英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

almanac [almanac 词源字典]: almanac: [14] One of the first recorded uses of almanac in English is by Chaucer in his Treatise on the astrolabe 1391: ‘A table of the verray Moeuyng of the Mone from howre to howre, every day and in every signe, after thin Almenak’. At that time an almanac was specifically a table of the movements and positions of the sun, moon, and planets, from which astronomical calculations could be made; other refinements and additions, such as a calendar, came to be included over succeeding centuries.

The earliest authenticated reference to an almanac comes in the (Latin) works of the English scientist Roger Bacon, in the mid 13th century. But the ultimate source of the word is obscure. Its first syllable, al-, and its general relevance to medieval science and technology, strongly suggest an Arabic origin, but no convincing candidate has been found.
[almanac etymology, almanac origin, 英语词源]
and: and: [OE] A word as ancient as the English language itself, which has persisted virtually unchanged since at least 700 AD, and has cognates in other Germanic languages (German und, Dutch en), but no convincing ultimate ancestor for it has been identified
bird: bird: [OE] Bird is something of a mystery word. It was not the ordinary Old English word for ‘feathered flying animal’; that was fowl. In Old English, bird meant specifically ‘young bird, nestling’. It did not begin to replace fowl as the general term until the 14th century, and the process took many hundreds of years to complete. Its source is quite unknown; it has no obvious relatives in the Germanic languages, or in any other Indo-European language.

The connotations of its original meaning have led to speculation that it is connected with breed and brood (the usual Old English form was brid, but the r and i subsequently became transposed in a process known as metathesis), but no convincing evidence for this has ever been advanced. As early as 1300, bird was used for ‘girl’, but this was probably owing to confusion with another similar Middle English word, burde, which also meant ‘young woman’.

The usage crops up from time to time in later centuries, clearly as an independent metaphorical application, but there does not really seem to be an unbroken chain of occurrences leading up to the sudden explosion in the use of bird for ‘young woman’ in the 20th century. Of other figurative applications of the word, ‘audience disapproval’ (as in ‘get the bird’) comes from the hissing of geese, and in ‘prison sentence’ bird is short for bird lime, rhyming slang for time.
bloomer: bloomer: [19] Bloomers, long loose trousers worn by women, were not actually invented by someone called Bloomer – the credit for that seems to go to a Mrs Elizabeth Smith Miller of New York – but their first advocate was Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–94), a US feminist who strongly promoted their use in the early 1850s as a liberated garment for women. The extent to which this became a cause célèbre can be gauged by the fact that it gave rise to so-called Bloomerism, a movement for ‘rationalizing’ women’s dress; in 1882 Lady Harberton wrote in Macmillan’s Magazine ‘“Bloomerism” still lurks in many a memory’. Bloomer ‘mistake’ is late 19th-century, and apparently originally Australian.

Early commentators derived it, not altogether convincingly, from ‘blooming error’.
bluff: bluff: English has two words bluff, one or perhaps both of them of Dutch origin. The older, ‘hearty’ [17], originally referred to ships, and meant ‘having a flat vertical bow’. This nautical association suggests a Dutch provenance, though no thoroughly convincing source has been found. The sense ‘flat, vertical, (and broad)’ came to be applied to land features, such as cliffs (hence the noun bluff ‘high steep bank’, which emerged in America in the 18th century).

