ultimately from a Germanic base *d(e)up- ‘deep, hollow’. The derived verb, *dupjan, produced Old English dyppan, ancestor of modern English dip. It originally meant quite specifically ‘immerse’ in Old English, sometimes with reference to baptism; the sense ‘incline downwards’ is a 17th-century development.
=> deep, dimple
display: display: [14] Display originally meant ‘unfold’, and it is related not to modern English play but to ply. It comes via Old French despleier (whose modern French descendant, déployer, is the source of English deploy [18]) from Latin displicāre. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘un-’ and plicāre ‘fold’ (source of or related to English accomplish, complicated, ply, and simple), and in classical Latin seems only to have had the metaphorical meaning ‘scatter’.

In medieval Latin, however, it returned to its underlying literal sense ‘unfold’, which was originally retained in English, particularly with reference to sails or flags. The notion of ‘spreading out’ is retained in splay, which was formed by lopping off the first syllable of display in the 14th century.
=> accomplish, complicate, deploy, ply, simple
English: English: [OE] The people and language of England take their name from the Angles, a West Germanic people who settled in Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. They came originally from the Angul district of Schleswig, an area of the Jutland peninsula to the south of modern Denmark. This had a shape vaguely reminiscent of a fishhook, and so its inhabitants used their word for ‘fishhook’ (a relative of modern English angler and angling) to name it.

From earliest times the adjective English seems to have been used for all the Germanic peoples who came to Britain, including the Saxons and Jutes, as well as the Angles (at the beginning of the 8th century Bede referred to them collectively as gens anglorum ‘race of Angles’). The earliest record of its use with reference to the English language is by Alfred the Great.
=> angler, angling
extravagant: extravagant: [14] An extravagant person is literally one who ‘wanders out of’ the proper course. The word comes from the present participle of medieval Latin extrāvagārī, a compound formed from the prefix extrā- ‘outside’ and vagārī ‘wander’ (source of English vagabond, vagary, and vagrant), which seems originally to have been used adjectivally with reference to certain uncodified or ‘stray’ papal decrees. This was the word’s original application in English, and the present-day meanings ‘wildly excessive’ and ‘spending too lavishly’ did not really establish themselves before the early 18th century.
=> vagabond, vagary, vagrant
fraction: fraction: [14] Like fracture [15], which preserves its etymological meaning more closely, fraction comes ultimately from fractus, the past participle of Latin frangere ‘break’. This verb goes back to prehistoric Indo-European *bhr(e)g-, which also produced English break. The Latin derived noun fractiō simply meant ‘breaking’, particularly with reference to the breaking of Communion bread, but all trace of this literal sense has now virtually died out in English, leaving only the mathematical sense ‘number produced by division’ and its metaphorical offshoots.

Amongst the English meanings that have disappeared is ‘discord, quarrelling’, but before it went it produced fractious [18].
=> fracture, fragile, frail
hockey: hockey: [19] The first known unequivocal reference to the game of hockey comes in William Holloway’s General Dictionary of Provincialisms 1838, where he calls it hawkey, and describes it as ‘a game played by several boys on each side with sticks, called hawkeybats, and a ball’ (the term came from West Sussex). It is not known for certain where the word originated, but it is generally assumed to be related in some way to hook, with reference to the hockey stick’s curved end. The Galway Statutes of 1527 refer to the ‘hurling of the little ball with hockie sticks or staves’, which may mean ‘curved sticks’.
=> hook
hypnosis: hypnosis: [19] Húpnos was Greek for ‘sleep’. From it was derived the adjective hūpnotikós ‘sleepy, narcotic’, which English acquired via Latin and French as hypnotic [17]. At first this was used only with reference to sleep-inducing drugs, but then in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the techniques of inducing deep sleep or trance by suggestion were developed.

Early terms for the procedure included animal magnetism and mesmerism (see MESMERIZE), and then in 1842 Dr James Braid coined neurohypnotism for what he called the ‘condition of nervous sleep’. By the end of the 1840s this had become simply hypnotism. Hypnosis was coined in the 1870s as an alternative, on the model of a hypothetical Greek *hypnosis.
ingredient: ingredient: [15] The -gredi- of ingredient represents the Latin verb gradī ‘step, go’ (whose past participial stem gress- has given English aggression, congress, digress, etc). From it was formed ingredī ‘go in, enter’, whose present participle ingrediēns became English ingredient. The word’s etymological meaning is thus ‘that which “enters into” a mixture’. It was originally used mainly with reference to medicines, and its current application to food recipes seems to be a comparatively recent development.
=> aggression, congress, grade, gradual
inoculate: inoculate: [15] Far-fetched as the connection may seem, inoculate actually comes ultimately from Latin oculus ‘eye’ (source of English ocular [16] and oculist [17]). By metaphorical extension oculus was applied to the ‘bud’ of a plant (much like the eye of a potato in English), and the verb inoculāre was coined to denote the grafting on of a bud or other plan part.

