英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

accolade [accolade 词源字典]: accolade: [17] Accolade goes back to an assumed Vulgar Latin verb *accollāre, meaning ‘put one’s arms round someone’s neck’ (collum is Latin for ‘neck’, and is the source of English collar). It put in its first recorded appearance in the Provençal noun acolada, which was borrowed into French as accolade and thence made its way into English. A memory of the original literal meaning is preserved in the use of accolade to refer to the ceremonial striking of a sword on a new knight’s shoulders; the main current sense ‘congratulatory expression of approval’ is a later development.
=> collar[accolade etymology, accolade origin, 英语词源]
admonish: admonish: [14] In Middle English times this verb was amoneste. It came, via Old French amonester, from an assumed Vulgar Latin verb *admonestāre, an alteration of Latin admonēre (monēre meant ‘warn’, and came from the same source as English mind). The prefix ad- was reintroduced from Latin in the 15th century, while the -ish ending arose from a mistaken analysis of -este as some sort of past tense inflection; the t was removed when producing infinitive or present tense forms, giving spellings such as amonace and admonyss, and by the 16th century this final -is had become identified with and transformed into the more common -ish ending.
=> mind
affray: affray: [14] Affray is a word of mixed Germanic and Romance origin. The noun comes from the verb, ‘alarm’ (now obsolete, but still very much with us in the form of its past participle, afraid), which was borrowed into English from Anglo- Norman afrayer and Old French effreer and esfreer. These go back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb *exfridāre, which was composed of the Latin prefix ex- ‘out’ and an assumed noun *fridus, which Latin took from the Frankish *frithuz ‘peace’ (cognate with German friede ‘peace’, and with the name Frederick). The underlying meaning of the word is thus ‘take away someone’s peace’.
=> afraid, belfry
bicycle: bicycle: [19] The word bicycle, literally ‘twowheeled’ (from Greek kúklos ‘circle, wheel’), was originally coined in French, and first appeared in English in 1868, in the 7 September edition of the Daily News: ‘bysicles and trysicles which we saw in the Champs Élysées and the Bois de Boulogne this summer’. This reflects the fact that it was in the 1860s that the bicycle first assumed the form we know it in today, with pedals and cranks driving the front wheel. (Slightly earlier was the now obsolete velocipede, literally ‘swift foot’, first applied to pedal bicycles and tricycles around 1850.

Until the introduction of pneumatic tyres in the 1880s, the new cycles were known as bone-shakers – a term first encountered in 1874.)
=> cycle, wheel
boss: boss: English has two words boss, of which the more familiar is far more recent; both are fairly obscure in origin. We know that boss ‘chief’ [19] comes from Dutch baas ‘master’ (it was introduced to American English by Dutch settlers), but where Dutch got the word from we do not know for certain. Boss ‘protuberance’ [13] was borrowed from Old French boce, which comes from an assumed general Romance *botja, but there the trail goes cold. Boss-eyed [19] and boss shot ‘bungled attempt’ [19] are both usually assumed to come from, or at least be connected with a 19thcentury English dialect verb boss ‘bungle’, of unknown origin.
bugbear: bugbear: [16] Early references to bugbear suggest that it was a sort of bug – ‘frightening creature’ – conjured up to frighten naughty children. It is usually assumed that the second element of the word simply represents the animal ‘bear’, and that the frightening creature was represented as being in the shape of a bear. The modern sense ‘source of annoyance’ developed in the late 19th century.
byelaw: byelaw: [13] Although nowadays often subconsciously thought of as being a ‘secondary or additional law’, in fact byelaw has no connection with by. The closest English relatives of its first syllable are be, boor, bower, both, bound ‘about to go’, build, burly, byre, and the second syllable of neighbour. It comes ultimately from the Germanic base *bu- ‘dwell’, and is assumed to have reached English via an unrecorded Old Norse *býlagu ‘town law’, a compound of býr ‘place where people dwell, town, village’, and lagu, source of English law.