The word’s metaphorical extension to people was at first derogatory – ‘rough, blunt’ – but the more favourable ‘hearty’ had developed by the early 19th century. Bluff ‘deceive’ [19] was originally a US poker term. It comes from Dutch bluffen ‘boast’, the descendant of Middle Dutch bluffen ‘swell up’.
body: body: [OE] For a word so central to people’s perception of themselves, body is remarkably isolated linguistically. Old High German had potah ‘body’, traces of which survived dialectally into modern times, but otherwise it is without known relatives in any other Indo- European language. Attempts have been made, not altogether convincingly, to link it with words for ‘container’ or ‘barrel’, such as medieval Latin butica. The use of body to mean ‘person in general’, as in somebody, nobody, got fully under way in the 14th century.
bore: bore: Bore ‘make a hole’ [OE] and bore ‘be tiresome’ [18] are almost certainly two distinct words. The former comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *bhor-, *bhr-, which produced Latin forāre ‘bore’ (whence English foramen ‘small anatomical opening’), Greek phárynx, and prehistoric Germanic *borōn, from which we get bore (and German gets bohren). Bore connoting ‘tiresomeness’ suddenly appears on the scene as a sort of buzzword of the 1760s, from no known source; the explanation most commonly offered for its origin is that it is a figurative application of bore in the sense ‘pierce someone with ennui’, but that is not terribly convincing.

In its early noun use it meant what we would now call a ‘fit of boredom’. There is one other, rather rare English word bore – meaning ‘tidal wave in an estuary or river’ [17]. It may have come from Old Norse bára ‘wave’.
=> perforate, pharynx
bother: bother: [18] When the word bother first turns up in English in the first half of the 18th century, it is largely in the writings of Irishmen, such as Thomas Sheridan and Jonathan Swift. This has naturally led to speculation that the word may be of Irish origin, but no thoroughly convincing candidate has been found. The superficially similar Irish Gaelic bodhar ‘deaf, afflicted’ is more alike in spelling than pronunciation. Another suggestion is that it may represent an Irish way of saying pother [16], an archaic word for ‘commotion’ which is itself of unknown origin.
bracelet: bracelet: [15] The Latin word for ‘bracelet’ was bracchiāle, a derivative of bracchium ‘arm’ – thus, ‘something worn on or round the arm’. This passed into Old French as bracel, which made a brief and unconvincing appearance in English in the early 16th century. It was the French diminutive form, bracelet, which caught on in English. Its colloquial use as a term for ‘handcuffs’ goes back to the early 19th century.
cod: cod: [13] Like most fish-names, the origins of cod are obscure. It has been suggested, not all that convincingly, that it comes from another word cod [OE], now obsolete, which meant broadly ‘pouch’ – the idea being that the fish supposedly has a ‘baglike’ appearance. Among the specific applications of this other cod, which was of Germanic origin, were ‘seedcase’ (which survived into the twentieth century in the archaic compound peascod ‘pea pod’) and ‘scrotum’.

By transference the latter came to mean ‘testicles’, whence codpiece, a 15th- to 17thcentury garment somewhat analogous to the jockstrap. The cuttle of cuttlefish comes from the same source.
=> cuttlefish
fiasco: fiasco: [19] In Italian, a fiasco is literally a ‘bottle’ (the word comes from medieval Latin fiasco, source of English flagon and flask). Its figurative use apparently stems from the phrase far fiasco, literally ‘make a bottle’, used traditionally in Italian theatrical slang for ‘suffer a complete breakdown in performance’. The usual range of fanciful theories has been advanced for the origin of the usage, but none is particularly convincing.
=> flagon, flask
graze: graze: [OE] There is no difficulty about the etymology of graze ‘feed on grass’: it was formed in Old English times as a derivative of the noun græs (modern English grass). But what about graze in the sense ‘scrape lightly’, first recorded in the 17th century? In the absence of any convincing alternative candidates, it is usually taken to be simply a special use of graze ‘feed on grass’, in the sense ‘remove grass close to the ground’, as some animals do in grazing – like a ‘close shave’, in fact.
=> grass
jazz: jazz: [20] Words of unknown origin always attract speculation, and it is hardly surprising that such an unusual and high-profile one as jazz (first recorded in 1913) should have had more than its fair share (one of the more ingenious and colourful theories is that it comes from the nickname of one Jasbo Brown, an itinerant black musician along the Mississippi – Jasbo perhaps being an alteration of Jasper).

