英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

acre [acre 词源字典]: acre: [OE] Acre is a word of ancient ancestry, going back probably to the Indo-European base *ag-, source of words such as agent and act. This base had a range of meanings covering ‘do’ and ‘drive’, and it is possible that the notion of driving contributed to the concept of driving animals on to land for pasture. However that may be, it gave rise to a group of words in Indo- European languages, including Latin ager (whence English agriculture), Greek agros, Sanskrit ájras, and a hypothetical Germanic *akraz.

By this time, people’s agricultural activities had moved on from herding animals in open country to tilling the soil in enclosed areas, and all of this group of words meant specifically ‘field’. From the Germanic form developed Old English æcer, which as early as 1000 AD had come to be used for referring to a particular measured area of agricultural land (as much as a pair of oxen could plough in one day).
=> act, agent, agriculture, eyrie, onager, peregrine, pilgrim[acre etymology, acre origin, 英语词源]
always: always: [13] In Old English, the expression was alne weg, literally ‘all the way’. It seems likely that this was used originally in the physical sense of ‘covering the complete distance’, but by the time it starts to appear in texts (King Alfred’s is the first recorded use, in his translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae around 888) it already meant ‘perpetually’. Alway survived into modern English, albeit as an archaism, but began to be replaced as the main form by always in the 12th century.

The final -s is genitive, not plural, and was originally added to all as well as way: alles weis. It has a generalizing force, much as in modern English one might say of a morning for ‘every morning’.
=> way
armour: armour: [13] Armour comes ultimately from Latin armātūra ‘armour, equipment’, a derivative of the verb armāre ‘arm’ (the direct English borrowing armature [15] originally meant ‘armour’ or ‘weapons’, but the ‘protective’ notion of armour led to its application in the 18th century to ‘metal covering the poles of a magnet’). In Old French armātūra became armeure, and subsequently armure, the form in which it was borrowed into English (the -our ending was artificially grafted on in the 14th century on the model of other Latin-based words such as colour and odour). Armoury is French in origin: Old French armoier ‘coat of arms’ was a derivative of arme ‘weapon’; this became armoirie, which was borrowed into English in the 15th century as armory, meaning ‘heraldry’, but also, owing to their formal similarity, came to be used with the same sense as armour – ‘protective metal suit’ or ‘weapons’.

This was what armoury meant when it came into English in the 14th century (and the sense survived long enough to be used by Wordsworth in a sonnet to ‘Liberty’ 1802: ‘In our halls is hung armoury of invincible knights of old’). The meaning ‘place for keeping weapons’ developed in the 16th century.
=> armature
blindfold: blindfold: [16] The original term for covering someone’s eyes with a bandage was blindfell [OE], which survived until the 16th century. This meant literally ‘strike someone blind’, the second element being the fell of ‘felling trees’. It appears that its past form, blindfelled, came to be mistaken for a present form, and this, together with some perceived connection with fold (presumably the ‘folding’ of the bandage round somebody’s head), conspired to produce the new verb blindfold.
brat: brat: [16] The origins of brat are not altogether clear, but it has plausibly been connected with the English dialect brat ‘makeshift or ragged garment’, as being the sort of apparel a rough or ill-mannered child might wear. This brat first appeared in late Old English as bratt, meaning ‘cloak’, a borrowing from Old Irish bratt ‘covering, mantle’.
brogue: brogue: [16] A brogue was originally a rudimentary sort of shoe worn in the more wild and woolly Celtic corners of the British Isles; the term does not seem to have been applied to today’s ‘stout country walking shoe’ until the early 20th century. The word, Irish and Scots Gaelic brōg, comes from Old Norse brók ‘leg covering’, which is related to English breeches; the relationship between ‘leg covering’ and ‘foot covering’ is fairly close, and indeed from the 17th to the 19th century brogue was used for ‘leggings’.

It is not clear whether brogue ‘Irish accent’ [18] is the same word; if it is, it presumably comes from some such notion as ‘the speech of those who wear brogues’.
=> breeches
bureau: bureau: [17] Etymologically, bureau seems to mean ‘red’. Its ultimate source is probably Greek purrhós ‘red’, a derivative of pur ‘fire’ (as in English pyre and pyrotechnic), which is related to English fire. This was borrowed into Latin as burrus, which developed into Old French bure ‘dark brown’. This seems to have formed the basis of a derivative burel, later bureau, meaning ‘dark brown cloth’.

