英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abominable [abominable 词源字典]: abominable: [14] The Latin original of this word meant ‘shun as an evil omen’. The prefix ab- ‘away’ was added to ōmen (source of English omen) to produce the verb abōminārī. From this was created the adjective abōminābilis, which reached English via Old French. From the 14th to the 17th century there was a general misapprehension that abominable was derived from Latin ab hominem ‘away from man’, hence ‘beastly, unnatural’.

This piece of fanciful folk etymology not only perpetuated the erroneous spelling abhominable throughout this period, but also seems to have contributed significantly to making the adjective much more strongly condemnatory.
=> omen[abominable etymology, abominable origin, 英语词源]
admiral: admiral: [13] Admirals originally had nothing specifically to do with the sea. The word comes ultimately from Arabic ’amīr ‘commander’ (from which English later also acquired emir [17]). This entered into various titles followed by the particle -al- ‘of’ (’amīr-al-bahr ‘commander of the sea’, ’amīr-al-mūminīn ‘commander of the faithful’), and when it was borrowed into European languages, ’amīr-al- became misconstrued as an independent, free-standing word.

Moreover, the Romans, when they adopted it, smuggled in their own Latin prefix ad-, producing admiral. When this reached English (via Old French) it still meant simply ‘commander’, and it was not until the time of Edward III that a strong naval link began to emerge. The Arabic title ’amīr-al-bahr had had considerable linguistic influence in the wake of Arabic conquests around the Mediterranean seaboard (Spanish almirante de la mar, for instance), and specific application of the term to a naval commander spread via Spain, Italy, and France to England.

Thus in the 15th century England had its Admiral of the Sea or Admiral of the Navy, who was in charge of the national fleet. By 1500 the maritime connection was firmly established, and admiral came to be used on its own for ‘supreme naval commander’.
=> emir
admire: admire: [16] Admire has rather run out of steam since it first entered the language. It comes originally from the same Latin source as marvel and miracle, and from the 16th to the 18th centuries it meant ‘marvel at’ or ‘be astonished’. Its weaker modern connotations of ‘esteem’ or ‘approval’, however, have been present since the beginning, and have gradually ousted the more exuberant expressions of wonderment. It is not clear whether English borrowed the word from French admirer or directly from its source, Latin admīrārī, literally ‘wonder at’, a compound verb formed from ad- and mīrārī ‘wonder’.
=> marvel, miracle
admit: admit: [15] This is one of a host of words, from mission to transmit, to come down to English from Latin mittere ‘send’. Its source, admittere, meant literally ‘send to’, hence ‘allow to enter’. In the 15th and 16th centuries the form amit was quite common, borrowed from French amettre, but learned influence saw to it that the more ‘correct’ Latin form prevailed.
=> commit, mission, transmit
aluminium: aluminium: [19] Aluminium comes from a coinage by the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, who discovered the metal. His first suggestion was alumium, which he put forward in Volume 98 of the Transactions of the Royal Society 1808: ‘Had I been so fortunate as … to have procured the metallic substances I was in search of, I should have proposed for them the names of silicium, alumium, zirconium, and glucium’.

He based it on Latin alūmen ‘alum’ (alum is a sulphate of aluminium, and the word alum, a 14th-century borrowing from French, derives ultimately from alūmen; alumina is an oxide of aluminium, and the word alumina is a modern Latin formation based on alūmen, which entered English at the end of the 18th century); and alūmen may be linked with Latin alūta ‘skins dried for making leather, using alum’.

Davy soon changed his mind, however, and in 1812 put forward the term aluminum – which remains the word used in American English to this day. British English, though, has preferred the form aluminium, which was mooted contemporaneously with aluminum on grounds of classical ‘correctness’: ‘Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound’, Quarterly Review 1812.
=> alum
amiable: amiable: [14] Amiable and amicable are the two English descendants of that most familiar of Latin verbs, amo, amas, amat … ‘love’. It had two rather similar adjectives derived from it: amābilis ‘lovable’ and, via amīcus ‘friend’, amīcābilis ‘friendly’ (source of English amicable [15]). Amīcābilis became in French amiable, and this was borrowed into English as amiable, but its meaning was subsequently influenced by that of French aimable ‘likeable, lovable’, which came from Latin amābilis.
=> amicable
badminton: badminton: [19] The game of ‘battledore and shuttlecock’ has been around for some time (it appears to go back to the 16th century; the word battledore, which may come ultimately from Portuguese batedor ‘beater’, first turns up in the 15th century, meaning ‘implement for beating clothes when washing them’, but by the 16th century is being used for a ‘small racket’; while shuttlecock, so named because it is hit back and forth, first appears in the early 16th century, in a poem of John Skelton’s).

