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abacus [abacus 词源字典]: abacus: [17] Abacus comes originally from a Hebrew word for ‘dust’, ’ābāq. This was borrowed into Greek with the sense of ‘drawing board covered with dust or sand’, on which one could draw for, among other purposes, making mathematical calculations. The Greek word, ábax, subsequently developed various other meanings, including ‘table’, both in the literal sense and as a mathematical table.

But it was as a ‘dust-covered board’ that its Latin descendant, abacus, was first used in English, in the 14th century. It was not until the 17th century that the more general sense of a counting board or frame came into use, and the more specific ‘counting frame with movable balls’ is later still.
[abacus etymology, abacus origin, 英语词源]
academy: academy: [16] Borrowed either from French académie or from Latin acadēmia, academy goes back ultimately to Greek Akadēmíā, the name of the place in Athens where the philosopher Plato (c. 428–347 BC) taught. Traditionally thought of as a grove (‘the groves of Academe’), this was in fact more of an enclosed piece of ground, a garden or park; it was named after the Attic mythological hero Akadēmos or Hekadēmus. In its application to the philosophical doctrines of Plato, English academy goes back directly to its Latin source, but the more general meanings ‘college, place of training’ derive from French.
acre: 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
affect: affect: There are two distinct verbs affect in English: ‘simulate insincerely’ [15] and ‘have an effect on’ [17]; but both come ultimately from the same source, Latin afficere. Of compound origin, from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and facere ‘do’, this had a wide range of meanings. One set, in reflexive use, was ‘apply oneself to something’, and a new verb, affectāre, was formed from its past participle affectus, meaning ‘aspire or pretend to have’.

Either directly or via French affecter, this was borrowed into English, and is now most commonly encountered in the past participle adjective affected and the derived noun affectation. Another meaning of afficere was ‘influence’, and this first entered English in the 13th century by way of its derived noun affectiō, meaning ‘a particular, usually unfavourable disposition’ – hence affection.

The verb itself was a much later borrowing, again either through French or directly from the Latin past participle affectus.
=> fact
again: again: [OE] The underlying etymological sense of again is ‘in a direct line with, facing’, hence ‘opposite’ and ‘in the opposite direction, back’ (its original meaning in Old English). It comes from a probable Germanic *gagin ‘straight’, which was the source of many compounds formed with on or in in various Germanic languages, such as Old Saxon angegin and Old Norse íg gegn.

The Old English form was ongēan, which would have produced ayen in modern English; however, Norse-influenced forms with a hard g had spread over the whole country from northern areas by the 16th century. The meaning ‘once more, anew’ did not develop until the late 14th century. From Old English times until the late 16th century a prefix-less form gain was used in forming compounds.

It carried a range of meanings, from ‘against’ to ‘in return’, but today survives only in gainsay. The notion of ‘opposition’ is carried through in against, which was formed in the 12th century from again and what was originally the genitive suffix -es, as in always and nowadays. The parasitic -t first appeared in the 14th century.
agitate: agitate: [16] Agitate is one of a host of English words descended ultimately from Latin agere (see AGENT). Among the many meanings of agere was ‘drive, move’, and a verb derived from it denoting repeated action, agitāre, hence meant ‘move to and fro’. This physical sense of shaking was present from the start in English agitate, but so was the more metaphorical ‘perturb’.

The notion of political agitation does not emerge until the early 19th century, when the Marquis of Anglesey is quoted as saying to an Irish deputation: ‘If you really expect success, agitate, agitate, agitate!’ In this meaning, a derivative of Latin agitāre has entered English via Russian in agitprop ‘political propaganda’ [20], in which agit is short for agitatsiya ‘agitation’.
=> act, agent
air: air: [13] Modern English air is a blend of three strands of meaning from, ultimately, two completely separate sources. In the sense of the gas we breathe it goes back via Old French air and Latin āēr to Greek áēr ‘air’ (whence the aero-compounds of English; see AEROPLANE). Related words in Greek were áērni ‘I blow’ and aúrā ‘breeze’ (from which English acquired aura in the 18th century), and cognates in other Indo-European languages include Latin ventus ‘wind’, English wind, and nirvana ‘extinction of existence’, which in Sanskrit meant literally ‘blown out’.

