英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

bean [bean 词源字典]: bean: [OE] The word bean (Old English bēan) has relatives in several Germanic languages (German bohne, Dutch boon, Swedish böna), pointing to a common West and North Germanic source *baunō, but that is as far back in history as we can pursue it. Beanfeast [19] apparently derived from the practice of serving bacon and beans (or, according to some, bean geese, a species of goose) at the annual dinners given by firms to their employees in the 19th century. Beano, originally a printers’ abbreviation, appears towards the end of the 19th century.
[bean etymology, bean origin, 英语词源]
bear: bear: [OE] The two English words bear ‘carry’ and bear the animal come from completely different sources. The verb, Old English beran, goes back via Germanic *ber- to Indo-European *bher-, which already contained the two central meaning elements that have remained with its offspring ever since, ‘carry’ and ‘give birth’. It is the source of a very large number of words in the Indo-European languages, including both Germanic (German gebären ‘give birth’, Swedish börd ‘birth’) and non-Germanic (Latin ferre and Greek phérein ‘bear’, source of English fertile and amphora [17], and Russian brat ‘seize’).

And a very large number of other English words are related to it: on the ‘carrying’ side, barrow, berth, bier, burden, and possibly brim; and on the ‘giving birth’ side, birth itself and bairn ‘child’ [16]. Borne and born come from boren, the Old English past participle of bear; the distinction in usage between the two (borne for ‘carried’, born for ‘given birth’) arose in the early 17th century.

Etymologically, the bear is a ‘brown animal’. Old English bera came from West Germanic *bero (whence also German bär and Dutch beer), which may in turn go back to Indo- European *bheros, related to English brown. The poetic name for the bear, bruin [17], follows the same semantic pattern (it comes from Dutch bruin ‘brown’), and beaver means etymologically ‘brown animal’ too.
=> amphora, bairn, barrow, berth, bier, born, burden, fertile, fortune, paraphernalia, suffer; brown
beard: beard: [OE] Old English beard came from West Germanic *bartha, which was also the source of German bart and Dutch baard. A close relative of this was Latin barba ‘beard’, which gave English barb [14] (via Old French barbe), barber [13] (ultimately from medieval Latin barbātor, originally a ‘beard-trimmer’), and barbel [14], a fish with sensitive whisker-like projections round its mouth (from late Latin barbellus, a diminutive form of barbus ‘barbel’, which was derived from barba).
=> barb, barber
beast: beast: [13] Beast replaced deer as the general word for ‘animal’ in the 13th century (deer of course remained in use for antlered animals of the family Cervidae), and was itself replaced by animal in the 17th century. It entered English via Old French beste from Latin bēstia (source of English bestial [14]).
=> bestial
beat: beat: [OE] Old English bēatan and the related Old Norse bauta may be traced back to a prehistoric Germanic *bautan. It has been conjectured that this could be connected with *fu-, the base of Latin confūtāre and refūtāre (source respectively of English confute [16] and refute [16]) and of Latin fustis ‘club’ (from which English gets fusty [14]).
=> beetle, confute, fusty, refute
beauty: beauty: [13] Beauty came via Anglo-Norman beute and Old French bealte from Vulgar Latin *bellitas, a derivative of Latin bellus ‘beautiful’ (this developed from an earlier, unrecorded *dwenolos, a diminutive form of Old Latin *duenos, *duonos, which is related to Latin bonus ‘good’ – source of English bonus [18], bounty [13], and bounteous [14]).

Other English words from the same ultimate source are beau [17] and its feminine form belle [17]; beatific [17], which comes from Latin beātus ‘blessed, happy’, the past participle of the verb beāre, a relative of bellus; embellish; and bibelot ‘small ornament’ [19], originally a French word based ultimately on *belbel, a reduplication of Old French bel ‘beautiful’.