It thus originally meant ‘law or regulation which applied only to a particular local community’, rather than the whole country.
=> be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, byre, neighbour
cameo: cameo: [15] The immediate source of modern English cameo was Italian cameo or cammeo. No one is too sure where it ultimately came from, but it has always been assumed that it had some sort of Oriental source – perhaps Arabic qamaā’īl ‘flower buds’. The original form of the word in English was cameu, which came from Old French camahieu; the Italianate cameo does not appear until the late 17th century.
cant: cant: English has two separate words cant. The older, ‘oblique angle’ [14], originally meant ‘edge’, and appears to have come via Middle Low German kant or Middle Dutch cant, both meaning ‘edge’ or ‘corner’, from Vulgar Latin *canto, a descendant of Latin cantus ‘iron tyre’. which was probably of Celtic origin (Welsh cant means ‘rim’).

The accusative case of the Vulgar Latin word, *cantōnem, was the source of English canton [16], originally ‘corner, section’, now ‘territorial division’; while its Italian descendant, canto, may be the source of Italian cantina ‘cellar’, from which English got canteen [18]. Cant ‘thieves’ jargon’ or ‘hypocritical talk’ [16] was probably originally a specific application of the Latin verb cantāre ‘sing’ (source also of English chant, canto, cantor, cantata, and canticle).

It is usually assumed that the usage derives from an ironic transference of the singing of church congregations or choirs to the wheedling ‘song’ of beggars and (by association) thieves.
=> canteen, canton; cantata, cantor, chant
chock-full: chock-full: [14] There is more than one theory to account for this word. It occurs in a couple of isolated instances around 1400, as chokkefulle and chekeful, prompting speculation that the first element may be either chock ‘wooden block’, which came from an assumed Old Northern French *choque (thus ‘stuffed full with lumps of wood’) or cheek (thus ‘full up as far as the cheeks’). It resurfaces in the 17th century as choke-ful, which has given rise to the idea that it may originally have meant ‘so full as to choke’. The available evidence seems too scanty to come to a firm conclusion.
colander: colander: [14] Colander probably comes ultimately from Latin colum ‘sieve’. From this was derived the verb cōlāre ‘strain’, which produced a Vulgar Latin noun *cōlātor. This is assumed to have passed into Old Provençal as colador, which appears to have been the source of early English forms such as culdor- and culatre. The n is a purely English innovation.
=> percolate, portcullis
combat: combat: [16] Combat means literally ‘fight with’. It comes via French combattre from late Latin combattere, a compound verb formed from Latin com- ‘with’ and *battere, an assumed variant of Latin battuere ‘fight, beat’ (ultimate source of English abate, battle, and debate).
=> abate, battle, debate
dance: dance: [13] The history of the word dance, now widespread amongst European languages (French dansir, Spanish danzar, Italian danzare, German tanzen, Swedish dansa, Russian tancovat’), is disappointingly obscure. All these forms, including the English word, stem from an original Old French danser. This developed from an assumed Vulgar Latin *dansāre, which may have been borrowed from a Frankish *dintjan (Frisian dintje ‘tremble’ has been compared).
develop: develop: [17] The history of develop and its close relative envelop is hazy. English acquired it from développer, the modern French descendant of Old French desveloper. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix des- ‘un-’ and voloper ‘wrap’. But where did voloper come from? Some have proposed a hypothetical Celtic base *vol- ‘roll’, while others have pointed to similarities, formal and semantic, with Italian viluppo ‘bundle’ and viluppare ‘wrap’, which come from an assumed late Latin *faluppa ‘husk’. Beyond that, however, the trail has gone cold.
=> envelop
duck: duck: [OE] A duck is a bird that ‘ducks’ – as simple as that. It gets its name from its habit of diving down under the surface of the water. There is no actual record of an English verb duck until the 14th century, but it is generally assumed that an Old English verb *dūcan did exist, which would have formed the basis of the noun duck. It came from a prehistoric West Germanic verb *dukjan, which also produced German tauchen ‘dive’.

English is the only language which uses this word for the bird, although Swedish has the term dykand, literally ‘dive-duck’, which refers to the ‘diver’, a sort of large waterbird. Nor is it the original English word: the Anglo-Saxons mainly called the duck ened, a term which survived until the 15th century. This represents the main Indo-European name for the duck, which comes from an original *anə ti- and is found in Greek nessa, Latin anas, German ente, Dutch eend, Swedish and, and Russian utka.
essay: essay: [15] Essay and assay [14] are fundamentally the same word, and only began to diverge in the 15th century. Both come via Old French assaier from Vulgar Latin *exagiāre ‘weigh out’, a verb derived from late Latin exagium ‘weighing’; this in turn was formed from the Latin verb exigere ‘weigh’ (source of English exact and examine).