In the 16th century a completely new set of meanings of air arrived in English: ‘appearance’ or ‘demeanour’. The first known instance comes in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, IV, i: ‘The quality and air of our attempt brooks no division’ (1596). This air was borrowed from French, where it probably represents an earlier, Old French, aire ‘nature, quality’, whose original literal meaning ‘place of origin’ (reflected in another derivative, eyrie) takes it back to Latin ager ‘place, field’, source of English agriculture and related to acre. (The final syllable of English debonair [13] came from Old French aire, incidentally; the phrase de bon aire meant ‘of good disposition’.) The final strand in modern English air comes via the Italian descendant of Latin āēr, aria.

This had absorbed the ‘nature, quality’ meanings of Old French aire, and developed them further to ‘melody’ (perhaps on the model of German weise, which means both ‘way, manner’ and ‘tune’ – its English cognate wise, as in ‘in no wise’, meant ‘song’ from the 11th to the 13th centuries). It seems likely that English air in the sense ‘tune’ is a direct translation of the Italian.

Here again, Shakespeare got in with it first – in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, i: ‘Your tongue’s sweet air more tunable than lark to shepherd’s ear’ (1590). (Aria itself became an English word in the 18th century.)
=> acre, aeroplane, agriculture, aria, aura, eyrie, malaria, wind
allow: allow: [14] Allow comes ultimately from two completely different Latin verbs, allaudāre and allocāre, which became blended in Old French alouer. The first, allaudāre, was based on laudāre ‘praise’ (source of English laud, laudable, and laudatory); the second, allocāre (source of English allocate [17]) on locāre ‘place’.

The formal similarity of the Latin verbs gradually drew their meanings closer together. The notion of ‘placing’, and hence ‘allotting’ or ‘assigning’, developed via the now obsolete ‘place to somebody’s credit’ to ‘take into account, admit’. Meanwhile, the idea of ‘praising’ moved through ‘commending’ or ‘approving’ to ‘accepting as true or valid’, and ultimately to ‘permitting’.
=> allocate, laudable, location
appeal: appeal: [14] The ultimate Latin source of appeal, the verb adpellere (formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and pellere ‘drive’ – related to anvil, felt, and pulse), seems to have been used in nautical contexts in the sense ‘direct a ship towards a particular landing’. It was extended metaphorically (with a modification in form to appellāre) to mean ‘address’ or ‘accost’, and from these came two specific, legal, applications: ‘accuse’ and ‘call for the reversal of a judgment’. Appeal had both these meanings when it was first adopted into English from Old French apeler.

The former had more or less died out by the beginning of the 19th century, but the second has flourished and led to the more general sense ‘make an earnest request’. Peal [14], as in ‘peal of bells’, is an abbreviated form of appeal, and repeal [14] comes from the Old French derivative rapeler.
=> anvil, felt, peal, pulse, repeal
appoint: appoint: [14] Appoint came from the Old French verb apointier ‘arrange’, which was based on the phrase a point, literally ‘to a point’. Hints of the original meaning can still be found in some of the verb’s early uses in English, in the sense ‘settle a matter decisively’, but its main modern meanings, ‘fix by prior arrangement’ and ‘select for a post’, had become established by the mid 15th century.
=> point
argue: argue: [14] English acquired argue and its various meanings via rather complex paths, but its ultimate origin is straightforward: the Latin verb arguere derived from a prehistoric Indo- European base *arg- ‘be white, bright, or clear’ (source also of Latin argentum ‘silver’, and thus of French argent ‘money’); it therefore meant primarily ‘make clear’, but this subsequently developed into ‘assert, prove’.

A frequentative form (that is, one denoting repeated action) evolved, argutāre; this signified ‘make repeated assertions or accusations’. This passed into medieval French as arguer ‘accuse, blame’, and also ‘bring forward reasons for an assertion’, and thence into English. The meaning ‘accuse’ died out in English in the late 17th century, leaving ‘reasoning, discussing’ as the main sense of argue.

