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device [device 词源字典]: device: [13] A device is something which has been devised – which, etymologically speaking, amounts to ‘something which has been divided’. For ultimately devise and divide come from the same source. The noun device comes in the first instance from Old French devis ‘division, contrivance’ and latterly (in the 15th century) from Old French devise ‘plan’, both of which were derivatives of the verb deviser ‘divide, devise’ (source of English devise [13]).

This in turn came from Vulgar Latin *dīvisāre, a verb based on the past participial stem of Latin dīvidere, source of English divide. The semantic development by which ‘divide’ passed to ‘contrive’, presumably based on the notion that dividing something up and distributing it needs some planning, happened before the word reached English, and English device has never meant ‘division’.

The sense ‘simple machine’ essentially evolved in the 16th century.
=> devise, divide, individual, widow[device etymology, device origin, 英语词源]
sophisticate: sophisticate: [14] As those who hanker for the ancestral meanings of words never tire of pointing out, sophisticated originally meant ‘adulterated, corrupted’. The modern approbatory sense ‘worldly-wise, cultured’ did not emerge (via an intermediate ‘lacking primitive or original naturalness or naivety’) until the end of the 19th century; and ‘refined and elaborate’ (as in ‘a sophisticated missile system’) is more recent still, not being recorded until after World War II.

The verb was adapted from the past participle of medieval Latin sophisticāre. This was derived from Latin sophisticus, a borrowing from Greek sophistikós, which in turn was derived from sophistés, a noun which meant literally ‘expert, deviser’, but was also used for a school of 5thcentury BC Greek philosophers (the Sophists) who came to be despised for their specious and intellectually dishonest reasoning (hence English sophistry [14]). Sophistés itself came via sophízesthai ‘play subtle tricks’ from sophós ‘skilled, clever, wise’, a word of unknown origin. Sophomore ‘second-year student’ [17] is an alteration of an earlier sophumer ‘arguer’, a derivative of sophum, which is a now defunct variant of sophism.
=> sophistry, sophomore
device (n.): late 13c., from Old French devis "division, separation, disposition, wish, desire; coat of arms, emblem; last will," from deviser "to divide, distribute" (see devise). Sense of "method by which something is divided" arose in French and led to modern meaning.
devise (v.): early 13c., "to form, fashion;" c. 1300, "to plan, contrive," from Old French deviser "dispose in portions, arrange, plan, contrive" (in modern French, "to chat, gossip"), from Vulgar Latin *divisare, frequentative of Latin dividere "to divide" (see divide). Modern sense is from "to arrange a division" (especially via a will), a meaning present in the Old French word. Related: Devised; devising.
Parkinson's Law: 1955 (in the "Economist" of Nov. 19), named for its deviser, British historian and journalist Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909-1993): "work expands to fill the time available for its completion."