Given that the word emerged in Black English (probably originally in the sense ‘copulation’), it is not surprising that attempts have been made to link it with some West African language, and picture it crossing the Atlantic with the slave ships, but there is no convincing evidence for that (the scenario seems to have got started with a 1917 article in the New York Sun, which was purely the invention of a press agent).
lumber: lumber: [14] Swedish has a dialectal verb loma ‘move heavily’, which is the only clue we have to the antecedents of the otherwise mysterious English verb lumber. The noun, too, which first appears in the 16th century, is difficult to account for. In the absence of any other convincing candidates, it is presumed to have been derived from the verb (its earliest recorded sense is ‘useless or inconvenient articles’, plausibly close to the verb; ‘cut timber’ did not emerge until the 17th century, in North America).
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
strop: strop: [OE] Strop has now narrowed down in meaning to the specialized ‘strip of leather for sharpening a razor’, but it used to be a much more general term for a leather band or loop. It goes back to a prehistoric West Germanic word that was probably an adoption of Latin stroppus ‘strap, band’. That in turn may well have come from Greek strophos ‘twisted band’, from strephein ‘turn’.

Old French had estrope from the same West Germanic source, and that probably reinforced the English word in the 14th century. Scottish pronunciation turned strop into strap [17], and that has now inherited most of the general functions of strop in English at large. As for stroppy ‘bad-tempered and uncooperative’, first recorded in 1951, no convincing link with strop ‘leather strip’ has ever been established (strop ‘fit of stroppiness’ is a back-formation from stroppy).

One suggestion is that it may be a radically stripped-down version of obstreperous.
bikini (n.): "low-waisted two-piece women's bathing suit," 1948, from French coinage, 1947, named for U.S. A-bomb test of June 1946 on Bikini, Marshall Islands atoll, locally Pikinni and said to derive from pik "surface" and ni "coconut," but this is uncertain. Various explanations for the swimsuit name have been suggested, none convincingly, the best being an analogy of the explosive force of the bomb and the impact of the bathing suit style on men's libidos (compare c. 1900 British slang assassin "an ornamental bow worn on the female breast," so called because it was very "killing").
Bikini, ce mot cinglant comme l'explosion même ... correspondant au niveau du vêtement de plage à on anéantissement de la surface vêtue; à une minimisation extrême de la pudeur. [Le Monde, 1947]
As a style of scanty briefs, from 1960. Variant trikini (1967), with separate bra cups held on by Velcro, falsely presumes a compound in bi-.
conclusive (adj.): 1610s, "occurring at the end," from French conclusif, from Late Latin conclusivus, from conclus-, past participle stem of concludere (see conclude). Meaning "definitive, decisive, convincing" (putting an end to debate) is from 1640s. Related: Conclusiveness.
convince (v.): 1520s, "to overcome in argument," from Latin convincere "to overcome decisively," from com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + vincere "to conquer" (see victor). Meaning "to firmly persuade" is from c. 1600. Related: Convinced; convincing; convincingly.
copacetic (adj.): 1919, but it may have origins in 19c. U.S. Southern black speech. Origin unknown, suspects include Latin, Yiddish (Hebrew kol b'seder), Italian, Louisiana French (coupe-sétique), and Native American. None is considered convincing by linguists.
fictive (adj.): 1610s, "formed by imagination," from French fictif, from stem of Latin fictio (see fiction). Earlier as "convincingly deceptive" (late 15c.). Related: Fictively.
gem (n.): "a precious stone" (especially when cut or polished), c. 1300, probably from Old French gemme (12c.), from Latin gemma "precious stone, jewel," originally "bud," from Proto-Italic *gebma- "bud, sprout," from PIE *geb-m- "sprout, bud" (cognates: Lithuanian žembeti "to germinate, sprout," Old Church Slavonic prozebnoti "to germinate"). The two competing traditional etymologies trace it either to the root *gembh- "tooth, nail; to bite" [Watkins] or *gem- "'to press." De Vaan finds the second "semantically unconvincing" and leans toward the first despite the difficult sense connection. Of persons, "a rare or excellent example (of something)" from late 13c. Alternative forms iemme, gimme persisted into 14c. and might represent a survival of Old English gimm "precious stone, gem, jewel," also "eye," which was borrowed directly from Latin gemma.
goose (n.): "a large waterfowl proverbially noted, I know not why, for foolishness" [Johnson], Old English gos "a goose," from Proto-Germanic *gans- "goose" (cognates: Old Frisian gos, Old Norse gas, Old High German gans, German Gans "goose"), from PIE *ghans- (cognates: Sanskrit hamsah (masc.), hansi (fem.), "goose, swan;" Greek khen; Latin anser; Polish gęś "goose;" Lithuanian zasis "goose;" Old Irish geiss "swan"), probably imitative of its honking.
Geese are technically distinguished from swans and from ducks by the combination of feathered lores, reticulate tarsi, stout bill high at the base, and simple hind toe. [Century Dictionary]
Spanish ganso "goose" is from a Germanic source. Loss of "n" sound is normal before "s." Plural form geese is an example of i-mutation. Meaning "simpleton, silly or foolish person" is from early 15c. To cook one's goose first attested 1845, of unknown origin; attempts to connect it to Swedish history and Greek fables are unconvincing. Goose-egg "zero" first attested 1866 in baseball slang, from being large and round. The goose that lays golden eggs (15c.) is from Aesop.
ham (n.2): "overacting inferior performer," 1882, American English, apparently a shortening of hamfatter (1880) "actor of low grade," which is said (since at least 1889) to be from the old minstrel show song, "The Ham-fat Man" (attested by 1856). The song, a comical black-face number, has nothing to do with acting, but the connection might be with the quality of acting in minstrel shows, where the song was popular (compare the definition of hambone in the 1942 "American Thesaurus of Slang," "unconvincing blackface dialectician"). Its most popular aspect was the chorus and the performance of the line "Hoochee, kouchee, kouchee, says the ham fat man."