Meanwhile, original Latin arguere had made its presence felt in establishing the sense ‘prove’ in English, now somewhat weakened to ‘imply, indicate’ (as in ‘Their lack of involvement argues indifference’). The sense ‘quarrel’ seems to have developed from ‘discuss’ in the 17th century.
arrest: arrest: [14] The Latin verb restāre meant ‘stand back, remain behind’ or ‘stop’ (it is the source of English rest in the sense ‘remainder’). The compound verb arrestāre, formed in postclassical times from the prefix ad- and restāre, had a causative function: ‘cause to remain behind or stop’, hence ‘capture, seize’. These meanings were carried over via Old French arester into English.
=> rest
attack: attack: [16] Attack reached English via French attaquer from Italian attaccare ‘attach, join’, which, like Old French atachier (source of English attach) was based on a hypothetical Germanic *stakōn (from which English gets stake). Phrases such as attaccare battaglia ‘join battle’ led to attaccare being used on its own to mean ‘attack’. Attach and attack are thus ‘doublets’ – that is, words with the same ultimate derivation but different meanings.
=> attach, stake
author: author: [14] Latin auctor originally meant ‘creator, originator’; it came from auct-, the past participial stem of augēre, which as well as ‘increase’ (as in English augment) meant ‘originate’. But it also developed the specific sense ‘creator of a text, writer’, and brought both these meanings with it into English via Old French autor. Forms with -th- began to appear in the mid 16th century (from French), and originally the-th- was just a spelling variant of -t-, but eventually it affected the pronunciation.

While the ‘writing’ sense has largely taken over author, authority [13] (ultimately from Latin auctōritās) and its derivatives authoritative and authorize have developed along the lines of the creator’s power to command or make decisions.
=> auction, augment
bank: bank: [12] The various disparate meanings of modern English bank all come ultimately from the same source, Germanic *bangk-, but they have taken different routes to reach us. Earliest to arrive was ‘ridge, mound, bordering slope’, which came via a hypothetical Old Norse *banki. Then came ‘bench’ [13] (now obsolete except in the sense ‘series of rows or tiers’ – as in a typewriter’s bank of keys); this arrived from Old French banc, which was originally borrowed from Germanic *bangk- (also the source of English bench).

Finally came ‘moneylender’s counter’ [15], whose source was either French banque or Italian banca – both in any case deriving ultimately once again from Germanic *bangk-. The current sense, ‘place where money is kept’, developed in the 17th century. The derived bankrupt [16] comes originally from Italian banca rotta, literally ‘broken counter’ (rotta is related to English bereave and rupture); in early times a broken counter or bench was symbolic of an insolvent moneylender.

The diminutive of Old French banc was banquet ‘little bench’ (perhaps modelled on Italian banchetto), from which English gets banquet [15]. It has undergone a complete reversal in meaning over the centuries; originally it signified a ‘small snack eaten while seated on a bench (rather than at table)’.
=> bench
beam: beam: [OE] In Old English times the word bēam (like modern German baum) meant ‘tree’ – a signification preserved in tree-names such as hornbeam and whitebeam. But already before the year 1000 the extended meanings we are familiar with today – ‘piece of timber’ and ‘ray of light’ – had started to develop. Related forms in other Germanic languages (which include, as well as German baum, Dutch boom, from which English gets boom ‘spar’ [16]) suggest a West Germanic ancestor *bauma, but beyond that all is obscure.
=> boom
bid: bid: [OE] Bid has a complicated history, for it comes from what were originally two completely distinct Old English verbs. The main one was biddan (past tense bæd) ‘ask, demand’, from which we get such modern English usages as ‘I bade him come in’. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *bithjan (source of German bitten ‘ask’), which was formed from the base *beth- (from which modern English gets bead).

But a contribution to the present nexus of meanings was also made by Old English bēodan (past tense bēad) ‘offer, proclaim’ (whence ‘bid at an auction’ and so on). This can be traced ultimately to an Indo- European base *bh(e)udh-, which gave Germanic *buth-, source also of German bieten ‘offer’ and perhaps of English beadle [13], originally ‘one who proclaims’.
=> bead, beadle
board: board: [OE] Old English bord had a wide range of meanings, whose two main strands (‘plank’ and ‘border, side of a ship’) reveal that it came from two distinct sources: Germanic *bortham and *borthaz respectively (despite their similarity, they have not been shown to be the same word). Related forms in other Germanic languages that point up the dichotomy are Dutch bord ‘shelf’ and boord ‘border, side of a ship’.

The second, ‘edge’ element of board (which is probably related to border) now survives in English only in seaboard (literally the ‘edge of the sea’) and in variations on the phrase on board ship (whose original reference to the ship’s sides is nowadays perceived as relating to the deck). Board ‘food’ (as in ‘board and lodging’), and hence boarder, are metaphorical applications of board ‘table’.
=> border
brace: brace: [14] English borrowed brace from Old French brace, which meant simply ‘(the length measured by) two arms’. It came from Latin bracchia, the plural of bracchium ‘arm’ (source of French bras ‘arm’, and also of various English technical terms, such as brachiopod [19], a type of shellfish, literally ‘arm-foot’). The word’s ultimate source was Greek brakhíōn ‘arm’, originally ‘upper arm’, which was formed from the comparative of brakhús ‘short’, a relative of English brief (the sense development is probably that the upper arm was named from being ‘shorter’ than the forearm).

