英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

alma mater [alma mater 词源字典]: alma mater: [17] Alma mater literally means ‘mother who fosters or nourishes’. The Latin adjective almus ‘giving nourishment’, derives from the verb alere ‘nourish’ (source of English alimony and alimentary). The epithet alma mater was originally applied by the Romans to a number of goddesses whose particular province was abundance, notably Ceres and Cybele.

In the 17th century it began to be used in English with reference to a person’s former school or college, thought of as a place of intellectual and spiritual nourishment (Alexander Pope was amongst its earliest users, although the reference is far from kind: ‘Proceed, great days! ’till Learning fly the shore … ’Till Isis’ Elders reel, their pupils’ sport, And Alma mater lie dissolv’d in Port!’ Dunciad 1718).

If that which nourishes is almus, those who are nourished are alumni (similarly derived from the verb alere). Alumnus was first applied in English to a pupil – and more specifically a former pupil or graduate – in the 17th century; an early reference combines the notions of alumnus and alma mater: ‘Lieutenant Governor … promised his Interposition for them, as become such an Alumnus to such an Alma Mater’, William Sewall’s Diary 12 October 1696.

The first example of the feminine form, alumna, comes in the 1880s.
=> alimentary, alimony, alumnus[alma mater etymology, alma mater origin, 英语词源]
aquamarine: aquamarine: [19] Aquamarine means literally ‘sea water’ – from Latin aqua marīna. Its first application in English was to the precious stone, a variety of beryl, so named because of its bluish-green colour. The art critic John Ruskin seems to have been the first to use it with reference to the colour itself, in Modern Painters 1846. (The French version of the word, aiguemarine, was actually used in English somewhat earlier, in the mid 18th century, but it did not long survive the introduction of the Latin version.) Latin aqua ‘water’ has of course contributed a number of other words to English, notably aquatic [15] (from Latin aquāticus), aqualung (coined around 1950), aquarelle [19] (via Italian acquerella ‘water colour’), aquatint [18] (literally ‘dyed water’), aqueduct [16] (from Latin aquaeductus), and aqueous [17] (a medieval Latin formation); it is related to Old English ēa ‘water’ and īg ‘island’, and is of course the source of French eau, Italian acqua, and Spanish agua.
autograph: autograph: [17] Greek auto- was a prefixal use of the adjective autós, meaning ‘same, self’. Many of the commonest auto- words in English, including autograph itself and also autocrat [19], automatic [18] (a derivative of automaton [17], which was formed from a hypothetical base *men- ‘think’ related to mental and mind), autonomy [17], and autopsy [17] (originally meaning ‘eye-witness’, and derived from Greek optós ‘seen’, source of English optic), are original Greek formations.

But the 19th and particularly the 20th century have seen a mass of new coinages, notably in scientific and technical terminology, including such familiar words as autism, autobiography, autoerotic, autofocus, autogiro, autoimmune, automotive, autosuggestion, and of course automobile (originally a French formation of the 1870s). Automobile has itself, of course, given rise to a completely new use for the auto- prefix, with the general connotation of ‘motorized transport’, as in autobus, autocar, autocycle, and the German autobahn.
cappuccino: cappuccino: [20] Frothy coffee was given the name cappuccino in Italian from its supposed resemblance to the habit of Capuchin monks, which is the colour of lightly milked coffee. The Order of Friars Minor Capuchins, an independent branch of Franciscans, was founded in 1528. In emulation of St Francis they wear a pointed cowl, in Italian a cappuccio (from late Latin cappa ‘hood’, source of English cap and cape), from which the name Cappuccino ‘Capuchin’ (literally ‘little hood’) was derived.

The term Capuchin itself arrived in English in the late 16th century, and the order’s vestimentary arrangements have gifted other items of vocabulary to English, notably capuchin [18] for a woman’s cloak and hood and capuchin monkey [18] for a type of South American monkey with a tuft of hair on its head resembling a monk’s cowl.
=> cap, cape
dope: dope: [19] Dope originated in the USA, where it was borrowed from Dutch doop ‘sauce’. This was a derivative of the verb doopen ‘dip’, which is related to English dip. It was at first used as a general colloquialism for any thick semi-liquid preparation, whether used as a food or, for example, as a lubricant, but during the 19th century some specific strands began to emerge: notably ‘drug’, and in particular ‘opium’, and ‘varnish painted on the fabric of an aircraft’.