Accordingly, both originally had underlying connotations of ‘testing by weighing’. But while these have become more concrete in assay ‘analyse precious metals’, essay has, under the influence of French essayer, gone down the more metaphorical route from ‘test’ to ‘try’. The verb now survives only in fairly formal use, but the noun is much more frequent, owing to its application to a ‘short nonfictional literary composition’.

It was first used thus in English by Francis Bacon in 1597 as the title of a collection of such pieces, and it is generally assumed that he borrowed the idea from the Essais of Montaigne, published in 1580.
=> assay, exact, examine
flail: flail: [OE] Flail is a distant relative of flagellation [15]. Both go back ultimately to Latin flagrum ‘whip’. This had a diminutive form flagellum, which in prehistoric times was borrowed into West Germanic as *flagil-. It is assumed that Old English inherited it as *flegil (although this is not actually recorded), which, reinforced in Middle English times by the related Old French flaiel, produced modern English flail. Flagellation comes from the derived Latin verb flagellāre ‘whip’.
=> flagellation
frown: frown: [14] Probably the underlying notion of frowning is ‘snorting’ rather than ‘wrinkling the brows’. It comes from Old French froignier, which meant ‘snort’ as well as ‘frown’. It is assumed to have been adopted into French from a Celtic language of Gaul, and would therefore have been related to Welsh ffroen ‘nostril’.
gauze: gauze: [16] Many terms for various types of fabric come from the name of a place they were originally associated with, from obvious derivatives such as damask from Damascus to more obscure associations like denim from Nîmes in France, and gauze appears to be no exception. It was borrowed from French gaze, which is generally assumed to have been named after Gaza, a city in medieval Palestine which was closely associated with the production of gauze.
gherkin: gherkin: [17] Etymologically, a gherkin may be a ‘little unripe one’. The word was borrowed from an assumed early Dutch *gurkkijn, a diminutive form of gurk, which probably came from Lithuanian agurkas. This in turn goes back via Polish ogurek to medieval Greek angoúrion, which has been linked with classical Greek ágouros ‘youth’.
giblets: giblets: [14] French gibier means ‘game’ – in the sense ‘hunted animals’ (it comes from Frankish *gabaiti ‘hunting with falcons’). In the Old French period this seems to have produced a diminutive form *giberet, literally ‘small game’, which, though never recorded, is assumed to have been the basis of Old French gibelet (l and r are very close phonetically, and each is easily substituted for the other). Gibelet is only known in the sense ‘game stew’, but it seems quite plausible that it could have originally meant ‘entrails of hunted animals’ (Walloon, the French dialect of southern Belgium, has giblè d’awe ‘goose giblets’).
gremlin: gremlin: [20] Gremlin originated as Royal Air Force slang, as the name of a mischievous imp that caused malfunctions and crashes. It is first recorded in 1941, but it is said to go back to the early 1920s. It is generally assumed that its latter part comes from goblin, but speculation has been rife and diverse as to the source of its first syllable: from the scholarly (Old English gremman ‘make angry’) to the inventively popular (a blend of goblin with Fremlin, the name of a well-known firm of brewers).
gymkhana: gymkhana: [19] The British brought the word gymkhana back with them from India, where they found it as Hindi gendkhāna, literally ‘ballhouse’, the name given to a racket court. The first syllable gym- is generally assumed to be an alteration of gend- on the analogy of gymnasium. The term was originally used for a ‘sports ground’; the current sense ‘horse-riding contest’ seems to have developed after World War I.
hockey: hockey: [19] The first known unequivocal reference to the game of hockey comes in William Holloway’s General Dictionary of Provincialisms 1838, where he calls it hawkey, and describes it as ‘a game played by several boys on each side with sticks, called hawkeybats, and a ball’ (the term came from West Sussex). It is not known for certain where the word originated, but it is generally assumed to be related in some way to hook, with reference to the hockey stick’s curved end. The Galway Statutes of 1527 refer to the ‘hurling of the little ball with hockie sticks or staves’, which may mean ‘curved sticks’.
=> hook
hull: hull: [OE] The notion underlying the word hull is of ‘covering’ or ‘concealing’. It originally meant ‘peapod’ – etymologically, the ‘covering’ of peas – and comes ultimately from the same Indo- European source as produced English cell, clandestine, conceal, hall, hell, and possibly colour and holster. It is generally assumed that hull ‘main body of a ship’, which first appeared in the 15th century, is the same word (a ship’s hull resembling an open peapod), although some etymologists have suggested that it may be connected with hollow.
=> cell, clandestine, conceal, hall, hell, occult
jam: jam: [18] The verb jam, meaning ‘press tightly together’, first appears in the early 18th century (the earliest-known unequivocal example of its transitive use is in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe 1719: ‘The ship stuck fast, jaum’d in between two rocks’). It is not known where it came from, but it is generally assumed to be imitative or symbolic in some way of the effort of pushing.