Of the rather diverse range of meanings the word has in modern English, ‘pair’ derives from the original notion of ‘twoness’, while ‘strengthening or supporting structure’ owes much to the idea of ‘clasping’, mainly contained originally in the verb brace [14], from Old French bracier ‘put one’s arms around’ (a derivative of Old French brace). In English it now only means ‘support, strengthen’, the sense ‘clasp with the arms’ being reserved to embrace [14], from Old French embracer.
=> brief, embrace
briar: briar: There are two distinct words briar in English, both of which can also be spelled brier, and as their meanings are fairly similar, they are often confused. The older [OE] is a name given to the wild rose, although in fact this usage is as recent as the 16th century, and in Old English times the word was used generally for any prickly bush, including particularly the bramble.

The Old English form was brēr, but it is not known where this came from. The other briar, ‘wild heather’ [19], is the one whose root is used for making briar pipes. The word comes from French bruyère, and was spelled bruyer when first introduced into English in the third quarter of the 19th century; the current spelling is due to assimilation to the other briar.

The French form comes from Gallo-Roman *brūcaria, a derivative of *brūcus, which was borrowed from Gaulish brūko. It appears to be related to the Greek word for ‘heather’, ereikē, from which English gets the technical botanical term ericaceous [19].
broach: broach: [14] The original meaning of broach was ‘pierce’, and it came from a noun meaning ‘spike’. The word’s ultimate source was the Latin adjective brocchus ‘pointed, projecting’, which in Vulgar Latin came to be used as a noun, *broca ‘spike’. This passed into Old French as broche, meaning ‘long needle’ and also ‘spit for roasting’. English first borrowed the word in the 13th century, as brooch, and then took it over again in the 14th century in the above quoted French meanings.

The nominal senses have now either died out or are restricted to technical contexts, but the verb, from the Vulgar Latin derivative *broccare, remains. From ‘pierce’, its meaning became specifically ‘tap a barrel’, which in the 16th century was applied metaphorically to ‘introduce a subject’. In French, the noun broche has produced a diminutive brochette ‘skewer’, borrowed into English in the 18th century; while a derivative of the verb brocher ‘stitch’ has been brochure, literally ‘a few pages stitched together’, also acquired by English in the 18th century.

A further relative is broccoli [17], plural of Italian broccolo ‘cabbage sprout’, a diminutive of brocco ‘shoot’, from Vulgar Latin *brocca.
=> broccoli, brochure, brooch
bug: bug: [14] Originally, bug meant ‘something frightening’ – and in fact one of the earliest known uses of the word was for what we would now call a ‘scare-crow’. It is one of a set of words (others are bogle and perhaps bugaboo) for alarming or annoying phenomena, usually supernatural, whose interrelationship and ultimate source have never been adequately explained (see BOGEY). Bug ‘insect’ [16] is probably the same word, although it has also been connected with Old English budd ‘beetle’. The meanings ‘defect’ (from the 19th century) and ‘germ’ and ‘hidden microphone’ (both 20th-century) all developed from ‘insect’.
camp: camp: [16] Latin campus meant ‘open field’. It branched out into various more specialized meanings. One of them, for example, was ‘battle field’: this was borrowed into the Germanic languages as ‘battle’ (German has kampf, for instance, as in the title of Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf ‘My struggle’). Another was ‘place for military exercises’, and this seems to have developed, in the word’s passage via Italian campo and French camp, to ‘place where troops are housed’.

English got the word from French. Camp ‘mannered, effeminate’ [20] is presumably a different word, but its origins are obscure. Latin campus itself was adopted in English in the 18th century for the ‘grounds of a college’. It was originally applied to Princeton university in the USA.
=> campaign, champion, decamp, scamp
carbuncle: carbuncle: [13] Etymologically, a carbuncle is a ‘small piece of coal’. It comes ultimately from Latin carbunculus, a diminutive form of carbō ‘coal’ (source of English carbon). This reached English via Old French carbuncle. The Latin word had two main metaphorical meanings, based on the idea of a glowing coal: ‘red gem’ and ‘red inflamed spot’, both of which passed into English.

