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asylum [asylum 词源字典]: asylum: [15] Greek sulon meant ‘right of seizure’. With the addition of the negative prefix a- ‘not’ this was turned into the adjective ásūlos ‘inviolable’, which in turn was nominalized as āsūlon ‘refuge’. When it first entered English, via Latin asylum, it was used specifically for ‘place of sanctuary for hunted criminals and others’ (a meaning reflected in modern English ‘political asylum’), and it was not until the mid 18th century that it came to be applied to mental hospitals.
[asylum etymology, asylum origin, 英语词源]
bay: bay: There are no fewer than six distinct words bay in English. The ‘sea inlet’ [14] comes via Old French baie from Old Spanish bahia. Bay as in bay leaf [14] comes from a different Old French word baie, whose source was Latin bāca ‘berry’. The ‘reddish-brown colour of a horse’ [14] comes via Old French bai from Latin badius, which is related to Old Irish buide ‘yellow’.

The ‘recessed area or compartment’ [14] comes from yet another Old French baie, a derivative of the verb bayer ‘gape, yawn’, from medieval Latin batāre (English acquired abash and abeyance from the same source, and it may also be represented in the first syllable of beagle). Bay ‘bark’ [14] comes from Old French abaiier, in which the element -bai- probably originated as an imitation of a dog howling.

And it is the source of bay as in at bay [13] (from Old French abai), the underlying idea of which is that of a hunted animal finally turning and facing its barking pursuers.
=> abash, abeyance, beagle
giblets: giblets: [14] French gibier means ‘game’ – in the sense ‘hunted animals’ (it comes from Frankish *gabaiti ‘hunting with falcons’). In the Old French period this seems to have produced a diminutive form *giberet, literally ‘small game’, which, though never recorded, is assumed to have been the basis of Old French gibelet (l and r are very close phonetically, and each is easily substituted for the other). Gibelet is only known in the sense ‘game stew’, but it seems quite plausible that it could have originally meant ‘entrails of hunted animals’ (Walloon, the French dialect of southern Belgium, has giblè d’awe ‘goose giblets’).
heart: heart: [OE] Heart is part of a widespread Indo- European family of words for the ‘cardiac muscle’, which all go back to the common ancestor *kerd-. From it come Greek kardíā (source of English cardiac [17]), Latin cor (whence French coeur, Italian cuor, Spanish corazón, not to mention a wide range of English descendants, including concord, cordial, courage, quarry ‘hunted animal’, and record), modern Irish croidhe, Russian serdce, and Latvian sirds.

Its Germanic off-spring was *khertōn, which produced German herz, Dutch hart, Swedish hjärta, Danish hjerte, and English heart. The only major Indo-European languages to have taken a different path are Romanian, whose inima ‘heart’ comes from Latin anima ‘soul’, and Welsh, which keeps craidd for the metaphorical sense ‘centre’, but for the bodily organ has calon, a descendant of Latin caldus ‘warm’.
=> cardiac, concord, cordial, courage, quarry, record
ichneumon: ichneumon: [16] Ichneumon comes from a Greek word which meant literally ‘tracker’. This was ikhneúmōn, a derivative of íkhnos ‘track, footstep’. Aristotle used it as the name for a species of wasp that hunted spiders, and it was adopted into English in this sense for the ichneumon fly, a wasplike insect with parasitic larvae, in the 17th century. Its original English application, however, was to a variety of African mongoose which ‘tracks down’ or hunts out crocodile eggs.
ruse: ruse: [15] Ruse and rush ‘hurry’ are ultimately the same word. Both come from Old French ruser ‘drive back, detour’. From this was derived the noun ruse, which brought the sense ‘detour, deviation’ with it into English. It was used in the context of a hunted animal dodging about and doubling back on its tracks to throw off its pursuers, and this led in the early 17th century to the emergence of the metaphorical sense ‘trick, stratagem’.

