英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

accumulate [accumulate 词源字典]: accumulate: [16] Accumulate was borrowed from Latin accumulāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ad-, here meaning ‘in addition’, and cumulāre ‘heap up’ (the source of English cumulative). Cumulāre itself derived from cumulus ‘heap’; English adopted this with its original Latin meaning in the 17th century, but it was not until the early 19th century that it was applied (by the meteorologist Luke Howard) to mountainous billowing cloud formations.
=> cumulative, cumulus[accumulate etymology, accumulate origin, 英语词源]
admiral: admiral: [13] Admirals originally had nothing specifically to do with the sea. The word comes ultimately from Arabic ’amīr ‘commander’ (from which English later also acquired emir [17]). This entered into various titles followed by the particle -al- ‘of’ (’amīr-al-bahr ‘commander of the sea’, ’amīr-al-mūminīn ‘commander of the faithful’), and when it was borrowed into European languages, ’amīr-al- became misconstrued as an independent, free-standing word.

Moreover, the Romans, when they adopted it, smuggled in their own Latin prefix ad-, producing admiral. When this reached English (via Old French) it still meant simply ‘commander’, and it was not until the time of Edward III that a strong naval link began to emerge. The Arabic title ’amīr-al-bahr had had considerable linguistic influence in the wake of Arabic conquests around the Mediterranean seaboard (Spanish almirante de la mar, for instance), and specific application of the term to a naval commander spread via Spain, Italy, and France to England.

Thus in the 15th century England had its Admiral of the Sea or Admiral of the Navy, who was in charge of the national fleet. By 1500 the maritime connection was firmly established, and admiral came to be used on its own for ‘supreme naval commander’.
=> emir
adolescent: adolescent: [15] The original notion lying behind both adolescent and adult is of ‘nourishment’. The Latin verb alere meant ‘nourish’ (alimentary and alimony come from it, and it is related to old). A derivative of this, denoting the beginning of an action, was alēscere ‘be nourished’, hence ‘grow’. The addition of the prefix ad- produced adolēscere.

Its present participial stem, adolēscent- ‘growing’, passed into English as the noun adolescent ‘a youth’ (the adjective appears not to have occurred before the end of the 18th century). Its past participle, adultus ‘grown’, was adopted into English as adult in the 16th century.
=> adult, alimentary, alimony, coalesce, coalition, proletarian, prolific
alder: alder: [OE] Alder is an ancient tree-name, represented in several other Indo-European languages, including German erle, Dutch els, Polish olcha, Russian ol’khá, and Latin alnus (which is the genus name of the alder in scientific classification). Alder is clearly the odd man out amongst all these forms in having a d, but it was not always so; the Old English word was alor, and the intrusive d does not begin to appear until the 14th century (it acts as a sort of connecting or glide consonant between the l and the following vowel, in much the same way as Old English thunor adopted a d to become thunder). The place-name Aldershot is based on the tree alder.
alderman: alderman: [OE] Alderman preserves the notion that those who are old (the ‘elders’) are automatically in charge. In Anglo-Saxon England the ealdor was the chief of a family or clan, by virtue of seniority (the word is based on the adjective eald ‘old’). Alderman (Old English ealdorman) was a political title or rank adopted probably in the early 8th century for someone who exercised in society at large an authority equivalent to that of the ealdor.

In effect, this meant that an alderman acted as a sort of viceroy to the king in a particular district. In the 12th century the title became applied to the governor of a guild, and as the guilds gradually took over some functions of local government, an alderman became a senior councillor. The title was officially abolished in Britain in 1974.
=> old
algebra: algebra: [16] Algebra symbolizes the debt of Western culture to Arab mathematics, but ironically when it first entered the English language it was used as a term for the setting of broken bones, and even sometimes for the fractures themselves (‘The helpes of Algebra and of dislocations’, Robert Copland, Formulary of Guydo in surgery 1541). This reflects the original literal meaning of the Arabic term al jebr, ‘the reuniting of broken parts’, from the verb jabara ‘reunite’.