That was how it was used when originally adopted into English (‘Peaches have their Season at May Kalends them to inoculate’, Palladius on Husbandry 1440), and the modern sense ‘introduce antigens into the body’ did not emerge before the early 18th century, based on the notion of ‘engrafting’ or ‘implanting’ an immunising virus into a person. It was originally used with reference to smallpox.
=> eye, ferocious, ocular
ivory: ivory: [13] As is hardly surprising, ivory goes back ultimately to an African word which meant both ‘ivory’ and ‘elephant’. A likely candidate as this source is Egyptian āb, which may well lie behind Latin ebur ‘ivory’. This passed into English via Old French ivurie. The expression ivory tower ‘place where reality is evaded’ is a translation of French tour d’ivoire. This was originally used in 1837 by the French critic Sainte-Beuve with reference to the poet Alfred de Vigny, whom he accused of excessive aloofness from the practicalities of the world. The English version is first recorded in 1911.
khaki: khaki: [19] Khaki is part of the large linguistic legacy of British rule in India. In Urdu khākī means ‘dusty’, and is a derivative of the noun khāk ‘dust’ (a word of Persian origin). It seems first to have been used with reference to the colour of military uniforms in the Guide Corps of the Indian army in the late 1840s. The term followed the colour when it was more widely adopted by the British army for camouflage purposes during the South African wars at the end of the 19th century.
member: member: [13] Latin membrum originally meant ‘part of the body, limb, organ’ (it has been connected tentatively with various words in other Indo-European languages meaning ‘flesh, meat’, including Sanskrit māmsám and Gothic mimz). But it was early broadened out metaphorically to ‘part of anything, one that belongs’, and brought that meaning with it via Old French membre into English.

The original sense still survives, though, particularly with reference to the ‘penis’ (an application that originated in Latin – membrōsus denoted ‘having a large penis’). Derived from Latin membrum was the adjective membrānus. Its feminine form membrāna was used as a noun meaning ‘skin covering an organ or limb’ – whence English membrane [16].
=> membrane
prairie: prairie: [18] Prairie comes ultimately from Latin prātum ‘meadow’ (source also of French pré ‘meadow’). From it was derived Vulgar Latin *prātāria, which passed into English via French prairie. The word was from the start almost exclusively used with reference to the plains of North America.
prude: prude: [18] Old French prudefemme ‘virtuous woman’ meant literally ‘fine thing of a woman’. It was a lexicalization of the phrase *preu de femme, in which preu meant ‘fine, brave, virtuous’ (its variant prud gave English proud). In the 17th century it was shortened to prude (Molière is the first writer on record as using it), with distinctly negative connotations of ‘overvirtuousness’. It was borrowed into English at the beginning of the 18th century, and for a couple of hundred years continued to be used almost exclusively with reference to women.
=> proud
rhubarb: rhubarb: [14] The Greeks had two words for ‘rhubarb’: rhéon, which was borrowed from Persian rēwend, and which evolved into Latin rheum, now the plant’s scientific name; and rha, which is said to have come from Rha, an ancient name of the river Volga, in allusion to the fact that rhubarb was once grown on its banks (rhubarb is native to China, and was once imported to Europe via Russia).

In medieval Latin rhubarb became known as rha barbarum ‘barbarian rhubarb, foreign rhubarb’, again with reference to the plant’s exotic origins; and in due course association with Latin rheum altered this to rheubarbarum. It passed into English via Vulgar Latin *rheubarbum and Old French reubarbe.
=> barbarian
sane: sane: [17] Latin sānus, a word of uncertain origin, meant ‘healthy’ – a connotation perpetuated in its derivative sanatorium ‘sickroom’ [19]. Its use with reference to mental rather than physical health (as in the Latin tag mēns sāna in corpore sāno ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’) led to its adoption in English for ‘of sound mind, not mad’.
=> sanatorium, sanitary
series: series: [17] Latin seriēs (from which English got series) denoted a ‘succession of things connected together’. It was derived from serere ‘connect’, which has also given English assert and insert [16]. Serial [19] was coined specifically with reference to stories published in instalments.
=> assert, insert, serial
station: station: [14] A station is etymologically a ‘standing’, hence a ‘place for standing’ – a guard who takes up his ‘station’ outside a building goes and ‘stands’ there. The word comes via Old French station from Latin statiō ‘standing’, a descendant of the base *stā- ‘stand’ (to which English stand is related). Various metaphorical senses emerged in Latin, such as ‘post, job’ and ‘abode, residence’, but ‘stopping place for vehicles’ is a post-Latin development.