Equally mysterious are the origins of jam the sweet substance spread on bread, which appeared around the same time. Contemporary etymologists were nonplussed (Nathan Bailey had a stab in the 1730s: ‘prob. of J’aime, i.e. I love it; as Children used to say in French formerly, when they liked any Thing’; but Dr Johnson in 1755 confessed ‘I know not whence derived’); and even today the best guess that can be made is that the word refers to the ‘jamming’ or crushing of fruit into jars.
jewel: jewel: [13] Originally, jewel meant ‘costly adornment made from precious stones or metals’ – a sense now largely restricted to the collective form jewellery [14]. The main modern sense ‘gem’ emerged towards the end of the 16th century. The word comes from Anglo-Norman juel, but exactly where that came from is not known for certain. It is generally assumed to be a derivative of jeu ‘game’, which came from Latin jocus (source of English jocular, joke, etc).
=> jeopardy, jocular, joke
keep: keep: [OE] For all that it is one of the commonest verbs in the language, remarkably little is known about the history of keep. It first appears in texts around the year 1000. It is assumed to have existed before then, but not to have belonged to a sufficiently ‘literary’ level of the language to have been written down. Nor has a link been established for certain with any words in other Germanic languages, although suggestions that have been put forward include Old High German kuofa ‘barrel’ (a relative of English coop), from the notion of its being something for ‘keeping’ things in, and also (since in the late Old English period keep was used for ‘watch’) Old Norse kópa ‘stare’.
liable: liable: [15] Today’s main meaning of liable, ‘likely to’, is a comparatively recent development. Its primary sense is ‘legally bound or obliged’ (as in ‘liable for someone else’s debts’), which goes right back to the word’s ultimate source, Latin ligāre ‘tie’. Its Old French descendant lier is assumed to have give rise to an Anglo-Norman derivative *liable, literally ‘bindable’, which English took over.

Other English words that come ultimately from ligāre include ally, liaison [17], lien [16] (etymologically a ‘bond’), ligament [14], ligature [14], oblige, religion, and rely.
=> ally, liaison, lien, ligament, ligature, oblige, religion, rely
lukewarm: lukewarm: [14] Lukewarm is a compound adjective based on the now obsolete Middle English luke ‘tepid’. It is not altogether clear where this came from, but it is generally assumed to be a derivative of the also now obsolete lew ‘(fairly) warm’, with perhaps a diminutive suffix. Lew goes back to an Old English hlēow ‘warm’, a variant of which became modern English lee ‘shelter’. It is related to Latin calor ‘heat’ (source of English calorie), calidus ‘hot’ (source of English caudle, cauldron, and chowder), and calēre ‘be hot’ (source of English nonchalant).
=> calorie, cauldron, chowder, lee, nonchalant
master: master: [OE] The Latin word for ‘master, chief’ was magister (which is generally assumed to have been based on the root of Latin magis ‘more’ and magnus ‘big’, source of English magnify, magnitude, etc). Its more obvious English descendants include magistrate and magisterial, and indeed English originally acquired magister itself in the 10th century in the form mægister, but over the years (partly under the influence of Old French maistre) this developed to master.