The anatomical connotations of this were adopted when the word was borrowed, as algebra, into Spanish, Italian, and medieval Latin, from one or other of which English acquired it. In Arabic, however, it had long been applied to the solving of algebraic equations (the full Arabic expression was ’ilm aljebr wa’lmuqābalah ‘the science of reunion and equation’, and the mathematician al- Khwarizmi used aljebr as the title of his treatise on algebra – see ALGORITHM), and by the end of the 16th century this was firmly established as the central meaning of algebra in English.
alligator: alligator: [16] The Spanish, on encountering the alligator in America, called it el lagarto ‘the lizard’. At first English adopted simply the noun (‘In this river we killed a monstrous Lagarto or Crocodile’, Job Hortop, The trauailes of an Englishman 1568), but before the end of the 16th century the Spanish definite article el had been misanalysed as part of the noun – hence, alligator. Spanish lagarto derived from Latin lacerta ‘lizard’, which, via Old French lesard, gave English lizard.
=> lizard
alluvial: alluvial: [19] Alluvial material is material that has been washed down and deposited by running water. Hence the term; for its ultimate source, Latin lavere (a variant of lavāre, which produced English latrine, laundry, lava, lavatory, lavish, and lotion), meant ‘wash’. Addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’ changed lavere to luere, giving alluere ‘wash against’.

Derived from this were the noun alluviō (source of the English technical term alluvion ‘alluvium’) and the adjective alluvius, whose neuter form alluvium became a noun meaning ‘material deposited by running water’. English adopted alluvium in the 17th century, and created the adjective alluvial from it in the 19th century. If Latin alluere meant ‘wash against’, abluere meant ‘wash away’.

Its noun form was ablūtiō, which English acquired as ablution in the 14th century.
=> ablution, latrine, laundry, lavatory, lavish, lotion
amok: amok: [17] Amok is Malayan in origin, where it is an adjective, amoq, meaning ‘fighting frenziedly’. Its first brief brush with English actually came in the early 16th century, via Portuguese, which had adopted it as a noun, amouco, signifying a ‘homicidally crazed Malay’. This sense persisted until the late 18th century, but by then the phrase run amok, with all its modern connotations, was well established, and has since taken over the field entirely. The spelling amuck has always been fairly common, reflecting the word’s pronunciation.
ampere: ampere: [19] This international term for a unit of electrical current derives from the name of André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836), the French physicist and mathematician. It was officially adopted by the Congrès Électrique in Paris in 1881. Ampère himself is best remembered for first making the distinction between electrical current and voltage, and for explaining magnetism in terms of electrical currents. The term ammeter ‘current-measuring device’ [19] was based on ampere.
angel: angel: [12] In a sense, English already had this word in Anglo-Saxon times; texts of around 950 mention englas ‘angels’. But in that form (which had a hard g) it came directly from Latin angelus. The word we use today, with its soft g, came from Old French angele (the ‘hard g’ form survived until the 13th century). The French word was in its turn, of course, acquired from Latin, which adopted it from Greek ángelos or ággelos.

This meant literally ‘messenger’, and its use in religious contexts arises from its being used as a direct translation of Hebrew mal’ākh ‘messenger’, the term used in the scriptures for God’s intermediaries. The Greek word itself may be of Persian origin.
=> evangelist
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
awkward: awkward: [14] When awkward was coined, in Scotland and northern England, it meant ‘turned in the wrong direction’. Middle English had an adjective awk, which meant ‘the wrong way round, backhanded’, and hence ‘perverse’, and with the addition of the suffix -ward this became awkward. Awk itself was adopted from Old Norse afugr, which is related to German ab ‘away’ and English off. Awkward followed a similar semantic path to awk, via ‘perverse, illadapted’ to ‘clumsy’.
=> off
bacchanalian: bacchanalian: [16] Bákkhos was the Greek god of wine. Son of Zeus and Semele, he was also known as Diónūsos. The Romans adopted him, amending his name to Bacchus, and his worshippers went in for a brand of licentious revelry, in his honour, known as Bacchanalia. Hence the metaphorical application of the English adjective to anything drunkenly orgiastic.
bain-marie: bain-marie: [19] In its origins, the bain-marie was far from today’s innocuous domestic utensil for heating food over boiling water. It takes its name from Mary, or Miriam, the sister of Moses, who according to medieval legend was an adept alchemist – so much so that she had a piece of alchemical equipment named after her, ‘Mary’s furnace’ (medieval Greek kaminos Marias). This was mistranslated into medieval Latin as balneum Mariae ‘Mary’s bath’, from which it passed into French as bain-marie.