The latter achieved some notoriety in British English in the 1980s following a remark by the Prince of Wales in 1984 comparing a piece of modern architecture unfavourably to a ‘carbuncle’, although ironically from the 15th to the 17th centuries the word was used for ‘something of great splendour’.
=> carbon
charge: charge: [13] The notion underlying the word charge is of a ‘load’ or ‘burden’ – and this can still be detected in many of its modern meanings, as of a duty laid on one like a load, or of the burden of an expense, which began as metaphors. It comes ultimately from Latin carrus ‘two-wheeled wagon’ (source also of English car). From this was derived the late Latin verb carricāre ‘load’, which produced the Old French verb charger and, via the intermediate Vulgar Latin *carrica, the Old French noun charge, antecedents of the English words.

The literal sense of ‘loading’ or ‘bearing’ has now virtually died out, except in such phrases as ‘charge your glasses’, but there are reminders of it in cargo [17], which comes from the Spanish equivalent of the French noun charge, and indeed in carry, descended from the same ultimate source. The origins of the verb sense ‘rush in attack’ are not altogether clear, but it may have some connection with the sense ‘put a weapon in readiness’.

This is now familiar in the context of firearms, but it seems to have been used as long ago as the 13th century with reference to arrows. The Italian descendant of late Latin carricāre was caricare, which meant not only ‘load’ but also, metaphorically, ‘exaggerate’. From this was derived the noun caricatura, which reached English via French in the 18th century as caricature.
=> car, cargo, caricature
chimney: chimney: [14] Greek kámīnos meant ‘furnace’ (it was related to kamárā ‘vaulted room’, source of English camera and chamber). It was borrowed into Latin as camīnus, from which the adjective camīnātus ‘having a furnace, oven, etc’ was derived. By late Latin times this had become a noun, camīnāta, which passed into Old French as cheminee, and thence into English. The original meanings ‘fireplace’ and ‘stove’ persisted until the 19th century, but already in Old French the sense ‘flue’ had developed, which was finally to win out.
=> camera, chamber
cob: cob: [15] Cob has a bizarre range of meanings – ‘nut’, ‘horse’, ‘male swan’, ‘loaf’, ‘ear of maize’ – but a distillation of them points back to an original ‘head, or something similarly rounded’ (cobnuts and cobloaves, for example, are spherical, and the male swan is the ‘chief’ or ‘leader’). It is therefore tempting to see a connection with the now obsolete cop ‘top, head’ (probably represented in cobweb), and even with Latin caput ‘head’.
=> cobble
cock: cock: [OE] The word cock is probably ultimately of onomatopoeic origin, imitative of the male fowl’s call (like the lengthier English cock-adoodle- doo [16], French coquerico, and German kikeriki). Beyond that it is difficult to go with any certainty; it reflects similar words in other languages, such as medieval Latin coccus and Old Norse kokkr, but which if any the English word was borrowed from is not clear.

It has been suggested that it goes back to a Germanic base *kuk-, of which a variant was the source of chicken, but typical Old English spellings, such as kok and kokke, suggest that it may have been a foreign borrowing rather than a native Germanic word – perhaps pointing to Germanic coccus. The origin of the interconnected set of senses ‘spout, tap’, ‘hammer of a firearm’, and ‘penis’ is not known; it is possible that it represents an entirely different word, but the fact that German hahn ‘hen’ has the same meanings suggests otherwise.

Of derived words, cocker [19], as in ‘cocker spaniel’, comes from cocking, the sport of shooting woodcock, and cocky [18] is probably based on the notion of the cock as a spirited or swaggering bird, lording it over his hens (there may well be some connection with cock ‘penis’, too, for there is an isolated record of cocky meaning ‘lecherous’ in the 16th century). Cockerel [15] was originally a diminutive form.
=> chicken, cocky
coin: coin: [14] Latin cuneus meant ‘wedge’ (from it we get cuneiform ‘wedge-shaped script’). It passed into Old French as coing or coin, where it developed a variety of new meanings. Primary amongst these was ‘corner-stone’ or ‘corner’, a sense preserved in English mainly in the now archaic spelling quoin. But also, since the die for stamping out money was often wedge-shaped, or operated in the manner of a wedge, it came to be referred to as a coin, and the term soon came to be transferred to the pieces of money themselves.
=> quoin
colon: colon: There are two distinct words colon in English. Colon ‘part of the large intestine’ [16] comes via Latin from Greek kólon, which meant ‘food, meat’ as well as ‘large intestine’. Colon the punctuation mark [16] comes via Latin from Greek kōlon, which originally meant literally ‘limb’. It was applied metaphorically (rather like foot) to a ‘unit of verse’, and hence to a ‘clause’ in general, meanings which survive in English as technical terms. From there it was a short step to the main present-day meaning, ‘punctuation mark’.
commit: commit: [14] Etymologically, commit simply means ‘put together’. It comes from Latin committere, a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and the verb mittere ‘put, send’ (whence English missile and mission). It originally meant literally ‘join, connect’, but then branched out along the lines of ‘put for safety, entrust’ (the force of com- here being more intensive than collective) and ‘perpetrate’ (exactly how this sense evolved is not clear).

