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abstruse [abstruse 词源字典]: abstruse: [16] It is not clear whether English borrowed abstruse from French abstrus(e) or directly from Latin abstrūsus, but the ultimate source is the Latin form. It is the past participle of the verb abstrūdere, literally ‘thrust’ (trūdere) ‘away’ (ab). (Trūdere contributed other derivatives to English, including extrude and intrude, and it is related to threat.) The original, literal meaning of abstruse was ‘concealed’, but the metaphorical ‘obscure’ is just as old in English.
[abstruse etymology, abstruse origin, 英语词源]
accept: accept: [14] Accept comes ultimately from Latin capere, which meant ‘take’ (and was derived from the same root as English heave). The addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’ produced accipere, literally ‘take to oneself’, hence ‘receive’. The past participle of this, acceptus, formed the basis of a new verb, acceptāre, denoting repeated action, which made its way via Old French into English.
=> heave
acquaint: acquaint: [13] Acquaint is connected with quaint, distant though they may seem in meaning. It comes via Old French acointer from medieval Latin accognitāre, which was based ultimately on cognitus, the past participle of cognoscere ‘know’. Cognitus gave English cognition, of course, but also quaint (cognitus developed into cointe, queinte in Old French, and came to mean ‘skilled, expert’; this led later to the notion of being skilfully made or elegant, which eventually degenerated into ‘agreeably curious’).
=> cognition, quaint
act: act: [14] Act, action, active, actor all go back to Latin agere ‘do, perform’ (which is the source of a host of other English derivatives, from agent to prodigal). The past participle of this verb was āctus, from which we get act, partly through French acte, but in the main directly from Latin. The Latin agent noun, āctor, came into the language at about the same time, although at first it remained a rather uncommon word in English, with technical legal uses; it was not until the end of the 16th century that it came into its own in the theatre (player had hitherto been the usual term).

Other Latin derivatives of the past participial stem āct- were the noun āctiō, which entered English via Old French action, and the adjective āctīvus, which gave English active. See also ACTUAL.
=> action, active, agent, cogent, examine, prodigal
actual: actual: [14] In common with act, action, etc, actual comes ultimately from Latin āctus, the past participle of the verb agere ‘do, perform’. In late Latin an adjective āctuālis was formed from the noun āctus, and this passed into Old French as actuel. English borrowed it in this form, and it was not until the 15th century that the spelling actual, based on the original Latin model, became general. At first its meaning was simply, and literally, ‘relating to acts, active’; the current sense, ‘genuine’, developed in the mid 16th century.
=> act, action
acute: acute: [14] Acute derives from Latin acūtus ‘sharp’ (which was also the source of English ague). This was the past participle of the verb acuere ‘sharpen’, which in turn was probably formed from the noun acus ‘needle’. Like the related acid, acetic, and acrid, it can be traced back to an Indo-European base *ak- ‘be pointed’, which was also the ultimate source of oxygen and edge.
=> acetic, acid, acrid, ague, cute, edge, oxygen
addict: addict: [16] Originally, addict was an adjective in English, meaning ‘addicted’. It was borrowed from Latin addictus, the past participle of addicere, which meant ‘give over or award to someone’. This in turn was formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and the verb dicere. The standard meaning of dicere was ‘say’ (as in English diction, dictionary, and dictate), but it also had the sense ‘adjudge’ or ‘allot’, and that was its force in addicere.
=> dictate, diction, dictionary
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
adultery: adultery: [14] Neither adultery nor the related adulterate have any connection with adult. Both come ultimately from the Latin verb adulterāre ‘debauch, corrupt’ (which may have been based on Latin alter ‘other’, with the notion of pollution from some extraneous source). By the regular processes of phonetic change, adulterāre passed into Old French as avoutrer, and this was the form which first reached English, as avouter (used both verbally, ‘commit adultery’, and nominally, ‘adulterer’) and as the nouns avoutery ‘adultery’ and avouterer ‘adulterer’.