English beautiful is 15th century.
=> beau, belle, beatific, bibelot, bonus, bounty, embellish
beaver: beaver: [OE] Like bear, beaver appears to mean etymologically ‘brown animal’. Old English beofor or befor came from a prehistoric West and North Germanic *bebruz, which in turn went back to an Indo-European *bhebhrús, a derivative of the base *bhru- ‘brown’. Other words for ‘beaver’ from the same source include Czech bobr, Lithuanian bebrùs, and Latin fiber.
because: because: [14] Because originated in the phrase by cause, which was directly modelled on French par cause. At first it was always followed by of or by a subordinate clause introduced by that or why: ‘The Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified’, St John’s Gospel, 7:39, 1611. But already by the end of the 14th century that and why were beginning to be omitted, leaving because to function as a conjunction, a move which would perhaps have exercised contemporary linguistic purists as much as ‘The reason is because …’ does today. The abbreviated form ’cause first appears in print in the 16th century.
=> cause
beckon: beckon: see beacon
become: become: [OE] Become is a compound verb found in other Germanic languages (German bekommen, for instance, and Dutch bekomen), which points to a prehistoric Germanic source *bikweman, based on *kweman, source of English come. Originally it meant simply ‘come, arrive’, but the modern senses ‘come to be’ and ‘be suitable’ had developed by the 12th century. A parallel semantic development occurred in French: Latin dēvenīre meant ‘come’, but its modern French descendant devenir means ‘become’.
=> come
bed: bed: [OE] Bed is common throughout the Germanic languages (German bett, Dutch bed), and comes from a prehistoric Germanic *bathjam. Already in Old English times the word meant both ‘place for sleeping’ and ‘area for growing plants’, and if the latter is primary, it could mean that the word comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhodh-, source of Latin fodere ‘dig’ (from which English gets fosse and fossil), and that the underlying notion of a bed was therefore originally of a sleeping place dug or scraped in the ground, like an animal’s lair.
=> fosse, fossil
bedizen: bedizen: see distaff
bedlam: bedlam: [15] The word bedlam is a contraction of Bethlehem. It comes from the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem founded in 1247 by Simon FitzMary, Sheriff of London, as the Priory of St Mary Bethlehem. Situated outside Bishopsgate, in the City of London, the hospital began to admit mental patients in the late 14th century. In the 16th century it officially became a lunatic asylum. The word bedlam came to be used for any ‘madhouse’, and by extension for a ‘scene of noisy confusion’, in the 17th century.
bee: bee: [OE] Old English bēo ‘bee’ came from a prehistoric West and North Germanic *bīōn, source also of German biene, Dutch bij, and Swedish bi, which may all be traceable back to an Indo-European base *bhi- ‘quiver’. This, if it is true, means that the bee was originally named as the ‘quivering’, or perhaps ‘humming’ insect. Latin fucus ‘drone’ appears to be related.
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
beef: beef: [13] Like mutton, pork, and veal, beef was introduced by the Normans to provide a dainty alternative to the bare animal names ox, cow, etc when referring to their meat. Anglo-Norman and Old French boef or buef (which of course became modern French boeuf) came from Latin bov-, the stem of bōs ‘ox’, from which English gets bovine [19] and Bovril [19]. Bōs itself is actually related etymologically to cow. The compound beefeater ‘yeoman warder of the Tower of London’ was coined in the 17th century; it was originally a contemptuous term for a ‘well-fed servant’.
=> bovine, cow
beer: beer: [OE] Originally, beer was probably simply a general term for a ‘drink’: it seems to have come from late Latin biber ‘drink’, which was a derivative of the verb bibere ‘drink’ (from which English gets beverage, bibulous, imbibe, and possibly also bibber). The main Old English word for ‘beer’ was ale, and beer (Old English bēor) is not very common until the 15th century. A distinction between hopped beer and unhopped ale arose in the 16th century.
=> beverage, bibulous, imbibe
beetle: beetle: English has three separate words beetle. The commonest, beetle the insect, comes from Old English bitula, which was a derivative of the verb bītan ‘bite’: beetle hence means etymologically ‘the biter’. Beetle ‘hammer’, now largely restricted to various technical contexts, is also Old English: the earliest English form, bētel, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *bautilaz, a derivative of the verb *bautan, from which English gets beat (the cognate Old Norse beytill meant ‘penis’).

The adjective beetle [14], as in ‘beetle brows’, and its related verb are of unknown origin, although it has been speculated that there is some connection with the tufted antennae of certain species of beetle, which may suggest eyebrows.
=> bite; beat
before: before: [OE] Before is a Germanic compound, made up of *bi- ‘by’ and *forana ‘from the front’ (the resulting *biforana entered Old English as beforan). The second element, *forana, is a derivative of *fora, source of English for; this originally meant ‘before’, and only gradually developed the senses we are familiar with today.
=> for
beg: beg: [OE] Beg first turns up in immediately recognizable form in the 13th century, as beggen, but it seems likely that it goes back ultimately to an Old English verb bedecian ‘beg’. This came from the Germanic base *beth-, from which English also gets bid.
=> bid