英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

ale [ale 词源字典]: ale: [OE] Old English ealu ‘ale’ goes back to a Germanic root *aluth-, which also produced Old Norse öl (Scandinavian languages still use alerelated words, whereas other Germanic languages now only use beer-related words; English is the only one to retain both). Going beyond Germanic in time takes us back to the word’s ultimate Indo-European source, a base meaning ‘bitter’ which is also represented in alum and aluminium. Ale and beer seem to have been virtually synonymous to the Anglo- Saxons; various distinctions in usage have developed over the centuries, such as that ale is made without hops, and is heavier (or some would say lighter) than beer, but most of the differences have depended on local usage.

The word bridal is intimately connected with ale. Nowadays used as an adjective, and therefore subconsciously associated with other adjectives ending in -al, in Old English it was a noun, literally ‘bride ale’, that is, a beer-drinking session to celebrate a marriage.
[ale etymology, ale origin, 英语词源]
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
marzipan: marzipan: [19] The word marzipan has long puzzled etymologists. An elaborate theory was formulated in the early 20th century that traced it back to Arabic mawthabān ‘king who sits still’. That was applied by the Saracens to a medieval Venetian coin with a figure of the seated Christ on it. A series of fairly implausible semantic changes led from ‘coin’ via ‘box’ to ‘confectionery’, while the form of the word supposedly evolved in Italian to marzapane.

This turns out to be completely wide of the mark (not surprisingly), but the truth seems scarcely less remarkable. In Burma (now Myanmar) there is a port called Martaban, which was renowned in the Middle Ages for the jars of preserves and fruits exported from there to Europe. The name of the place came to be associated with its products, and in Italian, as marzapane, it denoted a type of sweetmeat (-pane for -ban suggests that some people subconsciously connected the word with Italian pane ‘bread’). Marzapane and its relatives in other languages (such as early modern French marcepain) entered English in the 16th century, and from the confusion of forms the consensus spelling marchpane emerged.