The effects of the former led to its use in the sense ‘fool’, and to the coinage of the adjective dopey, first recorded in the 1890s. The sense ‘information’ dates from around 1900.
=> deep, dip
electricity: electricity: [17] The earliest manifestation of electricity was that produced by rubbing amber, and hence the name, based on ēlectrum, Latin for ‘amber’ (which in turn derives from Greek ēlektron). The first evidence of this in a Latin text is in William Gilbert’s De magnete 1600, but by the middle of the century we find the word being used in English treatises, notably Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia epidemica 1646. (At this early stage, of course, it referred only to the ability of rubbed amber, etc to attract light bodies, the only property of electricity then known about; it was not until later that the full range of other electrical phenomena came to be included under the term.)
gooseberry: gooseberry: [16] Probably, when all is said and done, gooseberry is simply a compound of goose and berry. But no one has ever been able to explain satisfactorily why the gooseberry should have been named after the goose, and there has been no lack of alternative etymological suggestions for the word – notably that goose is an alteration of an old dialect word for the ‘gooseberry’, such as groser or gozell, borrowed ultimately from French groseille ‘gooseberry’.

The quaint alteration goosegog dates from at least the early 19th century. Play gooseberry ‘be an uncomfortably superfluous third person with two lovers’ also goes back to the early 19th century, and may have originated in the notion of a chaperone (ostensibly) occupying herself with picking gooseberries while the couple being chaperoned did what they were doing (gooseberry-picker was an early 19th-century term for a ‘chaperone’).
hermit: hermit: [13] Etymologically, a hermit is someone who lives alone in the desert. The word comes ultimately from Greek érēmos ‘solitary’, from which was derived erēmíā ‘desert, solitude’. Many of the early Christian hermits, notably Saint Anthony, lived not only alone but in the desert, so it was appropriate that the term erēmítēs was applied to them. It came into English via medieval Latin herēmīta and Old French hermite.
juggernaut: juggernaut: [17] Hindi Jagganath is a title of Krishna, one of the avatars, or incarnations, of the god Vishnu, the Preserver. It comes from Sanskrit Jagganātha, a compound of jagat- ‘world’ and nāthás ‘lord’. It is applied also to a large wagon on which an image of the god is carried in procession (notably in an annual festival in Puri, a town in the northeastern Indian state of Orissa).

It used to be said, apocryphally, that worshippers of Krishna threw themselves under the wheels of the wagon in an access of religious ecstasy, and so juggernaut came to be used metaphorically in English for an ‘irresistible crushing force’: ‘A neighbouring people were crushed beneath the worse than Jaggernaut car of wild and fierce democracy’, J W Warter, Last of the Old Squires 1854.

The current application to large heavy lorries is prefigured as long ago as 1841 in William Thackeray’s Second Funeral of Napoleon (‘Fancy, then, the body landed at day-break and transferred to the car; and fancy the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine’); but it did not become firmly established until the late 1960s.
or: or: [12] The Old English word for ‘or’ was oththe. This appears to have been altered in the early Middle English period to other, probably due to the influence of similar words denoting ‘choice between alternatives’ and ending in -er (notably either and whether). Other was soon contracted to or, but it did not finally die out until the 15th century.
sleaze: sleaze: [20] It is common practice to name fabrics after their place of manufacture, and from the 17th century that applied to cloth made in Silesia (a region in east-central Europe, now mainly within Poland), and in particular to a type of fine linen or cotton. It did not take long for Silesia to be worn down to Slesia or Sleasia and finally to Sleasie. Also in the 17th century we find sleasie being applied as an adjective to fabrics that are thin or flimsy, and although a connection between the two usages has never been proved, the closeness of meaning seems unlikely to be coincidental.

Soon sleasie (or sleazy) was being used metaphorically for ‘slight, flimsy, insubstantial’. It took a sudden sideways semantic leap in the 1930s and 40s when it began to be used as a term of moral disapproval, denoting squalor, depravity or slatternliness, and it was in this sense that the back-formed noun sleaze first emerged in the 1960s. Then in the 1980s the word shifted its target from sex to financially motivated misdemeanours, notably the taking of bribes (the new usage is first recorded in ‘The sleaze factor’, a chapter heading in the book Gambling with History (1983) by the US journalist Laurence Barrett).
blond (adj.): late 15c., from Old French blont "fair, blond" (12c.), from Medieval Latin blundus "yellow," perhaps from Frankish *blund. If it is a Germanic word, it is possibly related to Old English blonden-feax "gray-haired," from blondan, blandan "to mix" (see blend (v.)). According to Littré, the original sense of the French word was "a colour midway between golden and light chestnut," which might account for the notion of "mixed."

Old English beblonden meant "dyed," so it is also possible that the root meaning of blonde, if it is Germanic, may be "dyed," as ancient Teutonic warriors were noted for dying their hair. Du Cange, however, writes that blundus was a vulgar pronunciation of Latin flavus "yellow." Another guess (discounted by German etymologists), is that it represents a Vulgar Latin *albundus, from alba "white."