Almost from the first they coexisted in English beside adult- forms, deriving either from Law French or directly from Latin, and during the 15th to 17th centuries these gradually ousted the avout- forms. Adulter, the equivalent of avouter, clung on until the end of the 18th century, but the noun was superseded in the end by adulterer and the verb by a new form, adulterate, directly based on the past participle of Latin adulterāre, which continued to mean ‘commit adultery’ until the mid 19th century.
=> alter
adventure: adventure: [13] Adventure derives ultimately from a Latin verb meaning ‘arrive’. It originally meant ‘what comes or happens by chance’, hence ‘luck’, but it took a rather pessimistic downturn via ‘risk, danger’ to (in the 14th century) ‘hazardous undertaking’. Its Latin source was advenīre, formed from the prefix adand venīre ‘come’. Its past participle stem, advent-, produced English advent [12] and adventitious [17], but it was its future participle, adventura ‘about to arrive’, which produced adventure.

In the Romance languages in which it subsequently developed (Italian avventura, Spanish aventura, and French aventure, the source of Middle English aventure) the d disappeared, but it was revived in 15th – 16thcentury French in imitation of Latin. The reduced form venture first appears in the 15th century.
=> adventitious, avent, venture
advertise: advertise: [15] When it was originally borrowed into English, from French, advertise meant ‘notice’. It comes ultimately from the Latin verb advertere ‘turn towards’ (whose past participle adversus ‘hostile’ is the source of English adverse [14] and adversity [13]). A later variant form, advertīre, passed into Old French as avertir ‘warn’ (not to be confused with the avertir from which English gets avert [15] and averse [16], which came from Latin abvertere ‘turn away’).

This was later reformed into advertir, on the model of its Latin original, and its stem form advertiss- was taken into English, with its note of ‘warning’ already softening into ‘giving notice of’, or simply ‘noticing’. The modern sense of ‘describing publicly in order to increase sales’ had its beginnings in the mid 18th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the verb was pronounced with the main stress on its second syllable, like the advertise- in advertisement.
=> adverse, adversity, verse
advice: advice: [13] Like modern French avis, advice originally meant ‘opinion’, literally ‘what seems to one to be the case’. In Latin, ‘seem’ was usually expressed by the passive of the verb vidēre ‘see’; thus, vīsum est, ‘it seems’ (literally ‘it is seen’). With the addition of the dative first person pronoun, one could express the notion of opinion: mihi vīsum est, ‘it seems to me’.

It appears either that this was partially translated into Old French as ce m’est a vis, or that the past participle vīsum was nominalized in Latin, making possible such phrases as ad (meum) vīsum ‘in (my) view’; but either way it is certain that a(d)- became prefixed to vīs(um), producing a new word, a(d)vis, for ‘opinion’.

It was originally borrowed into English without the d, but learned influence had restored the Latin spelling by the end of the 15th century. As to its meaning, ‘opinion’ was obsolete by the mid 17th century, but already by the late 14th century the present sense of ‘counsel’ was developing. The verb advise [14] probably comes from Old French aviser, based on avis.
=> vision, visit
advocate: advocate: [14] Etymologically, advocate contains the notion of ‘calling’, specifically of calling someone in for advice or as a witness. This was the meaning of the Latin verb advocāre (formed from vocāre ‘call’, from which English also gets vocation). Its past participle, advocātus, came to be used as a noun, originally meaning ‘legal witness or adviser’, and later ‘attorney’.

In Old French this became avocat, the form in which English borrowed it; it was later relatinized to advocate. The verb advocate does not appear until the 17th century. The word was also borrowed into Dutch, as advocaat, and the compound advocaatenborrel, literally ‘lawyer’s drink’, has, by shortening, given English the name for a sweetish yellow concoction of eggs and brandy.
=> invoke, revoke, vocation
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
afflict: afflict: [14] When it originally entered English, afflict meant ‘overthrow’, reflecting its origins in Latin afflīgere ‘throw down’, a compound verb formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and flīgere ‘strike’. English afflict comes either from the Latin past participle afflictus, from a new Latin verb formed from this, afflictāre, or perhaps from the now obsolete English adjective afflict, which was borrowed from Old French aflit and refashioned on the Latin model. The meaning ‘torment, distress’ developed in the early 16th century.
affray: affray: [14] Affray is a word of mixed Germanic and Romance origin. The noun comes from the verb, ‘alarm’ (now obsolete, but still very much with us in the form of its past participle, afraid), which was borrowed into English from Anglo- Norman afrayer and Old French effreer and esfreer. These go back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb *exfridāre, which was composed of the Latin prefix ex- ‘out’ and an assumed noun *fridus, which Latin took from the Frankish *frithuz ‘peace’ (cognate with German friede ‘peace’, and with the name Frederick). The underlying meaning of the word is thus ‘take away someone’s peace’.
=> afraid, belfry
agent: agent: [15] Latin agere, a verb of great semantic breadth (‘drive, lead, act, do’), has been a prolific source of English words. Its past participle, āctus, produced act, action, active, actor, actual, cachet, and exact, while other parts of its paradigm lie behind agile, agitate, ambiguous, coagulate, cogent, cogitate, examine, exigent, exiguous, and prodigal.