It came out of an earlier ‘stopping place on a journey’, and is first recorded in English at the end of the 18th century, in the USA, with reference to coach routes. The application to ‘railway stations’ dates from the 1830s. The notion of ‘standing still’ is preserved in the derived adjective stationary [15].
=> constant, instant, stand, state, stationary, stationery, statue
-acea: word-forming element denoting orders and classes in zoology, from Latin -acea, neuter plural of -aceus "belonging to, of the nature of" (enlarged from adjectival suffix -ax, genitive -acis); neuter plural because of a presumed animalia, a neuter plural noun. Thus, crustacea "shellfish" are *crustacea animalia "crusty animals." In botany, the suffix is -aceae, from the fem. plural of -aceus, with reference to Latin plantae, which is a fem. plural.
addiction (n.): c. 1600, "tendency," of habits, pursuits, etc.; 1640s as "state of being self-addicted," from Latin addictionem (nominative addictio) "an awarding, a devoting," noun of action from past participle stem of addicere (see addict (v.)). Earliest sense was less severe: "inclination, penchant," but this has become obsolete. In main modern sense it is first attested 1906, in reference to opium (there is an isolated instance from 1779, with reference to tobacco).
agnostic (n.): 1870, "one who professes that the existence of a First Cause and the essential nature of things are not and cannot be known" [Klein]; coined by T.H. Huxley (1825-1895), supposedly in September 1869, from Greek agnostos "unknown, unknowable," from a- "not" + gnostos "(to be) known" (see gnostic). Sometimes said to be a reference to Paul's mention of the altar to "the Unknown God," but according to Huxley it was coined with reference to the early Church movement known as Gnosticism (see Gnostic).
I ... invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic,' ... antithetic to the 'Gnostic' of Church history who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. [T.H. Huxley, "Science and Christian Tradition," 1889]
The adjective is first recorded 1870.
annus mirabilis (n.): 1667, Latin, literally "wonderful year, year of wonders," title of a publication by Dryden, with reference to 1666, which was a year of calamities in London (plague, fire, war).
arabesque (n.): 1610s, "Moorish or Arabic ornamental design," from French arabesque (16c.), from Italian arabesco, from Arabo "Arab," with reference to Moorish architecture. As a ballet pose, first attested 1830. Musical sense, in reference to an ornamented theme, is from 1864, originally the title given by Robert Schumann to one of his piano pieces.
artsy (adj.): "pretentiously artistic," 1902, from arts (see art (n.)); originally especially artsy-craftsy, with reference to the arts and crafts movement; always more or less dismissive or pejorative; artsy-fartsy was in use by 1971.
assimilationist (n.): "one who advocates racial or ethnic integration," 1900, in reference to possible U.S. attitudes toward Hawaii and possessions obtained in the war against Spain; usually with reference to Jews in European nations; see assimilation + -ist.
Audubon: with reference to birds or pictures of them, from U.S. naturalist John James Audubon (1785-1851).
Australia: from Latin Terra Australis (16c.), from australis "southern" + -ia. A hypothetical southern continent, known as terra australis incognita, had been proposed since 2c. Dutch explorers called the newfound continent New Holland; the current name was suggested 1814 by Matthew Flinders as an improvement over Terra Australis "as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the name of the other great portions of the earth" ["Voyage to Terra Australis"]. In 1817 Gov. Lachlan Macquarie, having read Flinders' suggestion, began using it in official correspondence. The ultimate source is Latin auster "south wind," hence, "the south country."

The Latin sense shift in australis, if it is indeed the same word other Indo-European languages use for east (see aurora), for which Latin uses oriens (see orient), perhaps is based on a false assumption about the orientation of the Italian peninsula, "with shift through 'southeast' explained by the diagonal position of the axis of Italy" [Buck]; see Walde, Alois, "Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch," 3rd. ed., vol. 1, p.87; Ernout, Alfred, and Meillet, Alfred, "Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine," 2nd. ed., p.94. Or perhaps the connection is more ancient, and from PIE root *aus- "to shine," source of aurora, which also produces words for "burning," with reference to the "hot" south wind that blows into Italy. Thus auster "(hot) south wind," metaphorically extended to "south."
autocrat (n.): 1803, from French autocrate, from Greek autokrates "ruling by oneself, absolute, autocratic," from autos- "self" (see auto-) + kratia "rule," from kratos "strength, power" (see -cracy). First used by Robert Southey, with reference to Napoleon. An earlier form was autocrator (1789), used in reference to the Russian Czars. Earliest form in English is the fem. autocratress (1762).
awe (n.): c. 1300, aue, "fear, terror, great reverence," earlier aghe, c. 1200, from a Scandinavian source, such as Old Norse agi "fright;" from Proto-Germanic *agiz- (cognates: Old English ege "fear," Old High German agiso "fright, terror," Gothic agis "fear, anguish"), from PIE *agh-es- (cognates: Greek akhos "pain, grief"), from root *agh- "to be depressed, be afraid" (see ail). Current sense of "dread mixed with admiration or veneration" is due to biblical use with reference to the Supreme Being. To stand in awe (early 15c.) originally was simply to stand awe. Awe-inspiring is recorded from 1814.
Al engelond of him stod awe.
["The Lay of Havelok the Dane," c. 1300]
backtrack (v.): "retrace one's steps," figuratively, by 1896, from literal sense, with reference to hunted foxes, from back (adv.) + track (v.). Related: Backtracked; backtracking.
badlands (n.): "arid, highly eroded regions of the western U.S.," 1852, from bad + land (n.). Applied to urban districts of crime and vice since 1892 (originally with reference to Chicago).
big-tent (adj.): in reference to welcoming all sorts and not being ideologically narrow, American English, 1982 with reference to religion, by 1987 with reference to politics.
biker (n.): "motorcycle rider" (especially with reference to club affiliation), 1968, American English, from bike (n.) in its slang sense of "motorcycle" (1939).