The whole range of meanings followed the Latin verb into English, although ‘put together’ was never more than an archaism, and died out in the 17th century. Of derivatives based on the Latin verb’s past participial stem commiss-, commission entered English in the 14th century and commissionaire (via French) in the 18th century. Medieval Latin commissārius produced English commissary [14] and, via French, Russian commissar, borrowed into English in the 20th century.
=> commissar, committee, missile, mission
compete: compete: [17] Compete comes from Latin competere. This was a compound verb formed from com- ‘together’ and petere ‘seek, strive’ (source of English petition, appetite, impetus, and repeat). At first this meant ‘come together, agree, be fit or suitable’, and the last of these meanings was taken up in the present participial adjective competēns, source of English competent [14]. In later Latin, however, competere developed the sense ‘strive together’, and this formed the basis of English compete.
=> appetite, competent, impetus, petition, repeat
conceive: conceive: [13] Conceive is one of a number of English words (deceive, perceive, and receive are others) whose immediate source is the Old French morpheme -ceiv-. This goes back ultimately to Latin capere ‘take’ (source of English capture), which when prefixed became -cipere. In the case of conceive, the compound verb was concipere, where the prefix com- had an intensive force; it meant generally ‘take to oneself’, and hence either ‘take into the mind, absorb mentally’ or ‘become pregnant’ – meanings transmitted via Old French conceivre to English conceive.

The noun conceit [14] is an English formation, based on the models of deceit and receipt. Conception [13], however, goes back to the Latin derivative conceptiō.
=> capture, conceit, conception, deceive, perceive, receive
conscience: conscience: [13] Latin conscīre meant ‘be mutually aware’. It was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘with, together’ and scīre ‘know’ (source of English science). To ‘know something with oneself’ implied, in a neutral sense, ‘consciousness’, but also a moral awareness, a mental differentiation between right and wrong, and hence the derived noun conscientia carried both these meanings, via Old French, into English (the more general, amoral, ‘consciousness’ died out in the 18th century).

A parallel Latin formation, using *sci-, the base of scīre, was conscius ‘aware’, acquired by English in the 17th century as conscious. Conscientious is also a 17th-century borrowing, ultimately from Latin conscientiōsus.
=> science
convenient: convenient: [14] Convenient comes from Latin conveniēns, the present participle of convenire ‘come together, be suitable, agree’, a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and venire ‘come’ (a distant relative of English come). Convenient reflects the more figurative of convenire’s meanings, as ultimately does covenant, but its original literal sense ‘assemble’ is preserved in convene [15], convention [15], convent, and coven.
=> convent, convention, coven, covenant, venue
convince: convince: [16] Latin convincere meant originally ‘overcome decisively’ (it was a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix com- and vincere ‘defeat’, source of English victory). It branched out semantically to ‘overcome in argument’, ‘prove to be false or guilty’; and when borrowed into English it brought these meanings with it. Before long they died out, leaving ‘cause to believe’, which developed in the 17th century, as the only current sense, but ‘find or prove guilty’ survives in convict [14], acquired from the Latin past participle convictus.
=> convict, victory
council: council: [12] Etymologically, a council is a body that has been ‘called together’ or ‘summoned’. Latin concilium meant ‘assembly, meeting’; it was formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and calāre ‘call, summon’. It passed into English via Anglo-Norman cuncile. It has no direct etymological connection with counsel, but the two are so similar that their meanings have tended to merge at various points down the centuries. Latin concilium also formed the basis of the verb conciliāre, which originally meant ‘bring together, unite’. Its metaphorical sense ‘make more friendly, win over’ is preserved in English conciliate [16].
=> conciliate
court: court: [12] Latin cohors designated an ‘enclosed yard’ (it was formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and an element hort- which also appears in English horticulture). By extension it came to stand for those assembled in such a yard – a crowd of attendants or company of soldiers; hence the meaning of cohort familiar today. But both in its original sense and as ‘retinue’ the word took another and rather more disguised path into English.