This cloth was used for covering the writing surface of desks, and so eventually bureau came to mean ‘writing desk’ itself. Offices being the natural habitat of writing desks, bureau was later applied to them too. The derivative bureaucracy is 19th-century, of French origin.
=> pyre, pyrotechnic
bury: bury: [OE] Modern English bury is a descendant of Old English byrgan, which came from the Germanic base *burg- (source also of English borough). The underlying meaning of the base was ‘protection, shelter’, and in the case of bury this referred to ‘covering a dead body with earth’ (in Old English, bury applied only to interment; the general sense ‘put underground’ did not develop until the 14th century). The derived burial goes back to Old English byrgels, which in Middle English times was mistaken for a plural.
=> borough
canopy: canopy: [14] Etymologically, a canopy is a ‘mosquito net’. The word comes ultimately from Greek kōnōpeion, a derivative of kónops ‘mosquito’. This passed via Latin cōnōpūum into medieval Latin as canopeum, which meant both ‘mosquito net’ and ‘couch with such a net’. English adopted it directly from Latin as canope or canape, meaning ‘covering suspended over a throne, bed, etc’.

The French version of the word, however, concentrated on other aspects of canopeum’s meaning; French canapé means ‘couch, sofa’. Its metaphorical extension, ‘piece of bread or biscuit with a savoury topping’, was borrowed into English towards the end of the 19th century.
=> canapé
cap: cap: [OE] Old English cæppa came from late Latin cappa ‘hood’, source also of English cape ‘cloak’. The late Latin word may well have come from Latin caput ‘head’, its underlying meaning thus being ‘head covering’.
=> cappuccino, chapel, chaperone, képi
carpet: carpet: [14] Originally, carpet was simply a sort of rough cloth, and medieval Latin carpīta, for example, was sometimes used for a garment made from it. In earliest English use it was a ‘table-cloth’ or ‘bed-spread’, and it was not until the 15th century that the specialized ‘floorcovering’ began to establish itself. The word itself entered English via either Old French carpite or medieval Latin carpīta, which was derived from carpīre, an alteration of Latin carpere ‘pluck’ (related to English harvest).

The underlying notion seems to be that such cloth was originally made from ‘plucked’ fabric, that is, fabric which had been unravelled or shredded.
chalice: chalice: [13] Latin calix ‘cup’ and its relative, Greek kálux ‘pod’, perhaps hold the record for the words most often borrowed into English. Calix first made its appearance as part of the original West Germanic stratum of English, into which it had been borrowed from Latin; this was as Old English cælc. Then came cælic, which Old English independently acquired from Latin after the conversion of the English to Christianity.

Next was calice, whose source was an Old French dialectal form descended from Latin calix. And finally, at the end of the 13th century, the main Old French form chalice was adopted. The final twist in the story is that in the 17th century Latin calyx (a descendant of the related Greek kálux) was borrowed into English as a botanical term, ‘outer covering of a flower’.
crust: crust: [14] Latin crusta meant ‘hard outer covering, shell’ (it is related to a number of words, including ultimately crystal, denoting a hard surface caused by freezing). Old French acquired it as crouste (the modern French form croûte formed the basis of croûton, borrowed into English in the early 19th century), and passed it on to Middle English as cruste. Crusta formed the basis of the modern Latin adjective crustāceus ‘having a shell’, applied in the early 19th century to the crustacea or crustaceans. And a custard was originally a kind of pie enclosed in a crust.
=> croûton, crystal, custard
Dalek: Dalek: [20] The name of these pathologically destructive robots, which first appeared on BBC TV’s Dr Who in 1963, was coined by their creator, Terry Nation. The story went about that he had come up with it one day while staring in a library at the spine of an encyclopedia volume covering entries from DA to LEK, but he has subsequently denied this.
deck: deck: [15] Ultimately, deck (both the noun and the verb) is the same word as thatch. The meaning element they share is of a ‘covering over the top’. The noun was borrowed from Middle Dutch dec, which meant ‘covering’ in general, and more specifically ‘roof’ and ‘cloak’ (its ultimate source was Germanic *thakjam, source of English thatch).

