英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

tight [tight 词源字典]: tight: [14] Tight originally meant ‘dense’ (‘His squire rode all night in a wood that was full tight’, Torrent of Portugal 1435). It appears to have been an alteration of an earlier thight ‘dense, thickset’, which was borrowed from Old Norse théttr ‘watertight, dense’. And this, like German and Dutch dicht ‘dense, close’, came from a prehistoric Germanic *thingkhtaz, whose other relatives include Lithuanian tankus ‘thick, standing close together’, Irish contēcim ‘coagulate’, and Sanskrit tañc- ‘contract’. The sense ‘firmly fixed’ developed in the 16th century, ‘drunk’ in the 19th century.
[tight etymology, tight origin, 英语词源]
tilde: tilde: see title
tile: tile: [OE] A tile is etymologically a ‘cover’. The word comes ultimately from Latin tēgula ‘tile’, a derivative of the same Indo-European base as produced English deck and thatch and Latin tegere ‘cover’ (source of English detect, protect, etc). Tēgula was borrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as *tegala, which evolved into German ziegel, Dutch tegel, and English tile.
=> deck, detect, protect, thatch, toga
till: till: English has three distinct words till, but two of them are probably related. The etymological notion underlying till ‘cultivate the soil’ [OE] is of ‘striving to obtain a goal’. Indeed, that is what its Old English ancestor tilian originally meant; ‘cultivate’ is a late Old English development, via an intermediate ‘labour’. The verb comes from a prehistoric Germanic *tilōjan, a derivative of the noun *tilam ‘aim, purpose’ (source of German ziel ‘goal’).

This passed into Old English as till ‘fixed point’, which seems to have been converted into a preposition meaning ‘up to a particular point (originally in space, but soon also in time)’. The compound until dates from the 13th century; its first element was borrowed from Old Norse *und ‘till’. The origins of till ‘money box’ [15] are uncertain.
tiller: tiller: see toil
tilt: tilt: [14] Tilt originally meant ‘fall over’; the sense ‘slant’ is not recorded before the 16th century. The word is probably descended from an unrecorded Old English *tyltan, whose ultimate source would have been the prehistoric Germanic adjective *taltaz ‘unsteady’ (ancestor also of Swedish tulta ‘totter’). Tilt ‘joust’ (first recorded in the 16th century) has traditionally been regarded as the same word, based presumably on the notion of making one’s opponent ‘fall over’, but this is not certain.
timber: timber: [OE] Timber originally denoted a ‘building’ – the Lindisfarne Gospels of around 950 translated Mark 13:1 (‘See what manner of stones and what buildings are here’) as ‘See what stones and what timber’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *timram, whose German descendant zimmer ‘room’ has remained closer to its semantic roots (but German zimmermann means ‘carpenter’).