In late Latin the accusative form cohortem had already become cortem, and this passed into English via Old French cort and Anglo-Norman curt. It retains the underlying notion of ‘area enclosed by walls or buildings’ (now reinforced in the tautological compound courtyard [16]), but it seems that an early association of Old French cort with Latin curia ‘sovereign’s assembly’ and ‘legal tribunal’ has contributed two of the word’s commonest meanings in modern English.

The Italian version of the word is corte. From this was derived the verb corteggiare ‘attend court, pay honour’, which produced the noun corteggio, borrowed into English via French as cortège [17]. Other derivatives include courtesy [13], from Old French cortesie (of which curtsey [16] is a specialized use) and courtesan [16], via French courtisane from Italian cortigiana.
=> cohort, courtesy, curtsey, horticulture
craft: craft: [OE] The original notion contained in the word craft is that of ‘strength’ (that is the meaning of its relatives in other Germanic languages, such as German and Swedish kraft). Old English croeft had that sense too (it had largely died out by the 16th century), but it had also developed some other meanings, which are not shared by its Germanic cognates: ‘skill’, for example (in a bad as well as a good sense, whence crafty) and ‘trade’ or ‘profession’.

Much later in origin, however (17th-century in fact), is the sense ‘ship’. It is not clear how this developed, but it may have been a shortening of some such expression as ‘vessel of the sailor’s craft’ (that is, ‘trade’). The word’s Germanic stem was *krab- or *kraf-, which some have seen also as the source of crave [OE].
=> crave
cue: cue: Cue has several meanings in English, and it is not clear whether they can all be considered to be the same word. In the case of ‘pigtail’ and ‘billiard stick’, both of which appeared in the 18th century, cue is clearly just a variant spelling of queue, but although cue ‘actor’s prompt’ [16] has been referred by some to the same source (on the grounds that it represents the ‘tail’ – from French queue ‘tail’ – of the previous actor’s speech) there is no direct evidence for this.

Another suggestion is that it represents qu, an abbreviation of Latin quando ‘when’ which was written in actor’s scripts to remind them when to come in.
=> queue
damn: damn: [13] Damn comes via Old French damner from Latin damnāre, a derivative of the noun damnum. This originally meant ‘loss, harm’ (it is the source of English damage), but the verb damnāre soon spread its application to ‘pronounce judgment upon’, in both the legal and the theological sense. These meanings (reflected also in the derived condemn) followed the verb through Old French into English, which dropped the strict legal sense around the 16th century but has persisted with the theological one and its more profane offshoots.
=> condemn, damage, indemnity
decimate: decimate: [17] Decimate is a cause célèbre amongst those who apparently believe that words should never change their meanings. The original general signification of its Latin source, the verb decimāre, was the removal or destruction of one tenth (it was derived from Latin decem ‘ten’), and it may perhaps strike the 20th century as odd to have a particular word for such an apparently abstruse operation.

It does, however, arise out of two very specific procedures in the ancient world: the exaction of a tax of one tenth (for which indeed English has the ultimately related word tithe), and the practice in the Roman army of punishing a body of soldiers guilty of some crime such as mutiny by choosing one in ten of them by lot to be put to death. Modern English does not perhaps have much use for a verb with such specialized senses, but the general notion of impassive and indiscriminate slaughter implied in the Roman military use led, apparently as early as the mid- 17th century, to the modern sense ‘kill or destroy most of’.
=> decimal, ten
degree: degree: [13] Etymologically, degree means ‘step down’, a sense revealed more clearly in its relative degrade [14]. It comes via Old French degre from Vulgar Latin *dēgradus, a compound noun formed from the prefix dē- ‘down’ and gradus ‘step’ (source of English gradual and a wide range of other words). The word’s modern meanings, such as ‘academic rank’ and ‘unit of temperature’, come from an underlying abstract notion of a hierarchy of steps or ranks. Degrade represents a parallel but distinct formation, originally coined as ecclesiastical Latin dēgradāre and passed into English via Old French degrader.
=> degrade, gradual, progress
delicate: delicate: [14] Delicate comes either from Old French delicat or direct from its source, Latin dēlicātus, but its ultimate history is obscure. Its formal similarity to delicious and delight, and the fact that ‘addicted to pleasure’ was one of the meanings of Latin dēlicātus, suggest that the three words may have an ancestor in common. Delicatessen [19] was borrowed from German delikatessen, plural of delikatesse ‘delicacy’, which in turn was acquired by German from French délicatesse.
=> delicatessen
divan: divan: [16] The word divan has a long and spectacularly variegated semantic history. It started out as Persian dēvān, which originally meant ‘small book’. This came to be used specifically for ‘account book’, and eventually for ‘accountant’s office’. From this its application broadened out to cover various official chambers and the bodies which occupied them, such as tax offices, customs collectors, courts, and councils of state.