This was usually a fairly informal, improvised affair, however, and latterly played mainly by children; the modern, codified game of badminton did not begin until the 1860s or 1870s, and takes its name from the place where it was apparently first played, Badminton House, Avon, country seat of the dukes of Beaufort. (A slightly earlier application of the word badminton had been to a cooling summer drink, a species of claret cup.)
bromide: bromide: [19] Potassium bromide is used as a sedative, and it was that which inspired the American humorist Gelett Burgess’s book Are You A Bromide? (1906), in which he metaphoricized bromide as a ‘dull conventional person’. In British English it is the more abstract figurative sense ‘trite or conventional remark’ that has caught on. Bromide was based on bromine [19], the name of a liquid element, which in turn was formed from French brome. The element was so christened, from Greek brōmos ‘stench’, because of its highly irritant and unpleasant smell.
bulimia: bulimia: [19] The condition now called ‘bulimia’ – in which bouts of overeating are followed by bouts of purging – was recognized and so named in the 1970s. The word used to name it, however, is much more ancient than that. It goes back to Greek boulimia, which meant ‘ravenous hunger’ (it was formed from limos ‘hunger’, with the prefix bou-; this may well have been adapted from bous ‘ox’, in which case the word would have meant literally ‘the hunger of an ox’).

It originally came into English, via medieval Latin, in the late 14th century, and for many hundred years its standard form was bulimy. It was applied to a sort of hunger so extreme that it could be categorized as an illness.
carmine: carmine: see crimson
chemical: chemical: [16] Essentially chemical, and the related chemistry and chemist, come from alchemy with the initial al- dropped. Alchemy itself is of Arabic origin; al represents the Arabic definite article ‘the’, while the second element was borrowed from Greek khēmíā ‘alchemy’. Loss of al- seems to have taken place originally in French, so the immediate source of the English words was French chimiste and chimique (whence the now obsolete English chemic, on which chemical was based).

At first this whole group of words continued to be used in the same sense as its progenitor alchemy; it is not really until the 17th century that we find it being consistently applied to what we would now recognize as the scientific discipline of chemistry.
=> alchemy
commit: commit: [14] Etymologically, commit simply means ‘put together’. It comes from Latin committere, a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and the verb mittere ‘put, send’ (whence English missile and mission). It originally meant literally ‘join, connect’, but then branched out along the lines of ‘put for safety, entrust’ (the force of com- here being more intensive than collective) and ‘perpetrate’ (exactly how this sense evolved is not clear).