Its most obvious offspring, however, are agent (literally ‘(person) doing something’) and agency, formed from the Latin present participial stem agent-. Agere itself is of considerable antiquity, being related to other Indo-European verbs such as Greek ágein ‘drive, lead’, Old Norse aka ‘travel in a vehicle’, and Sanskrit ájati ‘drives’.
=> act, agile, ambiguous, cachet, cogent, demagogue, exact, examine, prodigal
aggregate: aggregate: [15] Etymologically, aggregate contains the notion of a collection of animals. It comes from greg-, the stem of the Latin noun grex ‘flock, herd’ (also the source of gregarious). This formed the basis of a verb aggregāre ‘collect together’, whose past participle aggregātus passed into English as aggregate. Latin grex is related to Greek agorā ‘open space, market place’, from which English gets agoraphobia.
=> agoraphobia, egregious, gregarious, segregate
aghast: aghast: [13] Aghast was originally the past participle of a verb, agasten ‘frighten’, which in turn was based on the Old English verb gǣstan ‘torment’. The spelling with gh did not finally become established until the 18th century, and in fact aghast was the last in a series of etymologically related words in the general semantic area of ‘fear’ and ‘horror’ to undergo this transformation. It seems to have acquired its gh by association with ghastly, which in turn got it from ghost (probably under the ultimate influence of Flemish gheest).
ago: ago: [14] Historically, ago is the past participle of a verb. Its earlier, Middle English, form – agone – reveals its origins more clearly. It comes from the Old English verb āgān ‘pass away’, which was formed from gān ‘go’ and the prefix ā- ‘away, out’. At first it was used before expressions of time (‘For it was ago five year that he was last there’, Guy of Warwick 1314), but this was soon superseded by the now current postnominal use.
=> go
aid: aid: [15] Aid comes ultimately from the same source as adjutant (which originally meant simply ‘assistant’). Latin juvāre became, with the addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’, adjuvāre ‘give help to’; from its past participle adjutus was formed a new verb, adjūtāre, denoting repeated action, and this passed into Old French as aïdier, the source of English aid.
=> adjutant, jocund
alert: alert: [17] Alert comes, via French, from an Italian phrase all’ erta ‘on the look-out’, or literally ‘at the (alla) watch-tower (erta)’. Erta was short for torre erta, literally ‘high tower’, in which the adjective erta ‘high’ came ultimately from Latin ērectus, the past participle of ērigere ‘raise’.
=> erect
annihilate: annihilate: [16] Annihilate comes from the past participle of the late Latin verb annihilāre, meaning literally ‘reduce to nothing’ (a formation based on the noun nihil ‘nothing’, source of English nihilism and nil). There was actually an earlier English verb, annihil, based on French annihiler, which appeared at the end of the 15th century, but it did not long survive the introduction of annihilate.
=> nihilism, nil
apparatus: apparatus: [17] Etymologically, apparatus is ‘equipment that has been prepared for a particular use’. The word is borrowed from Latin apparātus, the past participle of the compound verb apparāre, formed from the prefix ad- and parāre ‘make ready’ (source of prepare ‘make ready in advance’, and related to parent). At the beginning of the 17th century, the related but anglicized form apparate put in a brief appearance in the language (possibly borrowed from French apparat), but within 20 years apparatus had supplanted it.
=> parent, prepare
appraise: appraise: [15] Originally, appraise meant simply ‘fix the price of’. It came from the Old French verb aprisier ‘value’, which is ultimately a parallel formation with appreciate; it is not clear whether it came directly from late Latin appretiāre, or whether it was a newly formed compound in Old French, based on pris ‘price’. Its earliest spellings in English were thus apprize and apprise, and these continued in use down to the 19th century, with the more metaphorical meaning ‘estimate the worth of’ gradually coming to the fore.

