英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

backwardness (n.)[backwardness 词源字典]: 1580s, from backward + -ness.[backwardness etymology, backwardness origin, 英语词源]
backwards (adv.): 1510s, from backward with adverbial genitive. Figurative phrase bend over backwards is recorded from 1901.
backwash (n.): 1876, "motion of a receeding wave," from back (adj.) + wash (n.).
backwater (n.): late 14c., "water behind a dam," from back (adj.) + water (n.1). Hence flat water without a current near a flowing river, as in a mill race (1820); figurative use of this for any flat, dull place is from 1899.
backwood (n.): 1709, American English, from back (adj.) + wood (n.) "forested tract." Also backwoods. As an adjective, from 1784.
BACKWOODSMEN ... This word is commonly used as a term of reproach (and that, only in a familiar style,) to designate those people, who, being at a distance from the sea and entirely agricultural, are considered as either hostile or indifferent to the interests of the commercial states. [John Pickering, "A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America," Boston, 1816]
backyard (n.): also back-yard, 1650s (perhaps early 15c.), from back (adj.) + yard (n.1).
bacon (n.): early 14c., "meat from the back and sides of a pig" (originally either fresh or cured, but especially cured), from Old French bacon, from Proto-Germanic *bakkon "back meat" (cognates: Old High German bahho, Old Dutch baken "bacon"). Slang phrase bring home the bacon first recorded 1908; bacon formerly being the staple meat of the working class.
bacteria (n.): 1847, plural of Modern Latin bacterium, from Greek bakterion "small staff," diminutive of baktron "stick, rod," from PIE *bak- "staff used for support" (also source of Latin baculum "rod, walking stick"). So called because the first ones observed were rod-shaped. Introduced as a scientific word 1838 by German naturalist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876).
bacterial (adj.): 1869, from bacteria + -al (1).
bacteriology (n.): 1884, from German; see bacteria + -ology. Related: Bacteriological (1886). Bacteriological warfare is from 1924.
bacteriophage (n.): 1921, from French bactériophage (1917), from bacterio-, comb. form of bacteria, + -phage.
bacterium (n.): c. 1848, singular of bacteria (q.v.).
Bactrian: "inhabitant of Bactria," late 14c.; as a type of camel, c. 1600, from Latin Bactria, ancient region in what is now northwestern Afghanistan, literally "the western province," from Persian bakhtar "the west."
bad (adj.): c. 1200, "inferior in quality;" early 13c., "wicked, evil, vicious," a mystery word with no apparent relatives in other languages.* Possibly from Old English derogatory term bæddel and its diminutive bædling "effeminate man, hermaphrodite, pederast," probably related to bædan "to defile." A rare word before 1400, and evil was more common in this sense until c. 1700. Meaning "uncomfortable, sorry" is 1839, American English colloquial.

Comparable words in the other Indo-European languages tend to have grown from descriptions of specific qualities, such as "ugly," "defective," "weak," "faithless," "impudent," "crooked," "filthy" (such as Greek kakos, probably from the word for "excrement;" Russian plochoj, related to Old Church Slavonic plachu "wavering, timid;" Persian gast, Old Persian gasta-, related to gand "stench;" German schlecht, originally "level, straight, smooth," whence "simple, ordinary," then "bad").

Comparative and superlative forms badder, baddest were common 14c.-18c. and used as recently as Defoe (but not by Shakespeare), but yielded to comparative worse and superlative worst (which had belonged to evil and ill).

As a noun, late 14c., "evil, wickedness." In U.S. place names, sometimes translating native terms meaning "supernaturally dangerous." Ironic use as a word of approval is said to be at least since 1890s orally, originally in Black English, emerging in print 1928 in a jazz context. It might have emerged from the ambivalence of expressions like bad nigger, used as a term of reproach by whites, but among blacks sometimes representing one who stood up to injustice, but in the U.S. West bad man also had a certain ambivalence:
These are the men who do most of the killing in frontier communities, yet it is a noteworthy fact that the men who are killed generally deserve their fate. [Farmer & Henley]
*Farsi has bad in more or less the same sense as the English word, but this is regarded by linguists as a coincidence. The forms of the words diverge as they are traced back in time (Farsi bad comes from Middle Persian vat), and such accidental convergences exist across many languages, given the vast number of words in each and the limited range of sounds humans can make to signify them. Among other coincidental matches with English are Korean mani "many," Chinese pei "pay," Nahuatl (Aztecan) huel "well," Maya hol "hole."
bad-mouth (v.): "abuse someone verbally," 1941, probably ultimately from noun phrase bad mouth (1835), in Black English, "a curse, spell," translating an idiom found in African and West Indian languages. Related: Bad-mouthed; bad-mouthing.
badass (n.): "tough guy," 1950s U.S. slang, from bad + ass (n.2).
badder (adj.): obsolete or colloquial comparative of bad, common 14c.-18c.
baddest (adj.): obsolete or colloquial superlative of bad, common 14c.-18c.
baddish (adj.): "rather bad," 1755, from bad + -ish.
baddy (n.): "bad man," 1937, from bad + -y (3).