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tabby [tabby 词源字典]: tabby: [17] By a bizarre series of etymological twists and turns, the tabby cat commemorates a textile manufacturing suburb of Baghdad. This was al-‘Attābīya, named after Prince Attāb, who lived there. The cloth made there was known as ‘attābī, and the term passed via Old French atabis and modern French tabis into English as tabby. This originally denoted a sort of rich silk taffeta (‘This day … put on … my false tabby waistcoat with gold lace’ noted Samuel Pepys in his diary for 13 October 1661), but since such cloth was originally usually striped, by the 1660s the word was being applied to brindled cats.
[tabby etymology, tabby origin, 英语词源]
tabernacle: tabernacle: see tavern
table: table: [12] Latin tabula originally denoted a ‘board’ or ‘plank’, and hence a ‘slab for writing on’ and a ‘list or similar arrangement of words or figures written on such a slab’ (as in a ‘table of contents’). It was in the farther outposts of the Roman empire that the sense ‘piece of furniture for serving meals on’ emerged – possibly in Frankish, where it would have been a direct translation of the term used for ‘table’, which meant literally ‘serving board’ (until tables with legs found their way northward from Greece and Rome, food had been served on individual trays or boards).

In much of the empire it became established as the word for ‘table’ (and it passed into English via Old French table), although in Spanish the original Latin term mensa survived as mesa. Derivatives in English include entablature [17], tableau [17] (originally a French diminutive form), tablet, tabloid, and tabular [17].
=> entablature, tableau, tablet, tabloid, tabular
tabloid: tabloid: [19] Tabloid originated as a trade-name for a brand of tablets of condensed medicine, registered in 1884 by Burroughs, Wellcome and Company. It was an alteration of tablet [14], which came from Old French tablete, a diminutive form of table (source of English table). This originally denoted a ‘slab for writing on or inscribing’. Such slabs would have been flat and often quite small, and in the late 16th century the term came to be applied to a ‘flat compressed piece of something’ – such as soap or medicine.

The notion of ‘compression’ or ‘condensation’ underlies the use of tabloid for newspapers of small page size and ‘condensed’ versions of news stories, which emerged at the beginning of the 20th century (‘He advocated tabloid journalism’, Westminster gazette 1 January 1901).
=> table
tabor: tabor: see tambourine
tacit: tacit: [17] Tacit was adapted from Latin tacitus, the past participle of tacēre ‘be silent’. Another derivative of this was Latin taciturnus, from which English gets taciturn [18]; and tacēre also lies behind English reticent.
=> reticent, taciturn
tack: tack: English has three distinct words tack. The oldest, meaning ‘nail or other fastening’ [14], comes from Old Northern French taque, a variant of Old French tache ‘nail, fastening’. This was borrowed from prehistoric Germanic, but the nature of its connection with attach, if any, is not known. In the 15th century it was applied to the ‘ropes, cables, etc fastening a ship’s sails’, and the adjustment of these fastenings when changing direction led to the use of tack as a verb meaning ‘change direction in a boat’. Tacky ‘sticky’, derived from tack in the 18th century, also depends on the general notion of ‘fastening’ (the origins of the other tacky, ‘shoddy, tasteless’ [19], are not known). Tack ‘horse’s harness and other equipment’ [20] is short for tackle [13].

This was probably borrowed from Middle Low German takel, a derivative of taken ‘seize’ (to which English take is related). The origins of tack ‘food’ [19] (as in hard tack) are not known.
=> tackle
tact: tact: [17] Tact originally denoted the ‘sense of touch’ (that is what Alexander Ross was referring to when he wrote ‘Of all the creatures, the sense of tact is most exquisite in man’, Arcana microcosmi 1651). But by the end of the 18th century it had evolved semantically via ‘refined faculty of perception’ to ‘skill in behaving or speaking with propriety or sensitivity’.