The word was reintroduced into English 17c. from French, and was until recently still felt as French, hence blonde (with French feminine ending) for females. Italian biondo, Spanish blondo, Old Provençal blon all are of Germanic origin.
Fair hair was much esteemed by both the Greeks and Romans, and so they not only dyed and gold-dusted theirs ..., but also went so far as to gild the hair of their statues, as notably those of Venus de Medici and Apollo. In the time of Ovid (A.U.C. 711) much fair hair was imported from Germany, by the Romans, as it was considered quite the fashionable color. Those Roman ladies who did not choose to wear wigs of this hue, were accustomed to powder theirs freely with gold dust, so as to give it the fashionable yellow tint. [C. Henry Leonard, "The Hair," 1879]
brachiosaurus (n.): 1903, Modern Latin, from Greek brakhion "arm" (see brachio-) + -saurus. The forelegs are notably longer than the hind legs.
Darius: name of three Persian rulers, notably Darius the Great, Persian emperor 521-485 B.C.E., from Greek Darius, from Old Persian Darayavaus, probably literally "he who holds firm the good," from PIE root *dher- (2) "to hold firmly, support" (see firm (adj.)).
free (adj.): Old English freo "free, exempt from, not in bondage, acting of one's own will," also "noble; joyful," from Proto-Germanic *frija- "beloved; not in bondage" (cognates: Old Frisian fri, Old Saxon vri, Old High German vri, German frei, Dutch vrij, Gothic freis "free"), from PIE *priy-a- "dear, beloved," from root *pri- "to love" (cognates: Sanskrit priyah "own, dear, beloved," priyate "loves;" Old Church Slavonic prijati "to help," prijatelji "friend;" Welsh rhydd "free").

The primary Germanic sense seems to have been "beloved, friend, to love;" which in some languages (notably Germanic and Celtic) developed also a sense of "free," perhaps from the terms "beloved" or "friend" being applied to the free members of one's clan (as opposed to slaves; compare Latin liberi, meaning both "free persons" and "children of a family"). For the older sense in Germanic, compare Gothic frijon "to love;" Old English freod "affection, friendship, peace," friga "love," friðu "peace;" Old Norse friðr "peace, personal security; love, friendship," German Friede "peace;" Old English freo "wife;" Old Norse Frigg "wife of Odin," literally "beloved" or "loving;" Middle Low German vrien "to take to wife," Dutch vrijen, German freien "to woo."

Meaning "clear of obstruction" is from mid-13c.; sense of "unrestrained in movement" is from c. 1300; of animals, "loose, at liberty, wild," late 14c. Meaning "liberal, not parsimonious" is from c. 1300. Sense of "characterized by liberty of action or expression" is from 1630s; of art, etc., "not holding strictly to rule or form," from 1813. Of nations, "not subject to foreign rule or to despotism," recorded in English from late 14c. (Free world "non-communist nations" attested from 1950 on notion of "based on principles of civil liberty.") Sense of "given without cost" is 1580s, from notion of "free of cost."

Free lunch, originally offered in bars to draw in customers, by 1850, American English. Free pass on railways, etc., attested by 1850. Free speech in Britain was used of a privilege in Parliament since the time of Henry VIII. In U.S., in reference to a civil right to expression, it became a prominent phrase in the debates over the Gag Rule (1836). Free enterprise recorded from 1832; free trade is from 1823; free market from 1630s. Free will is from early 13c. Free school is from late 15c. Free association in psychology is from 1899. Free love "sexual liberation" attested from 1822 (the doctrine itself is much older), American English. Free and easy "unrestrained" is from 1690s.
hip hop: also hip-hop, music style, first recorded 1982. Reduplication with vowel variation (as in tip-top, sing-song); OED reports use of hip hop with a sense of "successive hopping motion" dating back to 1670s. The term in its modern sense comes from its use in the early rap lyrics of the genre, notably Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and The Sugarhill Gang in "Rapper's Delight."
metaphysical (adj.): early 15c., "pertaining to metaphysics," from methaphesik (late 14c.) + -al, and in part from Medieval Latin metaphysicalis, from Medieval Latin metaphysica (see metaphysics). It came to be used in the sense of "abstract, speculative" (among others by Johnson, who applied it to certain 17c. poets, notably Donne and Cowley, who used "witty conceits" and abstruse imagery). Related: Metaphysically.
muscle (n.): late 14c., from Middle French muscle "muscle, sinew" (14c.) and directly from Latin musculus "a muscle," literally "little mouse," diminutive of mus "mouse" (see mouse (n.)).