The feminine counterpart mistress [14] was borrowed from Old French maistresse, a form maintained in English for some time. The alteration of mais- to mis- began in the 15th century, due probably to the weakly-stressed use of the word as a title (a phenomenon also responsible for the emergence of mister [16] from master). The abbreviated miss followed in the 17th century.
=> magistrate, magnitude, magnum, miss, mister, mistress
mine: mine: English has two quite distinct words mine. The first person possessive pronoun [OE] goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *mīnaz (source also of German mein, Dutch mijn, and Swedish and Danish min), which was derived from the same Indo-European source as produced English me. Originally it was an adjective, but in the 13th century the -n was dropped before consonants, and eventually the resulting my took over the adjective slot altogether, leaving mine as a pronoun only. Mine ‘excavation’ [14] is of uncertain origin.

It comes via Old French from an assumed Vulgar Latin *mina, which may go back ultimately to a Celtic *meini- ‘ore’ (Gaelic has mein ‘ore, mine’ and Welsh mwyn ‘ore’). The use of the word for an ‘explosive device’, which dates from the 17th century, arose from the practice of digging tunnels or ‘mines’ beneath enemy positions and then blowing them up.
=> me, my
moment: moment: [14] As the closely related momentum [17] suggests, ‘movement’ is the etymological notion underlying moment. It comes via Old French moment from Latin mōmentum. This was a contraction of an assumed earlier *movimentum, a derivative of movēre ‘move’ (source of English move), and it had a wide range of meanings: from the literal ‘movement’ (preserved in English in the directly borrowed momentum) developed the metaphorical ‘instant of time’ (which arose from the notion of a particle so small as only just to ‘move’ the pointer of a scale) and ‘importance’ – both preserved in English moment.

The former has been allotted the derived adjective momentary [16], the latter momentous [17].
=> momentous, momentum, move
mould: mould: English has three words mould. By some way the oldest is ‘earth, soil’ [OE], which comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *mel-, *mol-, *ml- ‘grind’ (source also of English meal ‘flour’, mill, etc). Moulder [16] may be derived from it. Mould ‘form’ [13] is assumed to come from Old French modle ‘form, shape, pattern’.

This was descended from Latin modulus ‘small measure’ (source of English module), a diminutive form of modus ‘measure’ (source of English mode, model, etc). Mould ‘fungus’ [15] appears to have originated as an adjective, meaning ‘mouldy’. This in turn was an adjectival use of the past participle of a now obsolete verb moul ‘go mouldy’, which was borrowed from an assumed Old Norse *mugla.
=> meal, mill, molar, moulder; mode, model, mood
moult: moult: [14] The etymological meaning of moult is simply ‘change’. It comes (via an assumed but never recorded Old English *mūtian) from a prehistoric Germanic verb borrowed from Latin mūtāre ‘change’ (source of English mutate). The extreme semantic narrowing down from ‘change’ to ‘change a coat of feathers’ is shown too in the related mews, which originally denoted ‘cages for moulting hawks’. The spelling with l, which started to appear in the 16th century, is due to association with words such as fault, whose l at that time was generally not pronounced. When it began to be, moult followed suit.
=> mews, mutate
page: page: English has two nouns page. The one that now denotes ‘boy servant’ originally meant simply ‘boy’ [13]. It was borrowed from Old French page, itself an adaptation of Italian paggio. This is generally assumed to have come from Greek paidíon, a diminutive form of pais ‘boy, child’ (source of English encyclopedia, paediatric [19], paedophilia [20], pedagogue [14], pederast [18], etc). Page of a book [15] depends ultimately on the notion of ‘fastening’.