From the 16th century onwards, however, it seems that association with the word praise (which is quite closely related etymologically) has been at work, and by the 19th century the form appraise was firmly established. Apprise ‘inform’, with which appraise is often confused (and which appears superficially to be far closer to the source pris or pretium ‘price’), in fact has no etymological connection with it.

It comes from appris, the past participle of French apprendre ‘teach’ (closely related to English apprehend).
=> appreciate, price
apprehend: apprehend: [14] The underlying notion in apprehend is of ‘seizing’ or ‘grasping’; it comes ultimately from the Latin verb prehendere ‘seize’ (source also of comprehend, predatory, and prehensile). Latin apprehendere ‘lay hold of’, formed with the prefix ad-, developed the metaphorical meaning ‘seize with the mind’ – that is, ‘learn’; and that was the earliest meaning apprehend had in English when it was borrowed either directly from Latin or via French appréhender: John de Trevisa, for instance, in his translation of De proprietatibus rerum 1398 writes ‘he holds in mind … without forgetting, all that he apprehends’.

More familiar modern senses, such as ‘arrest’ and ‘understand’, followed in the 16th century. A contracted form of the Latin verb, apprendere, became Old French aprendre, modern French apprendre ‘learn’. This provided the basis for the derivative aprentis ‘someone learning’, from which English gets apprentice [14]; and its past participle appris, in the causative sense ‘taught’, was the source of English apprise [17].

The chief modern meaning of the derived noun apprehension, ‘fear’, arose via the notion of ‘grasping something with the mind’, then ‘forming an idea of what will happen in the future’, and finally ‘anticipation of something unpleasant’.
=> apprentice, comprehend, impregnable, predatory, prehensile
apt: apt: [14] Apt comes from Latin aptus ‘fit, suited’, the past participle of the verb apere ‘fasten’. Other English words from this source are adapt, adapt, adept, inept, and (with the Latin prefix com-) couple and copulation. Related words are found in Indo-European languages of the Indian subcontinent: for instance, Sanskrit āpta ‘fit’.
=> adapt, adept, attitude, couple, inept
army: army: [14] Latin armāta ‘armed’, the past participle of the verb armāre, was used in postclassical times as a noun, meaning ‘armed force’. Descendants of armāta in the Romance languages include Spanish armada and French armée, from which English borrowed army. In early usage it could (like Spanish armada) mean a naval force as well as a land force (‘The King commanded that £21,000 should be paid to his army (for so that fleet is called everywhere in English Saxon) which rode at Greenwich’, Marchamont Needham’s translation of Selden’s Mare clausum 1652), but this had virtually died out by the end of the 18th century.
=> arm, armada
arson: arson: [17] Like ardour and ardent, arson comes from the Latin verb ardēre ‘burn’. Its past participle was arsus, from which was formed the noun arsiō ‘act of burning’. This passed via Old French into Anglo-Norman as arson, and in fact was in use in the Anglo-Norman legal language of England from the 13th century onwards (it occurs in the Statute of Westminster 1275). The jurist Sir Matthew Hale was the first to use the word in a vernacular text, in 1680. Other words in English ultimately related to it include arid and probably ash, area, and azalea.
=> ardour, area, ash, azalea
ashamed: ashamed: [OE] Ashamed is an Old English compound, formed ultimately from the noun scamu ‘shame’. The verb derived from this, scamian, meant ‘feel shame’ as well as (as in modern English) ‘put to shame’, and in this sense the intensive prefix ā- was added to it. The resulting verb ashame died out in the 16th century, but its past participle ashamed has survived.
=> shame
assize: assize: [13] Like assess, assize comes ultimately from Latin assidēre, which meant literally ‘sit beside someone’ (it was a compound verb formed from the prefix ad- ‘near’ and sedēre ‘sit’, related to English sit). In Old French this became asseeir (modern French has asseoir), of which the past participle was assis.

