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old[old 词源字典]

old: [OE] Etymologically, old means ‘grown-up’. It comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *altha (source also of German alt and Dutch oud) which was a past-participial adjective formed from the base of a verb meaning ‘grow, nourish’. (A precisely similar formation from the related Latin verb adolēscere ‘grow’ has given English adult, and Latin altus ‘high’ – source of English altitude [14] – was originally a past-participial adjective too, derived from alēre ‘nourish’, although it has metaphoricized ‘growing’ to ‘height’ rather than ‘age’.) Elderly and the comparative and superlative elder, eldest come ultimately from the same source. World began life as a compound noun of which the noun *ald- ‘age’, a relative of old, formed the second element.
=> adult, altitude, elder, world[old etymology, old origin, 英语词源]