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uniform [uniform 词源字典]: uniform: [16] Something that is uniform has literally only ‘one form’, the same throughout. The word comes, probably via French uniforme, from Latin ūniformis, a compound adjective formed from ūnus ‘one’ and forma ‘form’. Its use as a noun, for a ‘set of identical clothes worn by everyone’, dates from the 18th century, and was inspired by French.
=> form[uniform etymology, uniform origin, 英语词源]
union: union: [15] Union is one of a range of English words that go back to Latin ūnus ‘one’. This in turn was descended from a prehistoric Indo- European *oinos, which also produced English one. Other members of the family include inch, ounce, unique, unite [15], etc. As for union itself, its immediate ancestor was ūniō, a derivative of ūnus which denoted ‘unity’ or ‘the number one’. The application of the English word to an ‘association of workers’ dates from the early 19th century (a somewhat earlier term was combination).
=> inch, one, ounce, unique, unite
unique: unique: [17] Unique comes via French unique from Latin ūnicus ‘only, sole’. This was derived from ūnus ‘one’, a distant relative of English one. It originally meant simply ‘single, sole’ in English, and the extended sense ‘unequalled, unparalleled’, which has often drawn the hostile criticism of purists (particularly when accompanied by qualifiers such as very or completely), did not emerge until the late 18th century, under French influence.
=> one, union
unison: unison: [16] Unison originated as a musical term, denoting ‘of the same sound’. It comes via Old French unison from late Latin ūnisonus, a compound adjective formed from ūnus ‘one’ and sonus ‘sound’ (source of English sound). The metaphorical sense ‘agreement, concord’ emerged in the 17th century.
=> sound
unit: unit: [16] The term unit was given general currency by the 16th-century English mathematician, astrologer, and magician John Dee. It was formed from Latin ūnus, probably on the analogy of digit, and used as a mathematical term to replace unity as a translation of Euclid’s monás ‘indivisible number’. In a comment added to his introduction to Sir Henry Billingsley’s translation of Euclid, Dee wrote ‘Note the word unit to express the Greek monas, and not unity: as we have all commonly until now used’.
unite: unite: see union
universe: universe: [14] Universe denotes etymologically ‘turned into one’, hence ‘whole, indivisible’. It goes back ultimately to Latin ūniversus ‘whole, entire’, a compound adjective formed from ūnus ‘one’ and versus, the past participle of vertere ‘turn’. Its neuter form, ūniversum, was used as a noun meaning the ‘whole world’ (based on the model of Greek to hólon ‘the whole’), and this passed into English via Old French univers. The Latin derivative ūniversālis gave English universal [14].
=> convert, version
university: university: [14] The etymological notion underlying a university is that it denotes the ‘whole’ number of those belonging to it. The word comes via Old French universite from Latin ūniversitās, which was derived from ūniversus (source of English universe). This originally meant the ‘whole’, but in the postclassical period it was applied to guilds and other such associations, referring to the ‘totality’ of their membership. These included societies of teachers and students, from which the modern meaning of university emerged.
=> universe
unkempt: unkempt: [15] Unkempt means literally ‘uncombed’. It was coined from the prefix un- ‘not’ and the past participle of the now defunct verb kemb ‘comb’. This came from a prehistoric Germanic *kambjan, a derivative of *kambaz ‘comb’ (ancestor of the English noun comb). It began to be replaced by the new verb comb in the 14th century.
=> comb
until: until: see till
unwieldy: unwieldy: [14] Unwieldy originally meant ‘weak, feeble’ (‘a toothless, old, impotent, and unwieldy woman’, Reginald Scot, Discovery of Witch-craft 1584). The meaning ‘awkward to handle’ developed in the 16th century. The word was based on the now seldom encountered wieldy, which evolved from Old English wielde ‘active, vigorous’. This in turn went back to the Germanic base *walth- ‘have power’, source also of English herald and wield.
=> herald, wield
up: up: [OE] Up is part of a widespread family of Germanic adverbs which also includes German auf, Dutch and Danish op, and Swedish upp. It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *up-, which also produced English over and the prefixes hyper- and super- and may lie behind English evil. To open something is etymologically to put it ‘up’.
=> open, over
upbraid: upbraid: [OE] Upbraid originally meant ‘throw something up against someone as a fault’. It was formed from up and the ancestor of modern English braid, which used to mean ‘throw’, amongst other things. The object of the verb was originally the ‘fault’; the shift of focus to the ‘person blamed’ began in the 13th century.
=> braid
upholster: upholster: [19] Upholster has no etymological connection with holsters. It is a back-formation from upholsterer [17], which itself was derived from an earlier but now obsolete upholster ‘person who deals in or repairs small articles’. This was an agent noun formed from the verb uphold [13] (a compound of up and hold), in the now defunct sense ‘repair’.
=> hold
uproar: uproar: [16] Uproar has no direct etymological connection with roar. It originally meant ‘uprising, insurrection’, and was borrowed from Dutch oproer. This is a compound formed from op ‘up’ and roer ‘movement’. It was first used in English by William Tindale, in his 1526 translation of the Bible (for Acts 21:38 he has ‘that Egyptian which made an uproar, and led out into the wilderness about four thousand men’). The sense ‘loud outcry’, which was inspired of course by the similarity of roar, emerged as early as the 1540s.
upstart: upstart: [16] An upstart is etymologically simply someone who has ‘started up’ – but start in its early sense ‘jump, spring, rise’. Start-up was an early alternative version of the word (‘That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow’, says Don John in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing 1599), but it did not survive the 17th century.
uranium: uranium: [18] Ouranós was an ancient sky god in Greek mythology, consort of Gaea and father of Cronos and the Titans (his name was a personification of Greek ouranós ‘heaven’). The Romans called him ūranus, and the name soon came to be applied to the seventh planet from the sun after it was discovered in 1781. (Its discoverer, the German-born British astronomer Sir William Herschel, originally named it Georgium sidus ‘Georgian planet’, as an obsequious compliment to King George III, and others suggested that it should be called Herschel after the man who found it, but in the end the customary practice of naming after a classical deity prevailed.) The term uranium was derived from the planet’s name in 1789 by the German chemist Martin Klaproth, and is first recorded in English in 1797.
urban: urban: [17] Urban comes from Latin urbānus, a derivative of urbs ‘city’ (a word of unknown origin). It was preceded into English by urbane [16], which is essentially the same word, but came via Old French urbaine. It was originally used as urban is now, but after urban arrived it gradually took the metaphorical path to ‘smooth, sophisticated’. The derivatives suburb and suburban date from the 14th and 17th centuries respectively; and suburbia was coined in the 1890s.
=> suburban, urbane
urchin: urchin: [13] Urchin originally meant ‘hedgehog’. It was borrowed from Old Northern French herichon, which came via Vulgar Latin *hēriciō from Latin hērīcius or ērīcius ‘hedgehog’, a derivative of ēr ‘hedgehog’. This ancestral sense now survives only dialectally, but its spiny connotations are preserved in sea urchin, which dates from the late 16th century. The metaphorical ‘dirty scruffy child, brat’ emerged in the 16th century too. The second syllable of caprice goes back to Latin ērīcius.
=> caprice
Urdu: Urdu: see hoard