It comes via Old French page from Latin pāgina, a derivative of the base *pāg- ‘fix’ (source also of English pagan, pale ‘stake’, etc). This was used for ‘vine-stakes fastened together into a trellis’, which perhaps inspired its metaphorical application to a ‘column of writing’ in a scroll. When books replaced scrolls, pāgina was transferred to ‘page’.
=> encyclopedia, paediatric, pedagogue; pagan, pale, pole
pagoda: pagoda: [17] The immediate source of pagoda was Portuguese pagoda, but this is generally assumed to have been an adaptation of Persian butkada, a compound put together from but ‘idol’ and kada ‘dwelling, temple’. Its form was no doubt influenced by bhagodī, a word for ‘holy’ in the vernacular languages of India.
pig: pig: [13] The word pig is not recorded until the Middle English period, although it is assumed to have existed in Old English as *picga or *pigga. It originally meant ‘young pig’, and did not become the general term for ‘pig’ until the 16th century (the usual word in Old and Middle English was swine). Piglet is a late 19th-century coinage. It is not known where the word pig came from, although some have suggested a connection with Old English pīc ‘pointed object’ (source of modern English pike), perhaps in allusion to the pig’s pointed muzzle (if that is the truth of the matter, pig may be parallel as an animal-name with pike).
pontiff: pontiff: [17] In ancient Rome, members of the highest college of priests were known by the epithet pontifex. This looks as though it should mean ‘bridgemaker’ (as if it were formed from Latin pōns ‘bridge’ – source of English pontoon – with the suffix -fex, from facere ‘make’), but no one has ever been able to make any sense of this, and it is generally assumed that it originated as a loan-word, perhaps from Etruscan, and was subsequently adapted by folk etymology to pontifex.

It was adopted into Christian usage in the sense ‘bishop’. The pope was the ‘sovereign pontifex’, and in due course pontifex came to designate the ‘pope’ himself. The word passed into French as pontife, from which English gets pontiff.
=> punt
porter: porter: English has two distinct words porter, one for a ‘person who carries things’ [14] and the other for a ‘door attendant’ [13]. The former comes via Old French portour from medieval Latin portātor, a derivative of Latin portāre ‘carry’ (source of English import, portable, etc). It is generally assumed that porter the beer, first heard of in the 18th century, was so called from its being a favourite drink of porters. Porter ‘door attendant’ comes via Anglo-Norman porter from late Latin portārius, a derivative of Latin porta ‘gate’ (source of English port, as in porthole).
principle: principle: [14] Frequently confused, principal [13] and principle come from distinct sources – but both sources were derived ultimately from Latin princeps ‘chief’ (from which English gets prince). Principal goes back via Old French principal to Latin principālis ‘first, original’, while principle comes from *principle, an assumed Anglo-Norman variant of Old French principle, which went back to Latin principium ‘beginning, foundation’.
=> first, prime, prince
quarter: quarter: [13] Quarter is one of a large family of English words that go back ultimately to Latin quattuor ‘four’ and its relatives. Direct descendants of quattuor itself are actually fairly few – among them quatrain [16] and quatrefoil [15] (both via Old French). But its ordinal form quārtus ‘fourth’ has been most prolific: English is indebted to it for quart [14], quarter (via the Latin derivative quartārius ‘fourth part’), quartet [18], and quarto [16].

In compounds quattuor assumed the form quadr-, which has given English quadrangle [15] (and its abbreviation quad [19]), quadrant [14], quadratic [17], quadrille [18], quadruped [17], quadruplet [18] (also abbreviated to quad [19]), quarantine, quarrel ‘arrow’, not to mention the more heavily disguised cadre [19], carfax [14] (which means etymologically ‘four-forked’), squad, and square.