English originally borrowed the word in the 15th century, in semi-anglicized form, as balneo of Mary. At this time it still retained its original alchemical meaning, but by the early 19th century, when English adopted the French term, it had developed its present-day use.
barbecue: barbecue: [17] Barbecue originated in the language of the now extinct Taino people of the West Indies. It first emerges in the Haitian creole term barbacoa, which meant simply ‘wooden framework’ (used for other purposes than roasting meat – for example, as a bed). American Spanish adopted the word, and passed it on to English. Compare BUCCANEER.
bare: bare: [OE] Bare is an ancient word, traceable back to an Indo-European *bhosos. Descendants of this in non-Germanic languages include Lithuanian basas ‘barefoot’, but for the most part it is the Germanic languages that have adopted the word. Germanic *bazaz produced German and Swedish bar, Dutch baar, and, via Old English bær, modern English bare.
bough: bough: [OE] Bough is a word of some antiquity, dispersed far and wide throughout the Indo- European languages, but it is only in English that it has come to mean ‘branch’. It comes ultimately from an Indo-European *bhāghūs; the meaning this had is not altogether clear, but many of its descendants, such as Greek pakhus and Sanskrit bāhús, centre semantically round ‘arm’ or ‘forearm’ (a meaning element which can be discerned in the possibly related bosom).

Germanic adopted the Indo-European form as *bōgus, with apparently a shift in signification up the arms towards the shoulders (Old English bōg, bōh, Old Norse bógr, and Middle Dutch boech all meant ‘shoulder’, and the Dutch word later came to be applied to the front of a ship – possibly the source of English bow).
=> bosom, bow
boycott: boycott: [19] The word boycott sprang into general use in the year 1880, to describe the activities of the Irish Land League. This was an organization set up in 1879 by the Irish nationalist Michael Davitt to press for agrarian reforms, rent reductions, etc. Those who did not agree with its aims, it subjected to an organized campaign of ostracism. One of the first to suffer from this was one Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832–97), a British estate manager in County Mayo. Hence ‘to boycott’, which became a buzzword of the early 1880s, was quickly adopted by other European languages, and has remained in current use ever since.
brag: brag: [13] Brag first turned up in English as an adjective, meaning ‘spirited’ or ‘boastful’; the verb and noun did not appear until the 14th century. Where English got the word from, however, remains a mystery. French has braguer ‘brag’, but it is not clear whether English borrowed from French, or vice versa; French did, however, contribute the derivative bragard, which English adopted as braggart [16]. This probably also formed the basis of braggadocio, an Italianate coinage first used by the poet Edmund Spenser as a personification of ‘boastfulness’ in his Faerie Queene 1590.
buck: buck: [OE] Old English had two related words which have coalesced into modern English buck: bucca ‘male goat’ and buc ‘male deer’. Both go back to a prehistoric Germanic stem *buk-, and beyond that probably to an Indo-European source. The 18th-century meaning ‘dashing fellow’ probably comes ultimately from the related Old Norse bokki, a friendly term for a male colleague, which was originally adopted in English in the 14th century meaning simply ‘fellow’. The colloquial American sense ‘dollar’ comes from an abbreviation of buckskin, which was used as a unit of trade with the Native Americans in Frontier days.
=> butcher
buckle: buckle: [14] English acquired buckle via Old French boucla from Latin buccula ‘cheek strap of a helmet’. This was a diminutive form of Latin bucca ‘cheek’ (source of French bouche ‘mouth’), which gave English the anatomical term buccal ‘of the cheeks’ [19], and some have speculated is related to English pock. The notion of ‘fastening’ implicit in the Latin word carried through into English.

As well as ‘cheek strap’, Latin buccula meant ‘boss in the middle of a shield’. Old French boucle adopted this sense too, and created the derivative boucler, originally an adjective, meaning (of a shield) ‘having a central boss’. English borrowed this as buckler ‘small round shield’ [13]. The verb buckle was created from the English noun in the late 14th century, but the sense ‘distort’, which developed in the 16th century, comes from French boucler, which had come to mean ‘curl, bulge’.