Its modern nautical sense did not develop in English until the early 16th century, and as its antecedents suggest, its original signification was of a covering, perhaps of canvas or tarpaulin, for a boat. Only gradually has the perception of it changed from a roof protecting what is beneath to a floor for those walking above. The word’s application to a pack of cards, which dates from the 16th century, perhaps comes from the notion of the cards in a pile being on top of one another like the successive decks of a ship.

The verb deck [16] comes from Middle Dutch dekken ‘cover’.
=> detect, thatch, toga
dingy: dingy: [18] Nobody is quite sure where dingy comes from, but the very occasional occurrence of ding or dinge as Middle English forms of dung suggests that it may originally have signified ‘dung-coloured’ (although if it came from such a source it might have been expected to rhyme with springy rather than stingy). Dung [OE] itself appears to go back ultimately to an Indo-European base *dhengh- denoting ‘covering’ (relatives include the Lithuanian verb dengti ‘cover’), so its etymological significance is ‘material spread over the earth (for fertilization)’ rather than ‘excrement’.
=> dung
drape: drape: [15] The verb drape originally meant ‘weave wool into cloth’. It was borrowed from Old French draper, which was a derivative of drap ‘cloth’ (source of English drab). This in turn came from late Latin drappus, which was ultimately of Celtic origin. Other offspring of drap which found their way into English are draper [14], drapery [14], and trappings. The use of drapery for ‘loose voluminous cloth covering’ eventually fed back into the verb drape, producing in the 19th century its current sense ‘cover loosely with cloth’.
=> drab, draper, trappings
enamel: enamel: [14] The underlying meaning element in enamel is ‘melting’. It comes ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic base *smalt- (source of English schmaltz ‘sentimentality’ [20], borrowed via Yiddish from German schmalz ‘fat, dripping’), and related Germanic forms produced English smelt, melt, and malt. Old French acquired the Germanic word and turned it into esmauz; this in turn was re-formed to esmail, and Anglo-Norman adopted it as amail.

This formed the basis, with the prefix en- ‘in’, of a verb enamailler ‘decorate with enamel’. English borrowed it, and by the mid-15th century it was being used as a noun for the substance itself (the noun amel, a direct borrowing from Anglo-Norman, had in fact been used in this sense since the 14th century, and it did not finally die out until the 18th century).

Its application to the substance covering teeth dates from the early 18th century.
=> malt, melt, schmaltz, smelt
feel: feel: [OE] Like its West Germanic cousins, German fühlen and Dutch voelen, feel is part of a wider Indo-European word-family covering notions like ‘touching’ and ‘handling’, including Greek palámē and Latin palma ‘palm of the hand’ and Latin palpāre, originally ‘stroke, touch lightly’, later ‘feel’ (source of English palpable and palpitation). Its ultimate ancestor was the Indo-European base *pōl-, *pal-.
=> palm, palpable, palpitation
gaiter: gaiter: [18] Etymologically as well as semantically, gaiter is an ‘ankle covering’. It comes from French guêtre ‘gaiter’, which may well have been formed from Germanic *wirst-. This denoted ‘twist, turn’, and it has several modern derivatives which mean essentially ‘twisting joint’: German rist, for example, which has now migrated anatomically to the ‘instep’ and the ‘back of the hand’, originally signified ‘ankle, wrist’, and although English wrist now refers only to the hand/arm joint, it was formerly used dialectally for the ‘ankle’.
=> wrist
handkerchief: handkerchief: [16] Handkerchief is a compound formed from hand and the now obsolete kerchief ‘cloth for covering the head’ [13] (what in modern English would be called a head-scarf). This was acquired via Anglo-Norman courchef from Old French couvrechef, a compound of couvrir ‘cover’ and chief ‘head’. The colloquial abbreviation hanky is first recorded in the 1890s.
=> chef, chief, cover, hand, kerchief
hat: hat: [OE] Hat and hood are ultimately the same word, and denote literally ‘head-covering’. Both go back to Indo-European *kadh- ‘cover, protect’, which in the case of hat produced a Germanic derivative *khadnús, later *khattus. This was the source of English hat, and also of Swedish hatt and Danish hat (German hutt and Dutch hoed ‘hat’ are more closely related to English hood).
=> hood
heaven: heaven: [OE] The precise origins of the word heaven have never been satisfactorily explained. Could it perhaps be related in some way to Greek kamára ‘vault, covering’, and thus originally have denoted ‘sky thought of as arching over or covering the earth’ (‘sky’ is at least as ancient a meaning of heaven as ‘abode of god(s)’, although it now has an archaic air)? Are the tantalizingly similar German, Swedish, and Danish himmel and Dutch hemel related to it (going back perhaps to a common Germanic source *hibn- in which the /b/ sound, which became /v/ in English, was lost – as in e’en for even – and a suffix *-ila- was adopted rather than the *-ina- that produced English heaven), or are they completely different words? The etymological jury is still out.
hide: hide: English has two words hide in current usage, probably from an identical Indo-European source. The verb, ‘conceal’ [OE], which has no living relatives among the Germanic languages, comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *khūdjan. This was derived from a base which probably also produced English hoard, huddle, and hut, and goes back to Indo-European *keudh-, source also of Greek keúthein ‘cover, hide’, Welsh cuddio ‘hide’, and Breton kuzat ‘hide’. Hide ‘skin’ [OE] and its Germanic relatives, German haut, Dutch huid, and Swedish and Danish hud, come ultimately from Indo-European *keut-, which also produced Latin cutis ‘skin’ (source of English cuticle [17] and cutaneous [16]) and Welsh cwd ‘scrotum’.