And this in turn went back to Indo-European *demrom, a derivative of the base *dem-, *dom- ‘build’, from which English also gets dome, domestic, etc. The sense ‘building’ gradually developed into ‘building material’, then ‘wood used for building’, and finally ‘wood’ in general.
=> dome, domestic
timbre: timbre: see timpani
time: time: [OE] Time originally denoted ‘delimited section of existence, period’. Its ultimate source is the Indo-European base *dī- ‘cut up, divide’. This passed into prehistoric Germanic as *tī- (source also of English tide), and addition of the suffix *-mon- produced *tīmon – whence English time and Swedish timme ‘hour’. The application of the word to the more generalized, abstract notion of ‘continuous duration’ dates from the 14th century.
=> tide
timid: timid: [16] The Latin verb timēre meant ‘fear’ (its origins are not known). From it were derived the adjective timidus (source of English timid) and the noun timor ‘fear’ (whose medieval Latin descendant timorōsus ‘fearful’ gave English timorous [15]).
=> timorous
timpani: timpani: [16] Timpani was borrowed from Italian, where it is the plural of timpano ‘kettledrum’. This in turn went back via Latin tympanum ‘drum’ (source of English tympanum ‘ear-drum’ [17]) to Greek túmpanon ‘drum’, a close relative of the verb túptein ‘hit’. Part of the same word-family is timbre ‘sound-quality’ [19], whose French antecedent meant ‘bell hit with a hammer’.
=> timbre, tympanum
tin: tin: [OE] Tin is a general Germanic word, with relatives in German zinn, Dutch and Danish tin, and Swedish tenn. These point to a common ancestor *tinam, but where this came from is not known. The word was first used for a ‘tin can’ in the early 19th century. Tinker may be related.
tincture: tincture: see tinge
tinder: tinder: [OE] Tinder, and its relatives German zunder, Dutch tonder, and Swedish tunder, go back to a prehistoric Germanic base *tund- ‘ignite, kindle’, which also produced German anzünden, Swedish upptända, and Danish antænde ‘kindle’. Its ultimate origins are not known. The now clichéd tinder-dry is first recorded in Rudyard Kipling’s Light That Failed 1891: ‘the tinder-dry clumps of scrub’.
tinge: tinge: [15] Etymologically, tinge denotes ‘soak, moisten’. That is what its Latin source, tingere, originally meant. The notion of ‘colour’ comes from a secondary Latin sense, ‘dye’, which arose from the concept of ‘dipping in liquid dye’. The Latin past participle, tinctus, lies behind English taint [14], tincture [14], and tint [18].
=> taint, tincture, tint
tinker: tinker: [13] Etymologically, a tinker is probably a ‘worker in tin’. It could well be descended from an unrecorded Old English *tinecere, a plausible derivative of tin. There is an alternative possibility, however: it may have been derived from the now obsolete verb tink ‘tinkle’ (which, like tinkle [14] itself, was of imitative origin), in allusion to the metallic sounds made by tinkers repairing pots (northern and Scottish dialects had the word tinkler for ‘tinker’).
tinsel: tinsel: [16] Tinsel is etymologically something that ‘sparkles’. Its ultimate source is Latin scintilla ‘spark’, which has also given English scintillate [17]. This was altered in the postclassical period to *stincilla, which passed into Old French as estincele ‘spark’. From this was derived the adjective estincelé ‘sparkling’, which was applied particularly to fabric with metallic thread woven into it. English took this over as tinselle, originally an adjective but soon used as a noun. Its derogatory connotations of ‘gaudiness’ or ‘cheap glamour’ began to emerge in the 17th century.
=> scintillate, stencil
tint: tint: see tinge
tip: tip: English has three distinct words tip, two of them possibly related. Tip ‘extremity’ [15] was probably borrowed from Old Norse typpi. This was descended from prehistoric Germanic *tupp- ‘upper extremity’ (source also of English top and toupee). Tip ‘touch lightly’ [13] (as in ‘tip-and-run cricket’) may have been borrowed from Low German tippen, although it could be the same word as tip ‘extremity’ (from the notion of ‘just touching something with the tip of something else’).

It was used in 17th-century underworld argot for ‘give’ (as in ‘tip someone the wink’), and this evolved in the 18th century to ‘give a gratuity’. The antecedents of tip ‘overturn’ [14] (originally tipe) are not known, although the fact that it first appeared in northern dialects suggests that it may have been borrowed from a Scandinavian language. The derived tipsy [16] denotes etymologically ‘liable to fall over’.
=> top, toupee; tipsy
tire: tire: [OE] Tire is something of a mystery word. It was relatively common in the Old English period (where it originally meant ‘fail, cease, come to an end’ – ‘become weary’ is a secondary development), but then it disappeared, to return in the 14th century. Nor is anything certain known about its pre-English ancestry, although it may go back to the Indo-European base *deus- (source also of Sanskrit dosa- ‘fault, lack’). The use of the past participle tired as an adjective dates from the late 14th century.