It was acquired via French tact from Latin tactus ‘sense of touch’, a noun use of the past participle of tangere ‘touch’ (source of English contact, tangent, tangible, etc). Tactile [17], from the Latin derivative tactilis, preserves the original notion of ‘touching’.
=> contact, contagion, tactile, tangent, tangible
tactic: tactic: [17] Tactics denotes etymologically ‘arrangement, setting in order’. It goes back ultimately to Greek tássein ‘put in order’, hence ‘arrange in battle formation’. From this was derived taktós ‘arranged’, which formed the basis of the further adjective taktikós ‘concerned with arrangement or (military) planning’ (source of English tactic and tactical [16]). It was used in the plural, taktiká, for ‘matters relating to arrangement’, and this served as a model for English tactics.
tadpole: tadpole: [15] A tadpole is etymologically a ‘toad-head’. The word was coined from Middle English tadde ‘toad’ and pol ‘head’ (ancestor of modern English poll ‘voting’, historically a counting of ‘heads’). Tadpoles, with their moonlike faces appearing to take up about half of their small globular bodies, seem rather like animated heads.
=> poll, toad
tail: tail: [OE] Tail comes from a prehistoric Germanic *taglaz, whose other modern descendants include German zagel ‘penis’ and Swedish tagel ‘horsehair’. This in turn went back to an Indo- European *doklos, which had the general meaning ‘something long and thin’.
tailor: tailor: [13] A tailor is etymologically a ‘cutter’. The word was acquired from Anglo-Norman taillour, a variant of Old French tailleur. This went back to Vulgar Latin *tāliātor ‘cutter’, a derivative of *tāliāre ‘cut’, which in turn was formed from Latin tālea ‘cutting’ (in the sense of a ‘piece of a plant removed for grafting or regrowing’).

The specific application of the word to a ‘cutter or maker of clothes’ was foreshadowed in medieval Latin tāliātor vestium and Old French tailleur d’habits, and by the time it reached English, the memory of its etymological connection with ‘cutting’ had virtually disappeared; indeed in strict technical usage tailor ‘person who makes up clothes’ contrasts with cutter ‘person who cuts out the cloth’.

Other English descendants of tālea include detail, entail, retail, and tally [15] (which depends on another meaning of tālea, ‘twig’, hence ‘notches cut on a stick for counting’).
=> detail, entail, retail, tally
taint: taint: see tinge
take: take: [12] Take was borrowed from Old Norse taka, whose modern descendants include Swedish taga and Danish tage. Now defunct relatives include Middle Dutch tāken ‘seize’ and Gothic tekan ‘touch’, and its ancestral meaning is probably ‘lay hands on’, but its ultimate origins are not known.
tale: tale: [OE] A tale is etymologically something that is ‘told’. The word is descended from a prehistoric Germanic *talō, a derivative of the base *tal-, which also produced English talk and tell. Of its Germanic relatives, German zahl, Dutch getal, Swedish antal, and Danish tal all mean ‘number’, reflecting a secondary meaning ‘reckoning, enumeration’ which once existed in English, perhaps as an introduction from Old Norse (it survives in the related teller ‘counter of votes’ and all told).
=> talk, tell
talent: talent: [13] Greek tálanton meant ‘balance, weight’, and hence ‘unit of weight or money’. Latin borrowed it as talentum, using it metaphorically for ‘mental inclination’, and it was in this sense that English originally acquired it, via Old French talent. ‘Unit of money’ did not arrive (apart from one isolated Old English instance) until the late 14th century, and it was the use of the word in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30), in which a master gave his servants talents (money), which two of them put out to interest, earning their master’s approval, while the other less enterprising servant simply buried his, that led in the early 15th century to the use of the term for ‘aptitude, ability’.
talisman: talisman: [17] Talisman, one of the very few English nouns ending in -man which does not turn into -men in the plural (dragoman is another), denotes etymologically an ‘object consecrated by the completion of a religious ritual’. It comes via French talisman from medieval Greek télesmon, an alteration of late Greek télesma ‘consecrated object’. This in turn was derived from the verb teleín ‘complete’, hence ‘perform a ritual’, hence ‘consecrate’, which was based on télos ‘aim, result’ (source of English teleology [18]).
=> teleology, television
talk: talk: [13] Talk has only one close relative – East Frisian talken ‘talk, chatter’. This suggests that it may first have seen the light of day just before the Anglo-Saxon peoples first crossed the North Sea to Britain – they were then in close contact with the Frisians. However, there is no record of the verb in Old English, and it first crops up in West Midland texts of the early 13th century. Its ultimate source is the prehistoric Germanic base *tal-, which also produced English tale and tell.
=> tale, tell
tall: tall: [14] The ancestral meaning of tall is ‘quick’. It is a descendant of Old English getæl ‘quick, ready’, whose relatives included Old Frisian tel and Old High German gizal ‘quick’, and which may go back ultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base *tal- (source of English tale, talk, and tell). By the time of its re-emergence in Middle English it was being used for ‘brave, bold’, but the modern sense ‘of great height’ did not develop until the 16th century.
talon: talon: [14] Latin tālus meant ‘ankle’ (it was probably a borrowing from Celtic – Irish has sal ‘talon’). From it was derived Vulgar Latin *tālō ‘heel, spur’, which passed into English via Old French talon. In English its meaning evolved via ‘heel of an animal’ and ‘bird of prey’s claw’ to ‘claw’ in general.