英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

happy [happy 词源字典]: happy: [14] The Old and Middle English word for ‘happy’ was what in modern English has become silly. This began to change its meaning around the 15th century, and obviously an opportunity began to open up for an adjective expressing ‘contentment’ (as opposed to positive ‘joy’, denoted then by glad, fain, and joyful). The gap was partly filled by a weakening in the meaning of glad, but waiting in the wings was happy, a derivative of the noun hap ‘chance, luck’ (source of happen), which when it was coined in the 14th century meant ‘lucky, fortunate, prosperous’.

The main modern sense ‘highly pleased or contented’ developed in the early 16th century.
=> happen[happy etymology, happy origin, 英语词源]
agitator (n.): 1640s, agent noun from agitate (v.); originally "elected representative of the common soldiers in Cromwell's army," who brought grievances (chiefly over lack of pay) to their officers and Parliament.

Political sense is first recorded 1734, and negative overtones began with its association with Irish patriots such as Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847). Historically, in American English, often with outside and referring to people who stir up a supposedly contented class or race. Latin agitator meant "a driver, a charioteer."
content (adj.): c. 1400, from Old French content, "satisfied," from Latin contentus "contained, satisfied," past participle of continere (see contain). Related: Contently (largely superseded by contentedly).
content (v.): early 15c., from Middle French contenter, from content (adj.) "satisfied," from Latin contentus "contained, satisfied," past participle of continere (see contain). Sense evolved through "contained," "restrained," to "satisfied," as the contented person's desires are bound by what he or she already has. Related: Contented; contentedly.
discontent (v.): late 15c., from dis- "not" + content (v.). Related: Discontented; discontentedly; discontentment; discontentedness.
empiricism (n.): 1650s, in the medical sense, from empiric + -ism. Later in a general sense of "reliance on direct observation rather than theory," especially an undue reliance on mere individual experience; in reference to a philosophical doctrine which regards experience as the only source of knowledge from 1796.
Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I should call it that of radical empiricism, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I say 'empiricism' because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the half way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience has got to square. The difference between monism and pluralism is perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy. [William James, preface to "The Sentiment of Rationality" in "The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy," 1897]
Eros (n.): god of love, late 14c., from Greek eros (plural erotes), "god or personification of love," literally "love," from eran "to love," erasthai "to love, desire," which is of uncertain origin.

Freudian sense of "urge to self-preservation and sexual pleasure" is from 1922. Ancient Greek distinguished four ways of love: erao "to be in love with, to desire passionately or sexually;" phileo "have affection for;" agapao "have regard for, be contented with;" and stergo, used especially of the love of parents and children or a ruler and his subjects.
happiness (n.): 1520s, "good fortune," from happy + -ness. Meaning "pleasant and contented mental state" is from 1590s. Phrase greatest happiness for the greatest number was in Francis Hutcheson (1725) but later was associated with Bentham.
malcontent: 1580s, noun and adjective, from French malcontent; see mal- + content (adj.). Related: Malcontented; malcontentedly; malcontentedness.
pleased (adj.): "satisfied, contented," late 14c., past participle adjective from please (v.).
repine (v.): "to be fretfully discontented," mid-15c., probably from re-, here likely an intensive prefix, + pine (v.) "yearn." Related: Repined; repining.
sorehead (n.): "mean, discontented person," 1848, American English, from sore (adj.) + head (n.). Especially in 19c. U.S. political slang, a person who is dissatisfied through lack of recognition or reward for party service (1862).
telegram (n.): "telegraphic dispatch," according to Bartlett's 1859 edition a coinage of E. Peshine Smith of Rochester, N.Y., from tele-, as in telegraph + -gram, and introduced in the Albany "Evening Journal" of April 6, 1852. Damned in the cradle by purists who pointed out that the correct formation would be telegrapheme (which is close to the Modern Greek word).
May I suggest to such as are not contented with 'Telegraphic Dispatch' the rightly constructed word 'telegrapheme'? I do not want it, but ... I protest against such a barbarism as 'telegram.' [Richard Shilleto, Cambridge Greek scholar, in the London "Times," Oct. 15, 1857]
Related: Telegrammic.
trek: 1849 (n.) "a stage of a journey by ox wagon;" 1850 (v.), "to travel or migrate by ox wagon," from Afrikaans trek, from Dutch trekken "to march, journey," originally "to draw, pull," from Middle Dutch trecken (cognate with Middle Low German trecken, Old High German trechan "to draw"). Especially in reference to the Groot Trek (1835 and after) of more than 10,000 Boers, who, discontented with the English colonial authorities, left Cape Colony and went north and north-east. In general use as a noun by 1941. Related: Trekked; trekking.