英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

crayfish [crayfish 词源字典]: crayfish: [14] The crayfish is related etymologically as well as biologically to the crab. The Old High German word for ‘crab’ was krebiz (source of modern German krebs). This was borrowed into Old French as crevice (modern French has preserved the variant form écrevisse), and transmitted to Middle English as crevis. Association of the final syllable with fish led by the 16th century to its transformation to crayfish (a variant Middle English form cravis became crawfish).
=> crab, crawfish[crayfish etymology, crayfish origin, 英语词源]
hermaphrodite: hermaphrodite: [15] Biologically a combination of male and female, hermaphrodite is etymologically a blend of the names of Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods, and Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. According to Ovid Hermaphródītos, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, was beloved of the nymph Salmacis with an ardour so strong that she prayed for complete union with him – with the result that their two bodies became fused into one, with dual sexual characteristics. English acquired the term via Latin hermaphrodītus.
biological (adj.): 1840, from biology + -ical. Biological clock attested from 1955; not especially of human reproductive urges until c. 1991. Related: Biologically.
genetic (adj.): 1831, "pertaining to origins," coined by Carlyle as if from Greek genetikos from genesis "origin" (see genesis). Darwin used it biologically as "resulting from common origin" (1859); modern sense of "pertaining to genetics or genes" is from 1908 (see gene). Related: Genetically. Genetical is attested from 1650s as "pertaining to origins."