And the derivative quater ‘four times’ has contributed carillon [18] (etymologically a peal of ‘four’ bells), quaternary [15], and quire of paper [15] (etymologically a set of ‘four’ sheets of paper).
=> cadre, carfax, carillon, quad, quarrel, quarry, quire, squad, square
root: root: Root of a plant [OE] and root ‘dig with the nose’ [14] are distinct words. The former was borrowed from Old Norse rót, which goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *wrd-. This also produced Latin rādīx ‘root’, source of English radical, radish, etc. Root ‘dig’ is an alteration of an earlier wroot, which went back to Old English wrōtan. It is usually assumed that root ‘cheer, support’, which first emerged in America in the late 19th century, is the same word.
=> radical, radish
shrewd: shrewd: [14] Shrewd originally meant ‘wicked, dangerous’. Its modern sense ‘astute’ did not develop (via a less approbatory ‘cunning’) until the 16th century. It was derived from shrew ‘wicked man’ (a sense now obsolete). This is generally assumed to be the same noun as shrew the animal-name [OE], a word of uncertain origin. Shrews were formerly thought to have a poisonous bite, and were held in superstitious fear – hence the term’s metaphorical application. The move from ‘wicked man’ via ‘bad-tempered abusive complainer’ to ‘nagging woman’ began in the 14th century.
=> shrew
shy: shy: Shy ‘timid, reserved’ [OE] goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *skeukhwaz ‘afraid’ (source also of English eschew and skew). It is generally assumed that shy ‘throw’ [18] must have come from it, but the exact nature of the relationship between the two words is not clear. The original application of the verb seems to have been specifically to the throwing of sticks at chickens, and it has been suggested, not altogether convincingly, that its use alludes to the notion of a ‘shy’ cockerel that refuses to fight (there was an 18th- and early 19th-century slang term shy-cock which meant ‘cowardly person’).
=> eschew, skew
sign: sign: [13] Sign comes via Old French signe from Latin signum ‘mark’. It already had the meaning ‘mark denoting something’ in Latin, and it was in this sense that it entered English, gradually ousting the native word token. The verb sign goes back ultimately to the Latin derivative signāre ‘mark’. English acquired it in the 14th century, and first used it for ‘write one’s name’ in the 15th century.

Other related forms in English include assign [14], consign [15], design, ensign [14], insignia [17], resign [14] (in which the prefix re- has the force of ‘un-’), seal ‘wax impression, fastening’, signal, signatory [17], signature [16], signet [14], significant [16], and signify [13].

The ultimate source of Latin signum is uncertain. It was once assumed to go back to the Indo-European base *sek- ‘cut’ (source of English saw, section, etc), as if it denoted etymologically a ‘cut mark’, but now Indo-European *seq- ‘point out’, hence ‘say, tell’ (source of English say) is viewed as a more likely ancestor.
=> assign, consign, design, ensign, insignia, resign, seal, signal, signature, significant
slit: slit: [13] Slit is not recorded in Old English, but it is assumed to have existed, as *slittan (its first cousin slītan ‘slit’ survived into the 20th century in Scottish English as slite). It goes back ultimately to the same Germanic base that produced English slice and possibly also slash, slat and slate.
=> slice
smell: smell: [12] Smell is something of a mystery word. It is assumed to go back to an Old English *smiellan or *smyllan, but no such verb has been recorded, nor have any related forms in other languages been pin-pointed for certain. One theory links it with English smoulder [14] and the related Dutch smeulen ‘smoulder’, as if the notion of ‘smelling’ arose from the idea of breathing vapour or smoke through the nose.
sneeze: sneeze: [15] The Old English word for ‘sneeze’ was fnēsan, a distant relative of Greek pneuma ‘breath’ (source of English pneumatic). This survived into Middle English as fnese. The letters f and s were very similar in medieval script, so it could have played a part in the late 15th-century emergence of sneeze. Fnese had largely died out by the early 15th century, and it could well be that when printing got into full swing in the 1490s, with many old manuscript texts being reissued in printed form, printers unfamiliar with the old word fnese assumed it had the much more common initial consonant cluster sn-.

Another factor in the equation is the now obsolete verb neeze ‘sneeze’. This was borrowed in the 14th century from Old Norse hnósja, a descendant of the Indo-European base *ksneu-, which also produced German niesen, Dutch niezen, Swedish nysa, Danish nyse, and Russian chikhat’ ‘sneeze’. It bridged the gap between fnese and sneeze, and the new sneeze no doubt struck people as a more expressive alternative to the old neeze. (Both fnese and neeze go back ultimately to an imitation of the sound of breathing, blowing, or sneezing.)
=> pneumatic
stencil: stencil: [14] Stencil was originally a verb, meaning ‘decorate with bright colours’. It came from Old French estenceler ‘cause to sparkle’, a derivative of estencele ‘spark’. This was descended from Vulgar Latin *stincilla, an alteration of Latin scintilla ‘spark’ (source of English scintilla ‘jot’ [17] and scintillate [17]). There are no records of this original verb beyond the 15th century, and the noun stencil ‘sheet with cut-out designs’ did not appear until the early 18th century, but despite the long gap, they are generally assumed to be the same word.
=> scintillate, tinsel