英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

atmosphere (n.)[atmosphere 词源字典]: 1630s, atmosphaera (modern form from 1670s), from Modern Latin atmosphaera, from atmo-, comb. form of Greek atmos "vapor, steam" + spharia "sphere" (see sphere). Greek atmos is from PIE *awet-mo-, from root *wet- (1) "to blow" (also "to inspire, spiritually arouse;" see wood (adj.)). First used in English in connection with the Moon, which, as it turns out, practically doesn't have one.
It is observed in the solary eclipses, that there is sometimes a great trepidation about the body of the moon, from which we may likewise argue an atmosphaera, since we cannot well conceive what so probable a cause there should be of such an appearance as this, Quod radii solares a vaporibus lunam ambitntibus fuerint intercisi, that the sun-beams were broken and refracted by the vapours that encompassed the moon. [Rev. John Wilkins, "Discovery of New World or Discourse tending to prove that it probable there may be another World in the Moon," 1638]
Figurative sense of "surrounding influence, mental or moral environment" is c. 1800.[atmosphere etymology, atmosphere origin, 英语词源]
Micawber (n.): as a type of a childishly impractical man living in optimistic fantasy, from the character of Wilkins Micawber in Dickens' "David Copperfield" (1850).
"I am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon commission. It is not an avocation of a remunerative description -- in other words it does not pay -- and some temporary embarrassments of a pecuniary nature have been the consequence. I am however delighted to add that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up ...."
cricopharyngeal: "Of or relating to the cricoid cartilage and the pharynx; specifically designating or relating to the part of the inferior constrictor muscle of the pharynx that originates from the cricoid cartilage", Mid 19th cent.; earliest use found in Garth Wilkinson (1812–1899), Swedenborgian writer and homoeopath. After post-classical Latin cricopharyngaeus.