The whole range of meanings followed the Latin verb into English, although ‘put together’ was never more than an archaism, and died out in the 17th century. Of derivatives based on the Latin verb’s past participial stem commiss-, commission entered English in the 14th century and commissionaire (via French) in the 18th century. Medieval Latin commissārius produced English commissary [14] and, via French, Russian commissar, borrowed into English in the 20th century.
=> commissar, committee, missile, mission
committee: committee: [15] Committee was formed from the verb commit by adding the suffix -ee. Following the pattern of all such formations, it originally meant ‘person to whom something is committed’; it was not until the 17th century that the sense ‘body of people delegated to perform a particular function’ developed.
concomitant: concomitant: see count
contaminate: contaminate: [15] Contaminate appears to come from the same ultimate source as contact, a base *tag- ‘touch’, which produced the Latin verb tangere ‘touch’ (whence English tactile, tangent, and tangible). It seems also to have formed the basis of a compound Latin noun *contagmen ‘contact, pollution’, which became altered to contāmen. From this was derived the verb contamināre, whose past participle gave English contaminate.
=> contact, tactile, tangible
demijohn: demijohn: [18] Demijohn ‘large globular bottle’ has no connection with half of the common male forename. It arose through a process known as folk etymology, by which an unfamiliar or slightly outlandish foreign word is deconstructed and then reassembled using similar-sounding elements in the host language. In this case the source was French dame-jeanne, literally ‘Lady Jane’, a term used in French for such a container since the 17th century.
demise: demise: see dismiss
determine: determine: [14] The central meaning of determine is ‘fix a limit to’, as in ‘determine the scope of an enquiry’. It comes via Old French determiner from Latin dētermināre, a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘off’ and termināre ‘limit’ (source of English terminate). Its connotations of ‘firm resolve’, a 17th-century development, came via an intermediate sense ‘come to a firm decision on’.
=> terminate
diminish: diminish: [15] Diminish is a hybrid verb, the result of a marriage between the now obsolete diminue [14] and the virtually obsolete minish [14], both of which meant ‘make smaller’. Diminue came via Old French diminuer from Latin dīminuere ‘break into small pieces’; it was a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘from’ and minuere ‘lessen’ (source of English minute). Minish came via Old French menuiser from Vulgar Latin *minūtiāre, a derivative of Latin minūtus ‘small’; this, bringing the history of diminish full circle, was an adjectival use of the past participle of minuere.
=> minute
dimity: dimity: see drill
discriminate: discriminate: see discern
dismiss: dismiss: [15] Ultimately, dismiss and demise [16] are the same word: both come from Old French desmis or demis ‘sent away’. These in turn came from dismissus, the medieval descendant of Latin dīmissus, which was the past participle of dīmittere, a compound verb formed from dis- ‘away’ and mittere ‘send’. In the case of dismiss, English originally acquired the word, more logically, in the form dismit, based on the Latin infinitive, but in the late 15th century dismiss, in the past participial form dismissed modelled on the French past participle, began to replace it. Demise comes from Anglo-Norman *demise, which represents a nominal use of the feminine form of Old French demis.

It was originally a technical legal term signifying the transference of property or title, and only in the 18th century came to be used for the ‘death’ which often brought this about.
=> commit, demise, mission, transmit
disseminate: disseminate: see seed
dominion: dominion: [15] Dominion, in common with demesne, domain, dominant, dominate, domineer, dominie, domino, and don, and indeed danger and dungeon, comes ultimately from Latin dominus ‘lord, master’. This was a derivative of Latin domus ‘house’ (source of English dome) and, like the parallel Greek formation despótēs (source of English despot), originally meant ‘master of the house’.

Its most direct descendant in modern English is don [17]. This is the Spanish reflex of Latin dominus, used as a title of respect for Spanish lords or gentlemen, and has been applied since the mid 17th century (originally as a piece of university slang) to university teachers. Of derivatives, dominion comes from Latin dominium ‘property’ (of which a post-classical descendant was dominiō or domniō, source of English dungeon); dominate [17] and dominant [15] come from the verb dominārī ‘be lord and master’; domineer [16] is also from dominārī, via French dominer and early modern Dutch domineren; and dominie [17], a Scottish term for a ‘schoolmaster’, probably comes from the Latin vocative case dominē.
=> dame, danger, demesne, despot, dome, domestic, dominate
domino: domino: [18] The word domino was borrowed from French, where it originally signified (in the 16th century) a sort of hooded cloak worn by priests. It presumably represents a form of Latin dominus ‘lord, master’, but the reason for the application has never been satisfactorily explained (one suggestion is that it comes from the ritual formula benedicamus Domino ‘let us bless the Lord’).

By the time English acquired it, it had come to mean ‘hooded cloak with a halfmask, worn at masquerades’, and by the 19th century it was being used for the mask itself. It is far from clear whether the application to the game played with small rectangular blocks, which dates in English from the 19th century, represents a new use of the same word or a return to the original Latin, but either way the reason behind the usage is not known.

A possibility that has been advanced is that the winner of the game originally shouted domino! ‘lord!’.
dynamic: dynamic: [19] Greek dūnamis (a word of unknown origin) meant ‘strength’. It was used by the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel in 1867 to form the name of the new explosive he had invented, dynamite. From it was derived the adjective dunamikós ‘powerful’, which French adopted in the 17th century as dynamique, and English acquired it in the early 19th century. Related to dúnamis was the verb dúnasthai ‘be strong’ or ‘be able’; from this was derived the noun dunasteíā ‘power, domination’, source, via French or late Latin, of English dynasty [15].