So called because the shape and movement of some muscles (notably biceps) were thought to resemble mice. The analogy was made in Greek, too, where mys is both "mouse" and "muscle," and its comb. form gives the medical prefix myo-. Compare also Old Church Slavonic mysi "mouse," mysica "arm;" German Maus "mouse; muscle," Arabic 'adalah "muscle," 'adal "field mouse." In Middle English, lacerte, from the Latin word for "lizard," also was used as a word for a muscle.
Musclez & lacertez bene one selfe þing, Bot þe muscle is said to þe fourme of mouse & lacert to þe fourme of a lizard. [Guy de Chauliac, "Grande Chirurgie," c. 1425]
Hence muscular and mousy are relatives, and a Middle English word for "muscular" was lacertous, "lizardy." Figurative sense of "force, violence, threat of violence" is 1930, American English. Muscle car "hot rod" is from 1969.
notable (adj.): mid-14c., from Old French notable "well-known, notable, remarkable" (13c.) and directly from Latin notabilis "noteworthy, extraordinary," from notare "to note" (see note (v.)). The noun meaning "a person of distinction" is first recorded 1815. Related: Notably; notableness.
patriarch (n.): late 12c., from Old French patriarche "one of the Old Testament fathers" (11c.) and directly from Late Latin patriarcha (Tertullian), from Greek patriarkhes "chief or head of a family," from patria "family, clan," from pater "father" (see father (n.)) + arkhein "to rule" (see archon). Also used as an honorific title of certain bishops in the early Church, notably those of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome.
sermonette (n.): 1814, diminutive from sermon + -ette. Poe used sermonoid (1849); sermuncle (1886) also has been tried. English writers have turned to the Italian double diminutive sermonettino (1818) to describe notably trifling efforts.
Spenserian (adj.): 1817, from Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-1599), Elizabethan poet (for the origin of the surname, see Spencer). Spenserian stanza, which he employed in the "Faerie Queen," consists of eight decasyllabic lines and a final Alexandrine, with rhyme scheme ab ab bc bcc.

"The measure soon ceases to be Spenser's except in its mere anatomy of rhyme-arrangement" [Elton, "Survey of English Literature 1770-1880," 1920]; it is the meter in Butler's "Hudibras," Scott's "Lady of the Lake," and notably the "Childe Harold" of Byron, who found (quoting Beattie) that it allowed him to be "either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or satirical, as the humour strikes me; for, if I mistake not, the measure which I have adopted admits equally of all these kinds of composition."
thee (pron.): Old English þe (accusative and dative singular of þu "thou"), from Proto-Germanic *theke (cognates: Old Frisian thi, Middle Dutch di, Old High German dih, German dich, Old Norse þik, Norwegian deg, Gothic þuk), from PIE *tege-, accusative of root *tu-, second person singular pronoun (see thou). The verb meaning "to use the pronoun 'thee' to someone" is recorded from 1662, in connection with the rise of Quakerism.

In Middle English, people began to use plural forms in all cases, at first as a sign of respect to superiors, then as a courtesy to equals. By the 1600s, the singular forms had come to represent familiarity and lack of status, and fell from use except in the case of a few dialects, notably in the north of England. People in Lancashire north of the Rossendale Forest and Yorkshire formerly were noted for use of the singular second person pronouns tha (nom.) and thee (acc.). For religious reasons (Christian equality of persons, but also justified as grammatically correct), the Quakers also retained the familiar forms.
Thou and Thee was a sore cut to proud flesh and them that sought self-honour, who, though they would say it to God and Christ, could not endure to have it said to themselves. So that we were often beaten and abused, and sometimes in danger of our lives, for using those words to some proud men, who would say, "What! you ill-bred clown, do you Thou me?" as though Christian breeding consisted in saying You to one; which is contrary to all their grammar and teaching books, by which they instructed their youth. [George Fox's journal, 1661]

While the Quakers originally adopted "thee" and "thou" on account of their grammatical correctness, they soon fell into the careless habit of using "thee," the objective, instead of "thou," the nominative. Common illustrations are: "How does thee do?" or "Will thee," etc. [George Fox Tucker, "A Quaker Home," Boston, 1891]
unfamous (adj.): late 14c., "not well known, obscure," from un- (1) "not" + famous (adj.). Also from late 14c. as "notably bad," a sense now in infamous.
phosgene: "A colourless poisonous gas made by the reaction of chlorine and carbon dioxide. It was used as a poison gas, notably in the First World War", Early 19th century: from Greek phōs 'light' + -gen, with reference to its original production by the action of sunlight on chlorine and carbon monoxide.