Also from the French verb is bouclé ‘yarn with irregular loops’ [19].
=> bouclé, buckler
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
canopy: canopy: [14] Etymologically, a canopy is a ‘mosquito net’. The word comes ultimately from Greek kōnōpeion, a derivative of kónops ‘mosquito’. This passed via Latin cōnōpūum into medieval Latin as canopeum, which meant both ‘mosquito net’ and ‘couch with such a net’. English adopted it directly from Latin as canope or canape, meaning ‘covering suspended over a throne, bed, etc’.

The French version of the word, however, concentrated on other aspects of canopeum’s meaning; French canapé means ‘couch, sofa’. Its metaphorical extension, ‘piece of bread or biscuit with a savoury topping’, was borrowed into English towards the end of the 19th century.
=> canapé
caste: caste: [16] Caste has no etymological connection with cast. It is borrowed from Spanish and Portuguese casta ‘race, breed’, a nominal use of the adjective casta ‘pure’, from Latin castus (source of English chaste). The notion underlying the word thus appears to be ‘racial purity’. Use of casta by the Portuguese in India with reference to the Hindu social groupings led to its being adopted in this sense by English in the 17th century.
=> chaste, incest
cent: cent: [16] Centum is the Latin word for ‘hundred’ – indeed both come ultimately from the same Indo-European source, *kmtóm. It first appeared in English in the form cent in the phrase per cent (originally used apparently by the financier Sir Thomas Gresham in a letter of 1568: ‘the interest of xij per cent by the year’); this was probably borrowed from Italian per cento (it is not a genuine Latin phrase). The use of cent for a unit of currency dates from the 1780s, when it was adopted by the newly founded USA; its status as one hundredth of a dollar was officially ordained by the Continental Congress on 8 August 1786.
=> century
chagrin: chagrin: [17] The word chagrin first appeared in French in the 14th century as an adjective, meaning ‘sad, vexed’, a usage at first adopted into English: ‘My wife in a chagrin humour, she not being pleased with my kindness to either of them’, Samuel Pepys’s Diary 6 August 1666. It died out in English in the early 18th century, but the subsequently developed noun and verb have persisted. Etymologists now discount any connection with French chagrin ‘untanned leather’ (source of English shagreen [17]), which came from Turkish sagri.
chain: chain: [13] Chain is a direct descendant of Latin catēna ‘chain’, source also of English concatenate [16], literally ‘link together in a chain’. This passed into Old French as chaeine, a later from of which, chaine, was adopted by English. The Latin word’s antecedents are not known.
=> concatenate
chalice: chalice: [13] Latin calix ‘cup’ and its relative, Greek kálux ‘pod’, perhaps hold the record for the words most often borrowed into English. Calix first made its appearance as part of the original West Germanic stratum of English, into which it had been borrowed from Latin; this was as Old English cælc. Then came cælic, which Old English independently acquired from Latin after the conversion of the English to Christianity.

Next was calice, whose source was an Old French dialectal form descended from Latin calix. And finally, at the end of the 13th century, the main Old French form chalice was adopted. The final twist in the story is that in the 17th century Latin calyx (a descendant of the related Greek kálux) was borrowed into English as a botanical term, ‘outer covering of a flower’.
chamois: chamois: [16] The word chamois (the name of a species of Alpine antelope) probably goes back to a language spoken in the Alps before the Romans penetrated northwards. They adopted it as late Latin camox, and in the local Romansch language it is kamuotsch, but the source of the English word is the related French chamois. Its use in the sense ‘soft wash-leather’, as originally made from the skin of the chamois, dates from the 16th century, although the spelling shammy is not recorded before the 17th century.
chaste: chaste: [13] Chaste comes via Old French from Latin castus ‘pure’. The notion of making someone pure, by correcting or reproving them, was expressed in Latin by the derived verb castīgāre, which passed into English in the 17th century as castigate. Old French, however, had already adopted it as chastier, which in the 12th century produced the now obsolete English verb chaste ‘discipline’. From it were formed the derivatives chastise [14] and chasten [16]. Also ultimately from Latin castus is English caste.
=> caste, chasten, chastise, incest
chivalry: chivalry: [13] Etymologically, chivalry is the practice of riding horses. It comes from Old French chivalerie, a derivative of medieval Latin caballārius (related to, and perhaps direct source of, English cavalier). This meant ‘horseman’, and was formed from Latin caballus ‘horse’ (whence French cheval). The meaning of chivalerie had two main strands, both of them adopted into English: on the one hand ‘mounted soldiery’ (a sense superseded by the related cavalry), and on the other ‘knightly behaviour’.
=> cavalier, cavalry
chocolate: chocolate: [17] Chocolate is one of the contributions made to English by the Nahuatl language of the Aztec people. Their xocolatl was a compound noun formed from xococ ‘bitter’ and atl ‘water’, and therefore when first adopted by European languages (via Spanish) it was used for the drink ‘chocolate’. This was its original sense in English, and it was not for half a century or more that it came to be applied to solid, edible ‘chocolate’.
cholera: cholera: [14] Greek kholéra originally meant ‘illness caused by choler, bilious attack’; it was a derivative of kholé ‘bile’ (which is related to English gall). Passing into Latin as cholera, it began to be used for ‘bile’ itself, both in the physiological sense and as representing one of the four ancient humours, ‘anger’. It had that sense when first adopted into English, and into French, where it became colère (source of English choler [14]).