The semantic link between the two hides is ‘covering’.
=> hoard, huddle, hut; cutaneous, cuticle
hood: hood: [OE] Ultimately hood and hat are the same word, and both mean etymologically ‘headcovering’. They go back to an Indo-European *kadh- ‘cover, protect’, which in the case of hood produced a West Germanic derivative *khōdaz. From it are descended German hut ‘hat’, Dutch hoed ‘hat’, and English hood. Hoodwink [16] originally meant literally ‘cover someone’s eyes with a hood or blindfold so that they could not see’; the modern figurative sense ‘deceive’ is first recorded in the 17th century.
=> hat
hose: hose: [OE] The original meaning of hose was ‘leg-covering, stocking’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *khuson, which also produced German hose and Dutch hoos. It appears that the metaphorical transference from a ‘long tubular stocking’ to a ‘long tube for conveying liquid’ was first made in Dutch; it was introduced into English in the 15th century.
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
hut: hut: [17] Etymologically, a hut is probably a ‘covering structure’. The word has plausibly been traced back to Germanic *khūd-, which also produced English hide and probably hoard, house, and huddle. This would have been the source of Middle High German hütte, which eventually found its way into French as hutte – whence English hut.
=> hide, hoard, house, huddle
mask: mask: [16] Mask may be of Arabic origin. The word maskharah ‘buffoon’ has been postulated as the source of Italian maschera, from which, via French masque, English got mask. In modern English, the word is largely restricted to ‘face covering’, but a range of other senses developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, including ‘masked ball’ and ‘allegorical dramatic entertainment’, which are now lumped together under the French spelling masque. The derivative masquerade [16] was borrowed from French mascarade, with the spelling of masque later grafted on to it.
=> masque, masquerade
member: member: [13] Latin membrum originally meant ‘part of the body, limb, organ’ (it has been connected tentatively with various words in other Indo-European languages meaning ‘flesh, meat’, including Sanskrit māmsám and Gothic mimz). But it was early broadened out metaphorically to ‘part of anything, one that belongs’, and brought that meaning with it via Old French membre into English.

The original sense still survives, though, particularly with reference to the ‘penis’ (an application that originated in Latin – membrōsus denoted ‘having a large penis’). Derived from Latin membrum was the adjective membrānus. Its feminine form membrāna was used as a noun meaning ‘skin covering an organ or limb’ – whence English membrane [16].
=> membrane
orchard: orchard: [OE] Etymologically, an orchard is probably simply a ‘plant-yard’. It appears to have been coined in the prehistoric Germanic period from *worti-, the ancestor of the now archaic English noun wort ‘plant, vegetable, herb’ (which is distantly related to root), and *gardaz, *gardon, forerunner of English yard and garden. Originally, as its derivation suggests, it was quite a broad term, covering vegetable gardens as well as enclosures for fruit trees, but by the 15th century it had more or less become restricted to the latter.
=> garden, yard
pillion: pillion: [16] The word pillion long predates the invention of the motorcycle. It originally denoted a ‘small light saddle on a horse’, particularly one placed behind a main saddle. It is ultimately of Latin origin, but it reached English via a Celtic route. English borrowed it from Scottish Gaelic pillean, a diminutive form of peall ‘covering, cushion’. This in turn came from Latin pellis ‘skin’ (source of English pelt ‘skin’ and related to English film).
=> film, pelt
scum: scum: [13] Scum is etymologically a ‘layer on top’ of something. The word’s modern connotations of ‘dirt’ are a secondary development. It comes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic *skūman, a derivative of the base *skū- ‘cover’, and its relatives include German schaum ‘foam’ (source of English meerschaum [18], literally ‘sea-foam’).