Part of the same word family is dynamo [19], short for dynamo-electric machine, a term coined in 1867 by the electrical engineer Werner Siemens.
=> dynamite, dynasty
eliminate: eliminate: [16] To eliminate somebody is literally to ‘kick them out of doors’. The word comes from the past participle of Latin ēlīnāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and līmen ‘threshhold’ (source also of English subliminal and probably sublime). At first it was used in English with its original Latin sense (‘the secounde sorte thearfore, that eliminate Poets out of their citie gates’, Giles Fletcher, Christ’s Victorie 1610), and it was not until the early 18th century that the more general modern notion of ‘exclusion’ began to develop.
=> sublime, subliminal
eminent: eminent: [15] Someone who is eminent literally ‘stands out’. The word comes from the present participle of Latin ēminēre ‘stand out’, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and a verbal element -minēre ‘stand, project’ which occurs also in imminent and prominent and may be related ultimately to Latin mōns ‘mountain’, source of English mount and mountain.
=> imminent, mount, mountain, prominent
emir: emir: see admiral
epidemic: epidemic: [17] An epidemic is literally something that has an effect ‘among the people’. The word comes from French épidémique, a derivative of the noun épidémie, which goes back via late Latin epidēmia to Greek epidēmíā ‘disease prevalent among the people’. This was a noun use of epidémios, a compound adjective formed from the prefix epí- ‘among’ and demos ‘people’ (source of English democracy).
=> democracy
ermine: ermine: [12] The term ermine was introduced to English from Old French as a name for the ‘stoat’, but as in the case of other words of French origin like mutton and pork which soon came to be used for the dead animals’ product rather than the live animals themselves, it was not long (about a hundred years in fact) before ermine was being applied to the stoat’s fur, and specifically to its white winter fur.