It was revived as a term for a severe digestive disorder, involving vomiting, diarrhoea, etc, in the 17th century, and in the 19th century was applied (from the similarity of the symptoms) to the often fatal infectious disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio comma.
=> gall, melancholy
cider: cider: [14] Despite its seeming roots in the appleproducing English countryside, cider is a very ancient word, which has come a long way to reach us. Hebrew shēkhār meant ‘any strong drink in general’. It crops up in several places in the Bible, and was adopted by Greek and Latin translators as, respectively, sīkéra and sīcera. The Latin form was borrowed into Old French, where it became sisdre and eventually sidre.

By now it was being applied more specifically to drink made from apples, and it had that meaning when it was borrowed into English. However, its biblical associations were still sufficiently strong for it to retain its original meaning in certain contexts: for example, in 1382 John Wyclif translated Luke 1:15 (‘he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink’) as ‘he shall not drink wine and cider’.

Its original form survived for a while, too, as sicar, which did not disappear from English until the 17th century.
class: class: [16] Latin classis originally denoted ‘the people of Rome under arms, the ancient Roman army’; it appears to come from an earlier unrecorded *qladtis, a derivative of the base *qel- ‘call’, which points to an underlying sense ‘call to arms’. Under the terms of the constitution attributed to Servius Tullius, a 6thcentury BC king of Rome, the army, and hence the people, was divided into six such classes, membership of each based originally on the amount of land held, and latterly on wealth in money terms.

English first adopted the word in this antiquarian sense (which provided the basis for the modern application to social class), but its widespread use in the language probably began in the sense ‘group of pupils’. The derivatives classic [17] and classical [16] come from Latin classicus, probably via French classique; in Latin, the adjective signified ‘of the highest class of Roman citizen’, whence the word’s presentday approbatory connotations.
coast: coast: [13] Latin costa meant ‘rib’ (hence the English medical term intercostal ‘between the ribs’), but also more generally ‘flank, side’. It was in this sense that it passed into Old French as coste, and subsequently into English. The modern meaning ‘seashore’ (which had already developed in Old French) arises from the shore being thought of as the ‘side’ or ‘edge’ of the land (compare seaside).

Amongst the senses of the French word little represented in English is ‘hillside, slope’; it was however adopted in North America for a ‘slope down which one slides on a sledge’, and came to be used in the mid 19th century as a verb meaning ‘sledge down such a slope’. That was the source of the modern verbal sense ‘freewheel’. The coster of costermonger [16] was originally costard, a variety of apple named from its prominent ‘ribs’.

And another hidden relative is cutlet [18], borrowed from French côtelette, literally ‘little rib’.
=> costermonger, cutlet, intercostal
cockatrice: cockatrice: [14] The name of the cockatrice, a mythical serpent whose glance could kill, has a bizarre history. It started life as medieval Latin calcātrix, which meant literally ‘tracker, hunter’ (it was formed from the verb calcāre ‘tread, track’, a derivative of calx ‘heel’). This was a direct translation of Greek ikhneúmōn (a derivative of ikhneúein ‘track’), a name given to a mysterious Egyptian creature in ancient times which was said to prey on crocodiles.