English scum originally meant ‘foam’ too (‘Those small white Fish to Venus consecrated, though without Venus’ aid they be created of th’ Ocean scum’, Joshua Sylvester, Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas 1598), the notion being of a layer of froth ‘covering’ liquid, but by the 15th century it was broadening out to any ‘film on top of liquid’, and from there it went downhill to a ‘film of dirt’ and then simply ‘dirt’.

Germanic *skūman was borrowed into Old French as escume, and this formed the basis of a verb escumer ‘remove the top layer’, from which English gets skim [15].
=> meerschaum, skim
shell: shell: [OE] Shell goes back ultimately to the Germanic base *skal- ‘divide, separate’, which also produced English scale, scalp, school (of fish), shale, shelter, shield, shoal (of fish), skill, and skol. Its underlying meaning is hence a ‘covering that splits off or is peeled off’. Its immediate Germanic ancestor was *skaljō, which also produced Dutch schel and Norwegian skjæl. Shellac [18] is a compound of shell and lac ‘lacquer, varnish’ (a word of Sanskrit origin, of which lacquer is a derivative), and is a direct translation of French laque en écailles ‘lac (melted) in thin plates’.
=> scale, scalp, school, shale, shelter, shield, shoal, skill, skol
shelter: shelter: [16] The origins of shelter are unclear, but the most usually accepted explanation is that it is an alteration of the now obsolete sheltron. This denoted a body of troops which protected itself in battle with a covering of joined shields. It was descended from Old English scieldtruma, a compound formed from scield, the ancestor of modern English shield, and truma ‘troop’.
=> shield
sock: sock: English has two distinct words sock. The noun ‘foot covering’ [OE] originally meant ‘light shoe’, and went back ultimately to Greek súkkhos, a word perhaps borrowed from some Asiatic language. Latin took this over as soccus, which was then borrowed into prehistoric Germanic as *sok-. And this in turn evolved into German socke, Dutch zok, Swedish socka, Danish sok, and English sock. The origins of sock ‘hit’ [17] are not known.
spat: spat: English has three words spat (not counting the past form of spit). The oldest, ‘young of an oyster or similar shellfish’ [17], comes from Anglo-Norman spat, but the origins of that are unknown. Spat ‘shoe covering’ [19] is short for the earlier spatterdash [17]. This was a compound formed from spatter [16] (a word based ultimately on the sound of spattering) and dash (used here in the now archaic sense ‘splash violently’). Spat ‘tiff’ [19] originated in the USA, but its ancestry is not known.
strip: strip: Strip ‘narrow piece’ [15] and strip ‘remove covering’ [13] are distinct words. The former was perhaps borrowed from Middle Low German strippe ‘strap’, and may be related to English stripe [17], an acquisition from Middle Dutch strīfe. A stripling [13] is etymologically someone who is as thin as a ‘strip’. Strip ‘unclothe’ goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *straupjan, which also produced German streifen and Dutch stroopen. There was once a third English word strip, meaning ‘move quickly’, but it now survives only in the derived outstrip [16]; its origins are uncertain.
=> stripe, stripling
tar: tar: [OE] Tar is etymologically a substance produced from ‘trees’. The word goes back via a prehistoric Germanic *terw- (source also of German and Dutch teer, Swedish tjära, and Danish tjære) to Indo-European *drew- ‘tree’ (source of English tree) – the original application of the word evidently having been to the tarry resins produced by conifers. (The tar [17] of Jack tar ‘sailor’ is short for tarpaulin [17], a compound noun probably formed from tar and pall ‘covering’.)
=> tree, trough
tarmac: tarmac: [20] The term tarmac commemorates the name of John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836), a Scottish civil engineer who developed a method of levelling roads and covering them with gravel. Setting the gravel in tar produced in the 1880s the term tarmacadam, and in 1903 the abbreviated form tarmac was registered as a trademark. By 1919 the word was being used in British English as a synonym for ‘runway’.
trappings: trappings: [14] Trappings are etymologically ‘drapery’. The word was adapted from Anglo- Norman *trapour, a variant of Old French drapure; and this in turn was a derivative of drap ‘cloth’, source of English drape, drapery, etc. It was originally used in English for an ‘ornamental covering for a horse’, and its more general modern meaning did not emerge until the 16th century.
=> drape, drapery
tyre: tyre: [15] The word tyre was originally used for a protective covering of metal plates put round the rim of a wooden wheel. It is thought that it was short for attire [13] (a borrowing from Old French, but ultimately of unknown origin), the notion being of ‘attiring’ the wheels in their covering. At first the word was spelled tire or tyre indiscriminately. By the 18th century tire had become the standard form, and it remains so in American English, but when rubber wheel cushions were introduced in the 19th century, British English took to spelling them tyre.
=> attire
all-over (adj.): "covering every part," 1859, from all + over. All-overish "generally, indefinitely indisposed" is from 1820.
AP: abbreviation of Associated Press, first recorded 1879; the organization was founded May 1848 as co-operative news gathering effort among New York City newspaper publishers covering the war with Mexico.
aril (n.): "accessory covering of seeds," 1794, from Modern Latin arillus, from Medieval Latin arilli, Spanish arillos "dried grapes, raisins."
armature (n.): c. 1400, "an armed force," from Latin armatura "armor, equipment," from armatus, past participle of armare "to arm, furnish with weapons" from arma (see arm (n.2)). Meaning "armor" is mid-15c.; that of "protective covering of a plant or animal" is from 1660s. Electromagnetic sense is from 1835.
armor (n.): c. 1300, "mail, defensive covering worn in combat," also "means of protection," from Old French armeure "weapons, armor" (12c.), from Latin armatura "arms, equipment," from arma "arms, gear" (see arm (n.2)). Figurative use from mid-14c.

