quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- jugular[jugular 词源字典]
- jugular: see yoke
[jugular etymology, jugular origin, 英语词源] - juice
- juice: [13] Juice appears to come ultimately from a prehistoric root which meant ‘mix’. This had early descendants denoting ‘soup’ – Latin jūs, for instance, Sanskrit yūa, and Old Slavic jucha – and the Latin form passed into Old French as jus, whence English juice.
- jukebox
- jukebox: [20] The jukebox – a coin-operated record-player – got its name from being played in jukes; and a juke (or juke-house, or jukejoint), in US Black English slang of the middle years of the 20th century, was a roadhouse providing food and drink, music for dancing, and usually the services of prostitutes. The word probably came from the adjective juke or joog, which meant ‘wicked’ or ‘disorderly’ in the Gullah language, a creolized English of South Carolina, Georgia and northern Florida; and that in turn may well have originated in some as yet unidentified West African language.
- July
- July: [13] July was the month in which Julius Caesar was born. Originally in ancient Rome it was called Quintilis, literally ‘fifth month’ (the Roman year began in March), but after the death and deification of Caesar its name was changed in his honour. Latin Jūlius passed into English via Anglo-Norman julie, and until the 18th century the word was usually pronounced to rhyme with truly (as the related woman’s name Julie still is).
- jump
- jump: [16] Until the early modern English period, the words for ‘jump’ were leap and spring. Then, apparently out of nowhere, the verb jump appeared. Its provenance has never been satisfactorily explained, and etymologists fall back on the notion that it may originally have been intended to suggest the sound of jumping feet hitting the ground (the similar-sounding bump and thump are used to support this theory).
And certainly one of the earliest known instances of the word’s use connotes as much ‘making heavy contact’ as ‘rising’: ‘The said anchor held us from jumping and beating upon the said rock’, Sir Richard Guylforde, Pilgrimage to the Holy Land 1511. Jumper ‘sweater’ [19], incidentally, appears to have no etymological connection with jump. It was probably derived from an earlier dialectal jump or jup, which denoted a short coat for men or a sort of woman’s underbodice.
This in turn was borrowed from French juppe, a variant of jupe ‘skirt’, whose ultimate source was Arabic jubbah, the name of a sort of loose outer garment.
- junction
- junction: see join
- juncture
- juncture: see join
- June
- June: [13] June is the month of Juno, the Roman goddess of women and marriage, and wife and sister of Jupiter. Its Latin name was Jūnius mēnsis, ‘Juno’s month’, and Jūnius passed into English via Old French juin.
- jungle
- jungle: [18] Not surprisingly, jungle is a tropical word, but its ancestor denoted quite the opposite of the lush vegetation it now refers to. It comes from Sanskrit jangala, which originally meant ‘dry’, and hence ‘desert’. Its Hindi descendant jangal was used for an ‘area of wasteland’, and hence ‘such an area overgrown with scrub’, and when it was taken over into Anglo-Indian it was gradually extended to an ‘area of thick tangled trees’.
- junta
- junta: see join
- Jupiter
- Jupiter: see jovial
- jurisdiction
- jurisdiction: see judge
- just
- just: [14] Latin jūs originated in the terminology of religious cults, perhaps to begin with signifying something like ‘sacred formula’. By classical times, however, it denoted ‘right’, and particularly ‘legal right, law’, and it has provided English with a number of words connected with ‘rightness’ in general and with the process of law. The derived adjective jūstus has produced just and, by further derivation, justice [12] and justify [14].
The stem form jūr- has given injury, jury [14], objurgate [17], and perjury [14]. And combination with the element -dic- ‘say’ has produced judge, judicial, juridical, and jurisdiction. Not part of the same word family, however, is adjust [17], which comes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *adjuxtāre ‘put close to’, a compound verb based on Latin juxtā ‘close’ (whence English juxtaposition).
=> injury, judge, jury, objurgate, perjury - jut
- jut: see jet
- juxtaposition
- juxtaposition: see joust
- J
- the letter is a late modification of Roman -i-, originally a scribal creation in continental Medieval Latin to distinguish small -i- in cursive writing from the strokes of other letters, especially in the final positions of words. But in English, -y- was used for this, and -j- was introduced into English c. 1600-1640 to take up the consonantal sound that had evolved from -i- since Late Latin times. This usage first was attested in Spanish, where it was in place before 1600. English dictionaries continued to lump together words beginning in -i- and -j- until 19c., and -j- formerly was skipped when letters were used to express serial order.
Used in modern writing to represent Latin -i- before -a-, -e-, -o-, -u- in the same syllable, which in Latin was sounded as the consonant in Modern English you, yam, etc., but the custom is controversial among Latinists:
The character J, j, which represents the letter sound in some school-books, is an invention of the seventeenth century, and is not found in MSS., nor in the best texts of the Latin authors. [Lewis]
In words from Hebrew, -j- represents yodh, which was equivalent to English consonantal y (as in hallelujah) but in many names it later was conformed in sound to the -j- of Latin or French (Jesus). - j'accuse
- French, literally "I accuse," phrase made famous by Emile Zola in a public letter attacking the irregularities of the Dreyfus trial (published Jan. 13, 1898).
- jab (v.)
- 1825, "to thrust with a point," Scottish variant of job "to strike, pierce, thrust," from Middle English jobben "to jab, thrust, peck" (late 15c.), of unknown origin, perhaps echoic. Related: Jabbed; jabbing.
- jab (n.)
- 1825, from jab (v.). Meaning "a punch with the fist" is from 1889. Sense of "injection with a hypodermic needle," beloved by headline writers, is from 1914.
- jabber (v.)
- 1650s, spelling variant of Middle English jablen (c. 1400), also javeren, jaberen, probably ultimately echoic. Related: Jabbered; jabbering. The noun is 1727, from the verb.