quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- aristocracy[aristocracy 词源字典]
- aristocracy: [16] Greek áristos meant ‘best’; hence aristocracy signifies, etymologically, ‘rule by the best’ (the suffix -cracy derives ultimately from Greek krátos ‘strength, power’, a relative of English hard). The term aristokratíā was used by Aristotle and Plato in their political writings, denoting ‘government of a state by those best fitted for the task’, and English writers perpetuated the usage when the word was borrowed from French aristocratie: Thomas Hobbes, for instance, wrote ‘Aristocracy is that, wherein the highest magistrate is chosen out of those that have had the best education’, Art of Rhetoric 1679.
But from the first the term was also used in English for ‘rule by a privileged class’, and by the mid 17th century this had begun to pass into ‘the privileged class’ itself, ‘the nobility’. The derived aristocrat appeared at the end of the 18th century; it was a direct borrowing of French aristocrate, a coinage inspired by the French Revolution.
=> hard[aristocracy etymology, aristocracy origin, 英语词源] - feal (v.)
- "to hide, conceal," early 14c., a Northern English and Northern Midlands word, from Old Norse fela "to hide," from Proto-Germanic *felhan (Cognates: Gothic filhan "to hide, bury," Old English feolan "enter, penetrate, pass into").
- go (v.)
- Old English gan "to advance, walk; depart, go away; happen, take place; conquer; observe, practice, exercise," from West Germanic *gaian (cognates: Old Saxon, Old Frisian gan, Middle Dutch gaen, Dutch gaan, Old High German gan, German gehen), from PIE *ghe- "to release, let go" (cognates: Sanskrit jihite "goes away," Greek kikhano "I reach, meet with"), but there does not seem to be general agreement on a list of cognates.
A defective verb throughout its recorded history; the Old English past tense was eode, a word of uncertain origin but evidently once a different verb (perhaps connected to Gothic iddja); it was replaced 1400s by went, past tense of wenden "to direct one's way" (see wend). In northern England and Scotland, however, eode tended to be replaced by gaed, a construction based on go. In modern English, only be and go take their past tenses from entirely different verbs.
The word in its various forms and combinations takes up 45 columns of close print in the OED. Meaning "cease to exist" is from c. 1200; that of "to appear" (with reference to dress, appearance, etc.) is from late 14c.; that of "to be sold" is from early 15c. Meaning "to be known" (with by) is from 1590s; that of "pass into another condition or state" is from 1580s. From c. 1600 as "to wager," hence also "to stand treat," and to go (someone) better in wagering (1864). Meaning "say" emerged 1960s in teen slang. Colloquial meaning "urinate or defecate" attested by 1926, euphemistic (compare Old English gong "a privy," literally "a going").
To go back on "prove faithless to" is from 1859; to go under in the figurative sense "to fail" is from 1849. To go places "be successful" is by 1934. - pass (n.2)
- "written permission to pass into, or through, a place," 1590s, from pass (v.). Sense of "ticket for a free ride or admission" is first found 1838. Colloquial make a pass "offer an amorous advance" first recorded 1928, perhaps from a sporting sense. Phrase come to pass (late 15c.) uses the word with a sense of "completion, accomplishment."
- transmigrate
- "(Of the soul) pass into a different body after death", Late Middle English (as an adjective in the sense 'transferred'): from Latin transmigrat- 'removed from one place to another', from the verb transmigrare (see trans-, migrate).