The precise origins of Old French ruser are uncertain. It is generally referred to Latin recūsāre ‘refuse’, source of English recusant and possibly of refuse, but it has also been speculated that it came via a Vulgar Latin *rursāre or *rusāre from Latin rursus ‘backwards’.
=> rush
skin: skin: [11] The ancestral English word for ‘skin’ is hide. Skin was borrowed at the end of the Old English period from Old Norse skinn (source of Swedish skin and Danish skind). The etymological notion underlying the word is of ‘peeling’ or ‘slicing’ off an outer layer (it goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European base *sken- ‘cut off’, which was an extension of *sek- ‘cut’, source of English section, sector, sickle, etc), and so it presumably referred originally to the pelts removed from hunted animals.
=> section, segment, sickle
venison: venison: [13] Latin vēnātiō meant ‘hunting’, hence ‘hunted animals, game’ (it was derived from vēnārī ‘hunt’, which may be distantly related to English win). English acquired it via Old French venison in the sense ‘flesh of hunted animals used for food’, and the modern specialization to ‘deer-meat’ did not begin to emerge until the 18th century.
at bay: late 14c., originally often at the bay; see bay (n.3). Figurative use, of human beings in difficulties, is from c. 1400. The expression reflects the former more widespread use of at. Earlier the expression be at abai was used of the hunted animal, "be unable to escape," c. 1300, from French.
backtrack (v.): "retrace one's steps," figuratively, by 1896, from literal sense, with reference to hunted foxes, from back (adv.) + track (v.). Related: Backtracked; backtracking.
bay (n.3): "howl of a dog," early 14c., earlier "howling chorus raised (by hounds) when in contact with the hunted animal," c. 1300, from Old French bayer, from PIE root *bai- echoic of howling (compare Greek bauzein, Latin baubari "to bark," English bow-wow; also see bawl). From the hunting usage comes the transferred sense of "final encounter," and thence, on the notion of putting up an effective defense, at bay.
harrier (n.): "small hunting dog," 1540s, from Middle English hayrer (c. 1400), of uncertain origin. Possibly from Middle French errier "wanderer" [Barnhart], or associated with hare (n.), which they would have hunted. Influenced by harry (v.). The hawk genus (1550s) is from harry (v.).
hunt (v.): Old English huntian "chase game," related to hentan "to seize," from Proto-Germanic *huntojan (cognates: Gothic hinþan "to seize, capture," Old High German hunda "booty"), from PIE *kend-.

General sense of "search diligently" (for anything) is first recorded c. 1200. Related: Hunted; hunting. Happy hunting-grounds "Native American afterlife paradise" is from "Last of the Mohicans" (1826).
prey (n.): mid-13c., "animal hunted for food," also "that which is taken in war," from Old French preie "booty, animal taken in the chase" (mid-12c., Modern French proie), from Latin praeda "booty, plunder, game hunted," earlier praeheda, literally "something seized before," from PIE *prai-heda-; for first element see prae-; second element related to the second element in prehendere "to grasp, seize" (see prehensile).
quarry (n.1): "what is hunted," early 14c., quirre "entrails of deer placed on the hide and given to dogs of the chase as a reward," from Anglo-French quirreie, Old French cuiriee "the spoil, quarry" (Modern French curée), altered (by influence of Old French cuir "skin," from Latin corium "hide"), from Old French corée "viscera, entrails," from Vulgar Latin *corata "entrails," from Latin cor "heart," from PIE root *kerd- (1) "heart" (see heart (n.)). Sense of "anything chased in hunt" is first recorded 1610s; earlier "bird targeted by a hawk or other raptor" (late 15c.).
rascal (n.): mid-14c., rascaile "people of the lowest class, rabble of an army," also singular, "low, tricky, dishonest person," from Old French rascaille "rabble, mob" (12c., Modern French racaille, "the rascality or base and rascall sort, the scumme, dregs, offals, outcasts, of any company" [Cotgrave, French-English Dictionary, 1611]), perhaps a diminutive from Old French rascler, from Vulgar Latin *rasicare "to scrape" (see rash (n.)). Used also in Middle English of animals not hunted as game.
ruse (n.): early 15c., "dodging movements of a hunted animal;" 1620s, "a trick," from Old French ruse, reuse "diversion, switch in flight; trick, jest" (14c.), back-formed noun from reuser "to dodge, repel, retreat; deceive, cheat," from Latin recusare "deny, reject, oppose," from re-, intensive prefix (see re-), + causari "plead as a reason, object, allege," from causa "reason, cause" (see cause (n.)). It also has been proposed that the French word may be from Latin rursus "backwards," or a Vulgar Latin form of refusare. Johnson calls it, "A French word neither elegant nor necessary." The verb ruse was used in Middle English.
shunt (v.): early 13c., "to shy, start," perhaps from shunen "to shun" (see shun), and altered by influence of shot or shut. Meaning "to turn aside" is from late 14c.; that of "move out of the way" is from 1706. Adopted by railways from 1842. Related: Shunted; shunting.