This remained the standard English word for ‘marzipan’ until the 19th century, when marzipan was borrowed from German; this was an alteration of Italian marzapane, based on the misconception that it came from Latin marci pānis ‘Mark’s bread’.
paragon: paragon: [16] When we say someone is a ‘paragon of virtue’ – a perfect example of virtue, able to stand comparison with any other – we are unconsciously using the long-dead metaphor of ‘sharpening’ them against others. The word comes via archaic French paragon and Italian paragone from medieval Greek parakónē ‘sharpening stone, whetstone’. Thīs was a derivative of parakonan, a compound verb formed from pará ‘alongside’ and akonan ‘sharpen’ (a descendant of the same base, *ak- ‘be pointed’, as produced English acid, acute, etc), which as well as meaning literally ‘sharpen against’ was also used figuratively for ‘compare’.
=> acid, acute, eager, oxygen
automatically (adv.): 1834, "involuntarily, unconsciously;" see automatic + -ly (2).
bel (adj.): "beautiful," early 14c., from Old French bel, belle "beautiful, fair, fine" (see belle). "Naturalized in ME.; but after 1600 consciously French" [OED].
bohemian (n.): "a gypsy of society," 1848, from French bohemién (1550s), from the country name (see Bohemia). The modern sense is perhaps from the use of this country name since 15c. in French for "gypsy" (they were wrongly believed to have come from there, though their first appearance in Western Europe may have been directly from there), or from association with 15c. Bohemian heretics. It was popularized by Henri Murger's 1845 story collection "Scenes de la Vie de Boheme," the basis of Puccini's "La Bohème." Used in English 1848 in Thackary's "Vanity Fair."
The term 'Bohemian' has come to be very commonly accepted in our day as the description of a certain kind of literary gipsey, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits .... A Bohemian is simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art. ["Westminster Review," 1862]
bruxism (n.): "grinding the teeth unconsciously," from Greek ebryxa, aorist root of brykein "to gnash the teeth."
deliberate (adj.): early 15c., "done with careful consideration," from Latin deliberatus "resolved upon, determined," past participle of deliberare (see deliberation). Meaning "slow, consciously unhurried" is attested by 1590s. Related: Deliberately.
gloam (n.): 1821 (Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci"), a back-formation from gloaming that consciously or not revives the Old English noun.
grotty (n.): slang shortening of grotesque, it had a brief vogue 1964 as part of the argot popularized by The Beatles in "A Hard Day's Night." It unconsciously echoes Middle English groti "muddy, slimy," from Old English grotig "earthy," from grot "particle."
I.Q.: 1922, abbreviation of intelligence quotient, a 1921 translation of German Intelligenz-quotient, coined 1912 by German psychologist William L. Stern (1871-1938).
Intelligence is a general capacity of an individual consciously to adjust his thinking to new requirements: it is general mental adaptability to new problems and conditions of life. [Stern, "The Psychological Methods of Testing Intelligence," 1914]
knock up (v.): 1660s in sense of "arouse by knocking at the door," from knock (v.). However it is little used in this sense in American English, where the phrase means "get a woman pregnant" (1813), possibly ultimately from knock "to copulate with" (1590s; compare slang knocking-shop "brothel," 1860).
Knocked up in the United States, amongst females, the phrase is equivalent to being enciente, so that Englishmen often unconsciously commit themselves when amongst our Yankee cousins. [John Camden Hotten, "The Slang Dictionary," London, 1860]
mope (v.): 1560s, "to move and act unconsciously;" 1580s, "to be listless and apathetic," the sound of the word perhaps somehow suggestive of low feelings (compare Low German mopen "to sulk," Dutch moppen "to grumble, to grouse," Danish maabe, dialectal Swedish mopa "to mope"). Related: Moped; moping; mopey; mopish.
project (v.): late 15c., "to plan," from Latin proiectus, past participle of proicere (see project (n.)). Sense of "to stick out" is from 1718. Meaning "to cast an image on a screen" is recorded from 1865. Psychoanalytical sense, "attribute to another (unconsciously)" is from 1895 (implied in a use of projective). Meaning "convey to others by one's manner" is recorded by 1955. Related: Projected; projecting.
self-conscious (adj.): 1680s, "aware of one's action," a word of the English Enlightenment (Locke was using it by 1690), from self- + conscious. Morbid sense of "preoccupied with one's own personality" is attested from 1834 (in J.S. Mill). Related: Self-consciously; self-consciousness.
semiconscious (adj.): also semi-conscious, 1838, from semi- + conscious. Related: Semiconsciously; semiconsciousness.
subconscious (adj.): 1823, "not wholly conscious, feebly conscious" (implied in subconsciously), from sub- + conscious. First attested in De Quincey. The noun, in the psychological sense ("mental processes taking place without consciousness"), is attested from 1886, from adjectival sense "occurring in the mind, but not in consciousness;" earlier noun was subconsciousness (1845).
unconscious (adj.): 1712, "unaware, not marked by conscious thought," from un- (1) "not" + conscious. Meaning "temporarily insensible, knocked out" is recorded from 1860. Related: Unconsciously; unconsciousness. In psychology, the noun the unconscious (1876) is a loan-translation of German das Unbewusste. The adjective in this sense is recorded from 1912.
vegetative (adj.): late 14c., "endowed with the power of growth," from Old French vegetatif "(naturally) growing," from Medieval Latin vegetativus, from vegetat-, past participle stem of vegetare (see vegetable (adj.)). Middle English transferred sense was "characterized by growth." Modern pathological sense of "brain-dead, lacking intellectual activity, mentally inert" is from 1893, via notion of having only such functions which perform involuntarily or unconsciously and thus are likened to the processes of vegetable growth.
non-sexist: "Not sexist, especially deliberately or self-consciously so; not discriminatory with respect to gender", 1970s; earliest use found in Vocal Majority. From non- + sexist.