And finally it developed to ‘long seat’, of the sort which lined the walls of such Oriental chambers. The word carried these meanings with it via Arabic dīwān and Turkish divān into the European languages, and English acquired most of them as a package deal from French divan or Italian devano (it did not, however, include the ‘customs’ sense which, via the Turkish variant duwan, survives in French douane, Italian dogana, Spanish aduana, etc).

The 19th-century sense ‘smoking lounge’ seems to be an exclusively European development.
dome: dome: [16] Dome originally meant ‘house’ in English – it was borrowed from Latin domus ‘house’ (source of English domestic). However, in other European languages the descendants of domus had come to signify more than a humble dwelling house, and its new meanings spread to English. The word increasingly encompassed stately mansions and important places of worship. Italian duomo and German dom mean ‘cathedral’, for instance (a sense adopted by English in the late 17th and early 18th centuries), and since a leading characteristic of Italian cathedrals is their cupola, the word was soon applied to this.
=> domestic
draught: draught: [12] Draught and draft are essentially the same word, but draft (more accurately representing its modern English pronunciation) has become established since the 18th century as the spelling for ‘preliminary drawing or plan’, ‘money order’, and (in American English) ‘conscription’. The word itself probably comes from an unrecorded Old Norse *drahtr, an abstract noun meaning ‘pulling’ derived from a prehistoric Germanic verb *dragan (source of English drag and draw).

Most of its modern English meanings are fairly transparently descended from the idea of ‘pulling’: ‘draught beer’, for example, is ‘drawn’ from a barrel. Of the less obvious ones, ‘current of air’ is air that is ‘drawn’ through an opening; the game draughts comes from an earlier, Middle English sense of draught, ‘act of drawing a piece across the board in chess and similar games’; while draft ‘provisional plan’ was originally ‘something drawn or sketched’.
=> draft, drag, draw
emancipate: emancipate: [17] Despite modern associations with women’s liberation, emancipate has no etymological connection with man. It comes from Latin ēmancipāre, which meant originally ‘free from parental power’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out of’ and mancipium ‘ownership’, and referred in Roman law to the freeing of a son from the legal authority of the male head of the family, thus making him responsible for himself in law. Mancipium (source of the archaic English noun manciple ‘steward, purveyor’ [13]) was ultimately a compound noun formed from manus ‘hand’ (as in English manual) and capere ‘take’ (as in English captive and capture).

The association of the verb with the ‘freeing of slaves’, the basis of the present English meanings, is a modern development.
=> captive, capture, manciple, manual
engine: engine: [13] The underlying etymological meaning of engine is ‘natural talent’. It comes ultimately from Latin ingenium (source also of English ingenious) which was formed from the base *gen- (as in genetic) denoting ‘reproduction’ and meant literally ‘skill or aptitude one was born with’. Abstract meanings related to this (such as ‘ingenuity’ and ‘genius’) have now died out in English (which acquired the word via Old French engin), but what remains is a more specific strand of meaning in the Latin word – ‘clever device, contrivance’.

Originally this was an abstract concept (often used in a bad sense ‘trick, cunning ruse’), but as early as about 1300 there is evidence of a more concrete application in English to a ‘mechanical device’. The word’s modern use for ‘machine producing motion’ originates in its early 19thcentury application to the steam engine. Engineer [14] comes via Old French engigneor from medieval Latin ingeniātōr, a derivative of the verb ingeniāre ‘contrive’, which in turn came from ingenium.
=> gin, ingenious
enormous: enormous: [16] Etymologically, enormous is a parallel formation to abnormal and extraordinary. It comes from Latin ēnormis, a compound adjective formed from the prefix ex- ‘out of’ and norma ‘pattern, rule’ – hence literally ‘out of the usual pattern’. It originally had a range of meanings in English, including ‘abnormal, unusual’ (‘entered the choir in a military habit, and other enormous disguises’, Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry 1774) and ‘outrageous’.

By the beginning of the 19th century these had mostly died out, leaving the field clear for modern English ‘huge’, although the notion of ‘outrageousness’ remains in the noun derivative enormity [15].
=> abnormal, normal