The source of the French word is not entirely clear. One school of thought derives it from medieval Latin mūs Armenius ‘Armenian mouse’, on the assumption that this denoted a ‘stoat’ or ‘weasel’, but an alternative possibility is Germanic origin.
euphemism: euphemism: [17] Etymologically, euphemism means ‘speaking with good words’. Greek euphēmismós, a compound formed ultimately from the prefix eu- ‘good, well’ and phémē ‘speech, saying’ (a relative of English fable, fame, and fate), originally denoted the avoidance of words of ill omen at religious ceremonies, but it was subsequently taken up by grammarians to signify the substitution of a less for a more offensive word. Its opposite, dysphemism ‘use of a more offensive word’, is a modern coinage, formed in the late 19th century using the Greek prefix dus- ‘bad, difficult’.
=> fable, fame, fate
examine: examine: [14] Like essay and exact, examine comes ultimately from Latin exigere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and agere ‘lead, drive’ (source of English act and agent). This originally meant literally ‘drive out’, but a metaphorical sense ‘weigh accurately’ developed which was carried over into a derived noun exāmen ‘weighing’. This in turn formed the basis of another derivative, the verb exāmināre ‘weigh’, hence ‘weigh up, ponder, consider, test, examine’. The abbreviation exam for examination dates from the late 19th century.
=> act, agent, essay, exact
facsimile: facsimile: see fax
familiar: familiar: [14] Familiar originally meant simply ‘of the family’ (it came, partly via Old French familier, from Latin familiāris). Its usual use in this sense was in phrases such as familiar enemy and familiar foe, denoting a treacherous enemy from within one’s own family or household. It gradually broadened out semantically via ‘intimately associated’ (preserved in familiar spirit, and in the noun use ‘intimate friend’) to ‘well-known from constant association’.
=> family
family: family: [15] Latin famulus, a word of unknown origin, meant ‘servant’. From it was derived familia, a collective term for all the domestic servants of a household. Only rarely was it used for the entire household, including the servants’ employers too, and when it first entered English it was with the original Latin sense (which indeed survived until the late 18th century). Gradually, however, the English word broadened out to ‘whole household’, and then in the mid- 17th century narrowed down again to the current main sense ‘group of related people’.
=> familiar
famine: famine: [14] Both famine and famish [14] come ultimately from Latin famēs ‘hunger’. Its Vulgar Latin derivative *faminis produced Old French famine, source of English famine. Famish has come via a more circuitous route: another Vulgar Latin derivative of famēs was *affamāre, a compound verb formed with the prefix ad- ‘towards’; in Old French this became afamer, which was borrowed into Middle English, with loss of its first syllable, as fame ‘starve’; and before long this had the suffix -ish added to it, on the model of other verbs such as abolish and diminish.
=> famish
flamingo: flamingo: [16] Flamingos get their name from their reddish-pink plumage, which earned them the epithet ‘fire-bird’. This was expressed in Provençal (the language of southern French coastal areas, where flamingos abound) as flamenc, a compound formed from flama ‘flame’ (a descendant of Latin flamma) and the Germanic suffix -ing ‘belonging to’. English acquired the word via Portuguese flamengo. (It has, incidentally, no etymological connection with flamenco ‘Spanish dance’ [19], which comes from the Spanish word for ‘Flemish’: the people of Flanders seem to have had a reputation in the Middle Ages for bright, flamboyant dress, and hence ‘Flemish’ in Spanish became synonymous with ‘gipsy-like’.)
=> flame
formic acid: formic acid: see ant
formidable: formidable: [15] Latin formīdō meant ‘fear’ (it may have links with Greek mormó ‘bugbear, goblin’, which came from an Indo-European *mormo). From it was derived the verb formīdāre, which in turn produced the adjective formīdābilis, which English originally acquired in the literal sense ‘inspiring fear’. The weaker ‘impressive in size, difficulty, etc’ is a 17thcentury development.
fulminate: fulminate: [15] Etymologically, fulminate means ‘strike with lightning’. It comes from Latin fulmināre, a derivative of fulmen ‘lightning’. In medieval Latin its literal meaning gave way to the metaphorical ‘pronounce an ecclesiastical censure on’, and this provided the semantic basis for its English derivative fulminate, although in the 17th and 18th centuries there were sporadic learned reintroductions of its original meteorological sense: ‘Shall our Mountains be fulminated and thunder-struck’, William Sancroft, Lex ignea 1666.
germinate: germinate: see germ
gimmick: gimmick: [20] Gimmick originally meant ‘dishonest contrivance’ – indeed, in the first known printed reference to it, in George Maine’s and Bruce Grant’s Wise-crack dictionary 1926 (an American publication), it is defined specifically as a ‘device for making a fair game crooked’. The modern sense ‘stratagem for gaining attention’ seems to have come to the fore in the 1940s. The origins of the word are a mystery, although it has been suggested that it began as gimac, an anagram of magic used by conjurers.
hermit: hermit: [13] Etymologically, a hermit is someone who lives alone in the desert. The word comes ultimately from Greek érēmos ‘solitary’, from which was derived erēmíā ‘desert, solitude’. Many of the early Christian hermits, notably Saint Anthony, lived not only alone but in the desert, so it was appropriate that the term erēmítēs was applied to them. It came into English via medieval Latin herēmīta and Old French hermite.
homily: homily: [14] Etymologically, a homily is a discourse addressed to a ‘crowd of people’. The word comes via Old French omelie and late Latin homīlia from Greek homīlíā ‘discourse’. This was a derivative of hōmílos ‘crowd’, originally a compound noun formed from homou ‘together’ and ílē ‘crowd’. Its moral connotations emerged in the original Greek.
hominy: hominy: [17] Hominy, a gruel or porridge made from coarsely ground maize kernels, is a North American dish, and appropriately enough its linguistic origins are probably American too. A likely source is Algonquian appuminnéonash ‘parched corn’, a compound noun formed from appwóon ‘he bakes’ and minneash ‘grains, corn’. The first reference to it in an English text is by Captain John Smith, an early English colonist in America, in 1629: ‘Their servants commonly feed upon Milk Homini, which is bruised Indian corn pounded, and boiled thick, and milk for the sauce’.
humiliate: humiliate: see humble
illuminate: illuminate: [16] Etymologically, illuminate is a parallel construction to enlighten. It was formed in the late Latin period from the prefix in- and lūmen ‘light’ (source of English luminous). The past participle of the resulting illumināre gave English illuminate. The medieval-sounding sense ‘illustrate manuscripts’ is actually quite recent, replacing in the 18th century the parallel formation enlumine, acquired by English in the 14th century via Old French enluminer from medieval Latin inlūmināre. Illumine [14] came via Old French illuminer. Illustrate is closely related.
=> illustrate, luminous
imitate: imitate: [16] Latin imitāri meant ‘make a copy of’. It was formed from the base *im-, which also lies behind the Latin ancestors of English emulate [16] and image; all three words share the basic meaning element ‘likeness’. English acquired the word via the Latin past participle imitātus.
=> emulate, image
imminent: imminent: see prominent