Meaning "military equipment generally," especially siege engines, is late 14c. The word might have died with jousting if not for late 19c. transference to metal-shielded machinery beginning with U.S. Civil War ironclads (first attested in this sense in an 1855 report from the U.S. Congressional Committee on Naval Affairs).
aspirin (n.): coined 1899 by German chemist Heinrich Dreser (1860-1924) in German as a trademark name, from Latin Spiraea (ulmaria) "meadow-sweet," the plant in whose flowers or leaves the processed acid in the medicine is naturally found, + common chemical ending -in (see -ine (2)). Spiraea (Tournefort, 1700) is from Latinized form of Greek speiraia "meadow-sweet," so called from the shape of its follicles (see spiral (adj.)). The initial -a- is to acknowledge acetylation; Dreser said the word was a contraction of acetylierte spirsäure, the German name of the acid, which now is obsolete, replaced by salicylic acid.
Die Bezeichnung Aspirin ist abgeleitet aus "Spirsäure" -- alter Name der Salicylsäure und A = Acetyl; statt" Acetylirte Spirsäure, kurzweg "Aspirin". [H, Dreser, "Pharmakologisches über Aspirin (Acetylsalicylsäure)," in "Archiv für die Gesammte Physiologie des Menschen und der Thiere," 1899, p.307]
The custom of giving commercial names to medicinal products began in Germany in the late 19th century, when nascent pharmaceutical firms were discovering medical uses for common, easily made chemicals. To discourage competitors they would market the substance under a short trademarked name a doctor could remember, rather than the long chemical compound word. German law required prescriptions to be filled exactly as written.
babouche (n.): 1690s, from French babouche, from Arabic babush, from Persian papush, from pa "foot" (related to Avestan pad-, from PIE root *ped- (1) "a foot;" see foot (n.)) + posh "covering." Arabic, lacking a -p-, regularly converts -p- in foreign words to -b-.
babushka (n.): type of head covering for women, 1938, from Russian babushka "grandmother."