Ham also had a sports slang sense of "incompetent pugilist" (1888), perhaps from the notion in ham-fisted. The notion of "amateurish" led to the sense of "amateur radio operator" (1919).
persuadable (adj.): "capable of being persuaded," 1737, from persuade + -able. Fowler recommends this over the older adjective, persuasible (late 14c.), from Latin persuasibilis "convincing, persuasive," from persuad-, past participle stem of persuadere (see persuade). This originally meant "having power to persuade," but c. 1500 it also acquired the meaning "capable of being persuaded" and the older sense became obsolete.
persuasion (n.): late 14c., "action of inducing (someone) to believe (something); argument to persuade, inducement," from Old French persuasion (14c.) and directly from Latin persuasionem (nominative persuasio) "a convincing, persuading," noun of action from past participle stem of persuadere "persuade, convince," from per- "thoroughly, strongly" (see per) + suadere "to urge, persuade," from PIE *swad- "sweet, pleasant" (see sweet (adj.)). Meaning "religious belief, creed" is from 1620s.
phat (adj.): hip-hop slang, "great, excellent," 1992, originating perhaps in the late 1980s and meaning at first "sexiness in a woman." The word itself is presumably a variant of fat (q.v.) in one of its slang senses, with the kind of off-beat spelling preferred in street slang (compare boyz). The spelling is attested as far back as 1678, as an erroneous form of fat (a classical over-correction; see ph). This spelling is said by some to be an acronym, and supposed originals are offered: "pretty hot and tasty," or "pretty hips and thighs" among them, all unconvincing. These, too may have been innovations given as explanations to women who felt insulted by the word.
pregnant (adj.2): "convincing, weighty, pithy," late 14c., "cogent, convincing, compelling" (of evidence, an argument, etc.); sense of "full of meaning" is from c. 1400. According to OED from Old French preignant, present participle of preindre "press, squeeze, stamp, crush," from earlier priembre, from Latin premere "to press" (see press (v.1)). But Watkins has it from Latin praehendere "to grasp, seize," and in Barnhart it is from Latin praegnans "with child," literally "before birth" and thus identical with pregnant (adj.1).
sentinel (n.): 1570s, from Middle French sentinelle (16c.), from Italian sentinella "a sentinel." OED says "No convincing etymology of the It. word has been proposed," but perhaps (via a notion of "perceive, watch"), from sentire "to hear," from Latin sentire "feel, perceive by the senses" (see sense (n.)).
sheela-na-gig (n.): 1846, from Irish Sile na gcioch, literally "Sheila of the breasts" [OED]. According to modern folklorists, not a Celtic survival, but originating rather in the Romanesque churches of France and northern Spain. Their theories that it is meant to degrade the female body and discourage sexuality, or that it is meant as an apotropaic gesture to ward off the devil, are not entirely convincing.
so long (interj.): parting salutation, 1860, of unknown origin, perhaps from a German idiom (compare German parting salutation adieu so lange, the full sense of which probably is something like "farewell, whilst (we're apart)"); or perhaps from Hebrew shalom (via Yiddish sholom). Some have noted a similarity to Scandinavian leave-taking phrases, such as Norwegian Adjø så lenge, Farvel så lenge, Mor'n så lenge, literally "bye so long, farewell so long, morning so long;" and Swedish Hej så länge "good-bye for now," with så länge "for now" attested since 1850 according to Swedish sources. Most etymology sources seem to lean toward the German origin.

