英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

bum [bum 词源字典]: bum: There are two distinct words bum in English. By far the older, ‘buttocks’, is first recorded in John de Trevisa’s translation of Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon 1387: ‘It seemeth that his bum is out that hath that evil [piles]’. It is not clear where it comes from. The other, ‘tramp, loafer’, and its associated verb ‘spend time aimlessly’ [19], chiefly American, probably come from an earlier bummer, derived from the German verb bummeln ‘loaf around, saunter’ (familiar to English speakers from the title of Jerome K Jerome’s novel Three Men on the Bummel 1900, about a jaunt around Germany).
[bum etymology, bum origin, 英语词源]
aimless (adj.): 1620s, from aim (n.) + -less. Related: Aimlessly; aimlessness.
bloviate (v.): 1857, American English, a Midwestern word for "to talk aimlessly and boastingly; to indulge in 'high falutin'," according to Farmer (1890), who seems to have been the only British lexicographer to notice it. He says it was based on blow (v.) on the model of deviate, etc.

It seems to have been felt as outdated slang already by late 19c. ("It was a leasure for him to hear the Doctor talk, or, as it was inelegantly expressed in the phrase of the period, 'bloviate' ...." ["Overland Monthly," San Francisco, 1872, describing a scene from 1860]), but it enjoyed a revival early 1920s during the presidency of Warren G. Harding, who wrote a notoriously ornate and incomprehensible prose (e.e. cummings eulogized him as "The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors") at which time the word took on its connection with political speech; it faded again thereafter, but, with its derivative, bloviation, it enjoyed a revival in the 2000 U.S. election season that continued through the era of blogging.
doodle (v.): "scrawl aimlessly," 1935, from dialectal doodle, dudle "fritter away time, trifle," or associated with dawdle. It was a noun meaning "simple fellow" from 1620s.
LONGFELLOW: That's a name we made up back home for people who make foolish designs on paper when they're thinking. It's called doodling. Almost everybody's a doodler. Did you ever see a scratch pad in a telephone booth? People draw the most idiotic pictures when they're thinking. Dr. Von Holler, here, could probably think up a long name for it, because he doodles all the time. ["Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," screenplay by Robert Riskin, 1936; based on "Opera Hat," serialized in "American Magazine" beginning May 1935, by Clarence Aldington Kelland]
Related: Doodled; Doodling.
Doodle Sack. A bagpipe. Dutch. -- Also the private parts of a woman. ["Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," 1796]
flaneur (n.): "habitual loafer, idle man about town," 1854, from French flâneur, from flâner "to stroll, loaf, saunter," probably from a Scandinavian source (compare Old Norse flana "to wander aimlessly," Norwegian flana, flanta "to gad about"), perhaps from PIE *pele- (2) "flat, to spread." Related: flânerie.
maunder (v.): "to wander about aimlessly," c. 1746, earlier "to mumble, grumble" (1620s), both senses perhaps from frequentative of maund "to beg" (1560s), which is possibly from French mendier "to beg," from Latin mendicare (see mendicant). "Though the etymology of maunder is uncertain, it is clear that it is not a corruption of meander" [Fowler], but the two words seem to have influenced each other. Fowler writes that maunder is "best confined to speech, & suggests futility rather than digression ... & failure to reach an end rather than loitering on the way to it." Related: Maundered; maundering.
meander (v.): "flow in a winding course" (of rivers), 1610s, from meander (n.). Of a person, "to wander aimlessly" (1831), originally of persons traveling on a river (1821), perhaps influenced by confusion with maunder [OED]. Related: Meandered; meandering.
natter (v.): "grumble, chatter aimlessly, nag," 1829, northern England dialect variant of gnatter "to chatter, grumble," earlier (18c.) "to nibble away," probably of echoic origin. Related: Nattered; nattering. As a noun, 1866, from the verb.
wander (v.): Old English wandrian "move about aimlessly, wander," from West Germanic *wandran "to roam about" (cognates: Old Frisian wondria, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch wanderen, German wandern "to wander," a variant form of the root represented in Old High German wantalon "to walk, wander"), from PIE root *wendh- "to turn, wind, weave" (see wind (v.1)). In reference to the mind, affections, etc., attested from c. 1400. Related: Wandered; wandering. The Wandering Jew of Christian legend first mentioned 13c. (compare French le juif errant, German der ewige Jude).
meanderer: "A person who wanders aimlessly; a drifter", Late 19th cent.; earliest use found in Thomas Nelson Page (1853–1922). From meander + -er.
stravaig: "Wander about aimlessly", Late 18th century: probably a shortening of obsolete extravage 'digress, ramble'.