At one point Latin calcātrix, later caucātrix, came to be used for the crocodile itself, but this application never gained much currency in English (which adopted the word via Old French cocatris). Instead, it was adopted as another name for the basilisk, a mythical serpent. The accidental similarity of the first syllable to cock led both to the embroidering of the basilisk/cockatrice legend, so that it was said to have been born from a cock’s egg, and to the word’s 16th-century rerouting as a heraldic term for a beast with the head, wings, and body of a cock and the tail of a serpent.
cocoa: cocoa: [18] Like chocolate, cocoa came to English from the Nahuatl language of the Aztec people. Their cacahuatl meant ‘beans of the cocoa tree’. Its first element was borrowed into Spanish as cacao. This was adopted by English in the 16th century, and remained the standard form until the 18th century, when it was modified to cocoa. Originally it was pronounced with three syllables (/ko-ko-a/), but confusion with the coco of coconut (which was also sometimes spelled cocoa) led to the current twosyllable pronunciation.
coconut: coconut: [17] Despite its tropical origins, the coconut has a European name. The base of the coconut’s shell, with its three small holes, apparently reminded early Spanish and Portuguese explorers of a human face, so they called it coco; this was the Portuguese word for a grinning or grimacing face, as of a scarecrow. English adopted it in the 16th century, and it formed the basis of the compound coconut, first recorded in 1613. (Before then the fruit of the coconut palm had been known as the Indian nut.)
commodious: commodious: [15] Latin commodus meant ‘convenient’. It was a compound adjective formed from com- ‘with’ and modus ‘measure’, and thus meaning literally ‘conforming with due measure’. From it was derived the medieval Latin adjective commodiōsus, which passed, probably via French commodieux, into English. This originally meant ‘advantageous, useful, convenient’, and it was not really until the 16th century that it developed the meaning ‘affording a conveniently large amount of space’.

The noun derivative commodity entered English in the 14th century, and from earliest times had the concrete meaning ‘article of commerce’, deriving from the more general sense ‘something useful’. Commodus was borrowed into French as commode ‘convenient’, which came to be used as a noun meaning both ‘tall headdress for women’ and ‘chest of drawers’. English adopted the word in the 17th century, and in the 19th century added the new sense ‘chair housing a chamber pot’ (a semantic development paralleling the euphemistic use of convenience for lavatory).
=> commode, commodity
constable: constable: [13] The late Latin comes stabulī was an officer in charge of the stables (comes is the source of the English title count, and stabulum is the ancestor of English stable). From the comparatively lowly status of head groom, the job gradually grew in importance until Old French conestable was used for the principal officer of the household of the early French kings. In the 14th century the title was adopted for the Constable of England. On a less exalted level, the word has also been used since the 14th century for someone appointed to uphold law and order, and was applied to police officers when they were called into being in the 1830s.
=> count, stable
cormorant: cormorant: [13] In early medieval times the cormorant was named ‘sea raven’ – that is, in Latin, corvus marīnus. This passed into Old French first as cormareng, which later became cormaran. English adopted it and added a final t. The word’s origins are still evident in Portuguese corvo marinho ‘cormorant’.
=> marine
cosset: cosset: [17] Cosset may originally have meant ‘someone who lives in a cottage’. Old English had a word cotsǣta ‘cottager’, which was formed from cot ‘cottage’ and *sǣt-, an element related to the verb sit. This disappeared from the language after the Old English period, but not before it was adopted into Anglo-Norman as cozet or coscet (forms which appear in Domesday Book).

It has been suggested that this is the same word as turns up in local dialects from the 16th century meaning ‘lamb reared by hand, pet lamb’ (that is, a lamb kept by a cottager rather than at liberty with the flock), and further that the notion of pampering a pet lamb gave rise to the verb cosset.
cottage: cottage: [14] The Old English words for a small house or hut were cot and cote, both of which survive – just: cot as an archaic term for ‘cottage’ and cote in dovecote and sheepcote. (Cot ‘child’s bed’ [17], incidentally, is of Hindi origin.) They both derive ultimately from a Germanic base *kut-. Then, probably in the 12th century, one or both of them seem to have been taken up by the language of the gentry, Anglo- Norman, and had the suffix -age added, giving *cotage, which was eventually adopted by English as cottage.

