escalateyoudaoicibaDictYouDict[escalate 词源字典]
escalate: [20] Escalate is a back-formation from escalator [20], which was originally a tradename for a moving staircase first made in the USA around 1900 by the Otis Elevator Company. This in turn seems to have been coined (probably on the model of elevator) from escalade [16], a term in medieval warfare signifying the scaling of a fortified wall, which came via French and Spanish from medieval Latin scalāre, source of English scale ‘climb’. Escalate originally meant simply ‘ascend on an escalator’; the metaphorical sense ‘increase’ developed at the end of the 1950s.
[escalate etymology, escalate origin, 英语词源]
escalate (v.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1922, "to use an escalator," back-formation from escalator, replacing earlier verb escalade (1801), from the noun escalade. Escalate came into general use with a figurative sense of "raise" from 1959 (intrans.), originally in reference to scenarios for possible nuclear war. Related: Escalated; escalating. Transitive figurative sense is by 1962.