英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

effete [effete 词源字典]: effete: [17] Latin effētus meant literally ‘that has given birth’. It was a compound adjective, based on the prefix ex- ‘out’ and fētus ‘childbearing, offspring’ (source of English foetus). Its use spread metaphorically first to ‘worn out by giving birth’ and finally to simply ‘exhausted’, the senses in which English originally acquired it. The word’s modern connotations of ‘overrefinement’ and ‘decadence’ did not develop until the 19th century.
[effete etymology, effete origin, 英语词源]
beatnik (n.): coined 1958 by San Francisco newspaper columnist Herb Caen during the heyday of -nik suffixes in the wake of Sputnik. From Beat generation (1952), associated with beat (n.) in its meaning "rhythm (especially in jazz)" as well as beat (past participle adjective) "worn out, exhausted," but originator Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) in 1958 connected it with beatitude.
The origins of the word beat are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More than the feeling of weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of the mind. ["New York Times Magazine," Oct. 2, 1952]

"Beat" is old carny slang. According to Beat Movement legend (and it is a movement with a deep inventory of legend), Ginsberg and Kerouac picked it up from a character named Herbert Huncke, a gay street hustler and drug addict from Chicago who began hanging around Times Square in 1939 (and who introduced William Burroughs to heroin, an important cultural moment). The term has nothing to do with music; it names the condition of being beaten down, poor, exhausted, at the bottom of the world. [Louis Menand, "New Yorker," Oct. 1, 2007]
contrite (adj.): c. 1300, from Old French contrit and directly from Latin contritus, literally "worn out, ground to pieces," past participle of conterere "to grind," from com- "together" (see com-) + terere "to rub" (see throw (v.)). Used in English in figurative sense of "crushed in spirit by a sense of sin." Related: Contritely.
deadbeat (n.): "worthless sponging idler," 1863, American English slang, perhaps originally Civil War slang, from dead (adj.) + beat. Earlier used colloquially as an adjectival expression to mean "completely beaten" (1821), and perhaps the base notion is of "worn out, good for nothing." It is noted in a British source from 1861 as a term for "a pensioner."
In England "dead beat" means worn out, used up. ... But here, "dead beat" is used, as a substantive, to mean a scoundrel, a shiftless, swindling vagabond. We hear it said that such a man is a beat or a dead beat. The phrase thus used is not even good slang. It is neither humorous nor descriptive. There is not in it even a perversion of the sense of the words of which it is composed. Its origin is quite beyond conjecture. ["Americanisms," in "The Galaxy," January 1878]
It also was used of a kind of regulating mechanism in pendulum clocks.
effete (adj.): 1620s, "functionless as a result of age or exhaustion," from Latin effetus (usually in fem. effeta) "exhausted, unproductive, worn out (with bearing offspring), past bearing," literally "that has given birth," from a lost verb, *efferi, from ex- "out" (see ex-) + fetus "childbearing, offspring" (see fetus). Figurative use is earliest in English; literal use is rare. Sense of "intellectually or morally exhausted" (1790) led to that of "decadent, effeminate" (by 1850s).
kaput (adj.): "finished, worn out, dead," 1895, from German kaputt "destroyed, ruined, lost" (1640s), which in this sense probably is a misunderstanding of the phrase capot machen, a partial translation of French faire capot, a phrase which meant "to win all the tricks (from the other player) in piquet," an obsolete card game. Literally "to make a bonnet;" perhaps the notion is throwing a hood over the other player, but faire capot also meant in French marine jargon "to overset in a squall when under sail." The word was popularized in English during World War I.
"Kaput" -- a slang word in common use which corresponds roughly to the English "done in," the French "fichu." Everything enemy was "kaput" in the early days of German victories. [F. Britten Austin, "According to Orders," New York, 1919]
French capot is literally "cover, bonnet," also the name of a type of greatcloak worn by sailors and soldiers (see capote). The card-playing sense attested in German only from 1690s, but capot in the (presumably) transferred sense of "destroyed, ruined, lost" is attested from 1640s. [see William Jervis Jones, "A Lexicon of French Borrowings in the German Vocabulary (1575-1648)," Berlin, de Gruyter, 1976]. In Hoyle and other English gaming sources, faire capot is "to win all the tricks," and a different phrase, être capot, "to be a bonnet," is sometimes cited as the term for losing them. The sense reversal in German might have come about because if someone wins all the tricks the other player has to lose them, and the same word capot, when it entered English from French in the mid-17c. meant "to score a cabot against; to win all the tricks from."
"There are others, says a third, that have played with my Lady Lurewell at picquet besides my lord; I have capotted her myself two or three times in an evening." [George Farquhar (1677-1707), "Sir Harry Wildair"]
knackered (adj.): "worn out, tired," past participle adjective from knacker (v.).
obsolete (adj.): 1570s, from Latin obsoletus "grown old, worn out," past participle of obsolescere "fall into disuse," probably from ob "away" (see ob-) + an expanded form of solere "to be used to, be accustomed" (see insolent).
roue (n.): "debauchee," 1800, from French roué "dissipated man, rake," originally past participle of Old French rouer "to break on the wheel" (15c.), from Latin rotare "roll" (see rotary). Said to have been first applied in French c. 1720 to dissolute friends of the Duke of Orleans (regent of France 1715-23), to suggest the punishment they deserved; but probably rather from a secondary, figurative sense in French of "jaded, worn out," from the notion of "broken, run-over, beat down."
shot (adj.): early 15c., past participle adjective from shoot (v.). Meaning "wounded or killed by a bullet or other projectile" is from 1837. Figurative sense "ruined, worn out" is from 1833.
spent (adj.): "consumed," mid-15c., past participle adjective from spend. Of time, "passed, over," from 1520s; as "worn out, exhausted from overwork," 1560s.
wimple (n.): "head and neck covering for women," formerly worn out of doors and especially by nuns, Old English wimpel, from Proto-Germanic *wimpilaz (cognates: Old Saxon wimpal, Old Frisian wimpel, Middle Dutch, Dutch wimpel, Old High German wimpal, German wimpel, Old Norse vimpill), of obscure origin. Old French guimple (French guimpe) is from Germanic.