Originally this simply denoted any small humble country dwelling; it was not until the mid-18th century that it began to acquire modern connotations of tweeness.
=> cot, cote
count: count: There are two distinct words count in English. Count ‘enumerate’ [14] comes ultimately from Latin computāre ‘calculate’ (source of English compute). It came into English from Old French conter, which had, via the notion of ‘adding up and rendering an account’, developed the sense ‘tell a story’ (preserved in English in the derivatives account and recount).

The derivative counter [14] began life as medieval Latin computātōrium ‘place of accounts’, and entered English via Anglo- Norman counteour. Its modern sense ‘surface for transactions in a shop’ does not seem to have become firmly established until the early 19th century, although it was applied to similar objects in banks from the late 17th century. The noble title count [16] comes via Old French conte from Latin comes, which originally meant ‘companion, attendant’ (it was a compound noun, formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and īre ‘go’, and so its underlying etymological meaning is ‘one who goes with another’).

In the Roman empire it was used for the governor of a province, and in Anglo- Norman it was used to translate English earl. It has never been used as an English title, but the feminine form countess was adopted for the wife of an earl in the 12th century (and viscount was borrowed from Anglo-Norman viscounte in the 14th century). The Latin derivative comitātus was originally a collective noun denoting a ‘group of companions’, but with the development of meaning in comes it came to mean first ‘office of a governor’ and latterly ‘area controlled by a governor’.

In England, this area was the ‘shire’, and so county [14], acquired via Anglo-Norman counte, came to be a synonym for ‘shire’. Another descendant of Latin comes is concomitant [17], from the present participle of late Latin concomitārī.
=> account, compute, putative, recount; concomitant, county
cretin: cretin: [18] In the Swiss-French dialect of the high Alps the term creitin or crestin (their version of christian) was applied to people suffering from mental handicap and stunted growth – the notion being to emphasize that despite their abnormalities, such people were nevertheless as much human beings as any other ‘Christian’. The word was adopted (via French crétin) as a clinical term for someone suffering from dwarfism and mental retardation as a result of a congenital thyroid deficiency, and was subsequently broadened out, towards the end of the 19th century, as a general disparaging term for a ‘fool’.
=> christian
debt: debt: [13] Debt originated as dēbita, the plural of Latin dēbitum ‘that which is owed’, a noun formed from the past participle of the verb dēbēre ‘owe’. In Vulgar Latin, dēbita was evidently viewed as a feminine singular noun, and it passed thus into Old French as dette, the form in which English originally acquired the word. From the 13th to the 16th centuries the French spelling was latinized as debte, a reform which English adopted in the 16th century.

In the 15th century English independently borrowed Latin dēbitum as debit. (Latin dēbēre ‘owe’, source also of English debenture, due, and duty, was originally a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘away’ and habēre ‘have’, literally ‘have away’, that is, ‘keep in one’s possession what belongs to someone else’.)
=> debenture, due, duty, endeavour
dinner: dinner: [13] The etymological meaning of dinner is ‘breakfast’. The word comes ultimately from an unrecorded Vulgar Latin verb *disjūnāre, a compound formed from the prefix dis- ‘un-’ and jējūnus ‘fasting, hungry’ (source of English jejune [17]): hence, ‘break one’s fast’. Old French adopted it in two phases: as desiuner, which became modern French déjeuner (originally ‘breakfast’ but later ‘lunch’), borrowed by English in the 18th century; and as disner.

In later Old French this developed into diner (source of English dine [13]), which came to be used as a noun – from which English acquired dinner. In English it has always denoted the main meal of the day, although the timing of this has varied over the centuries, and continues to do so, according to region, social class, etc.
=> jejune
disc: disc: [17] Disc comes ultimately from Greek dískos ‘quoit’, a derivative of the verb dikein ‘throw’. This passed into Latin as discus, adopted by English in the 17th century in its original athletic sense. The most salient semantic feature of the discus was perhaps its shape, and it was this that English took over in the form disc (either adapted from Latin or borrowed from French disque). The spelling disk is preferred in American English, and it is the standard form used for ‘disc-shaped computer storage device’. Other English words ultimately derived from Latin discus are dais, desk, and dish.
=> dais, desk, dish