Earlier guesses that it was a sailors' corruption of a South Pacific form of Arabic salaam are not now regarded as convincing. "Dictionary of American Slang" also adds to the list of candidates Irish slán "safe," said to be used as a salutation in parting. The phrase seems to have turned up simultaneously in America, Britain, and perhaps Canada, originally among lower classes. First attested use is in title and text of the last poem in Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" in the 1860 edition.
An unknown sphere, more real than I dream'd, more direct, darts awakening rays about me -- So long!
Remember my words -- I may again return,
I love you -- I depart from materials;
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.
Whitman's friend and fan William Sloane Kennedy wrote in 1923:
The salutation of parting -- 'So long!' -- was, I believe, until recent years, unintelligible to the majority of persons in America, especially in the interior, and to members of the middle and professional classes. I had never heard of it until I read it in Leaves of Grass, but since then have quite often heard it used by the laboring class and other classes in New England cities. Walt wrote to me, defining 'so long' thus: "A salutation of departure, greatly used among sailors, sports, & prostitutes -- the sense of it is 'Till we meet again,' -- conveying an inference that somehow they will doubtless so meet, sooner or later." ... It is evidently about equivalent to our 'See you later.' The phrase is reported as used by farm laborers near Banff, Scotland. In Canada it is frequently heard; 'and its use is not entirely confined to the vulgar.' It is in common use among the working classes of Liverpool and among sailors at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and in Dorsetshire. ... The London Globe suggests that the expression is derived from the Norwegian 'Saa laenge,' a common form of 'farewell,' au revoir. If so, the phrase was picked up from the Norwegians in America, where 'So long' first was heard. The expression is now (1923) often used by the literary and artistic classes.
sylph (n.): 1650s, "air-spirit," from Modern Latin sylphes (plural), coined 16c. by Paracelsus (1493-1541), originally referring to any race of spirits inhabiting the air, described as being mortal but lacking a soul. Paracelsus' word seems to be an arbitrary coinage, but perhaps it holds a suggestion of Latin silva and Greek nymph, or Greek silphe "a kind of beetle," but French etymologists propose a Gaulish origin. The Century Dictionary comments that, "to occultists and quacks like Paracelsus words spelled with -y- look more Greek and convincing." The meaning "graceful girl" first recorded 1838, on the notion of "slender figure and light, airy movement" [OED].
unconvinced (adj.): 1670s, from un- (1) "not" + past participle of convince (v.). Unconvincing is recorded from 1650s.