The feminine form of this, assise, came to be used as a noun ranging in meaning from the very general ‘act of sitting’ or ‘seat’ to the more specific legal senses ‘sitting in judgement’ and ‘session of a court’ (English session comes ultimately from Latin sedēre too). It was the legal usages which passed into English.
=> session, sit, size
associate: associate: [14] Latin socius meant ‘companion’ (it is related to English sequel and sue), and has spawned a host of English words, including social, sociable, society, and socialism. In Latin, a verb was formed from it, using the prefix ad- ‘to’: associāre ‘unite’. Its past participle, associātus, was borrowed into English as an adjective, associate; its use as a verb followed in the 15th century, and as a noun in the 16th century.
=> sequel, social, society, sue
astound: astound: [17] Astound, astonish, and stun all come ultimately from the same origin: a Vulgar Latin verb *extonāre, which literally meant something like ‘leave someone thunderstruck’ (it was formed from the Latin verb tonāre ‘thunder’). This became Old French estoner, which had three offshoots in English: it was borrowed into Middle English in the 13th century as astone or astun, and immediately lost its initial a, producing a form stun; then in the 15th century, in Scotland originally, it had the suffix -ish grafted on to it, producing astonish; and finally in the 17th century its past participle, astoned or, as it was also spelled, astound, formed the basis of a new verb.
=> astonish, stun
attorney: attorney: [14] Attorney was formed in Old French from the prefix a- ‘to’ and the verb torner ‘turn’. This produced the verb atorner, literally ‘turn to’, hence ‘assign to’ or ‘appoint to’. Its past participle, atorne, was used as a noun with much the same signification as appointee – ‘someone appointed’ – and hence ‘someone appointed to act as someone else’s agent’, and ultimately ‘legal agent’.

Borrowed into English, over the centuries the term came to mean ‘lawyer practising in the courts of Common Law’ (as contrasted with a solicitor, who practised in the Equity Courts); but it was officially abolished in that sense by the Judicature Act of 1873, and now survives only in American English, meaning ‘lawyer’, and in the title Attorney- General, the chief law officer of a government.
=> turn
awake: awake: [OE] Awake was formed by adding the intensive prefix ā- to the verb wake (in Old English wacan or wacian, related to watch, and also ultimately to vegetable, vigil, and vigour). The adjective awake arose in the 13th century; it was originally a variant form of the past participle of the verb.
=> vigil, wake, watch
bandit: bandit: [16] Etymologically, a bandit is someone who has been ‘banished’ or outlawed. The word was borrowed from Italian bandito, which was a nominal use of the past participle of the verb bandire ‘ban’. The source of this was Vulgar Latin *bannīre, which was formed from the borrowed Germanic base *bann- ‘proclaim’ (from which English gets ban). Meanwhile, in Old French, bannīre had produced banir, whose lengthened stem form baniss- gave English banish [14].
=> ban, banish
bear: bear: [OE] The two English words bear ‘carry’ and bear the animal come from completely different sources. The verb, Old English beran, goes back via Germanic *ber- to Indo-European *bher-, which already contained the two central meaning elements that have remained with its offspring ever since, ‘carry’ and ‘give birth’. It is the source of a very large number of words in the Indo-European languages, including both Germanic (German gebären ‘give birth’, Swedish börd ‘birth’) and non-Germanic (Latin ferre and Greek phérein ‘bear’, source of English fertile and amphora [17], and Russian brat ‘seize’).

And a very large number of other English words are related to it: on the ‘carrying’ side, barrow, berth, bier, burden, and possibly brim; and on the ‘giving birth’ side, birth itself and bairn ‘child’ [16]. Borne and born come from boren, the Old English past participle of bear; the distinction in usage between the two (borne for ‘carried’, born for ‘given birth’) arose in the early 17th century.

Etymologically, the bear is a ‘brown animal’. Old English bera came from West Germanic *bero (whence also German bär and Dutch beer), which may in turn go back to Indo- European *bheros, related to English brown. The poetic name for the bear, bruin [17], follows the same semantic pattern (it comes from Dutch bruin ‘brown’), and beaver means etymologically ‘brown animal’ too.
=> amphora, bairn, barrow, berth, bier, born, burden, fertile, fortune, paraphernalia, suffer; brown
beauty: beauty: [13] Beauty came via Anglo-Norman beute and Old French bealte from Vulgar Latin *bellitas, a derivative of Latin bellus ‘beautiful’ (this developed from an earlier, unrecorded *dwenolos, a diminutive form of Old Latin *duenos, *duonos, which is related to Latin bonus ‘good’ – source of English bonus [18], bounty [13], and bounteous [14]).

Other English words from the same ultimate source are beau [17] and its feminine form belle [17]; beatific [17], which comes from Latin beātus ‘blessed, happy’, the past participle of the verb beāre, a relative of bellus; embellish; and bibelot ‘small ornament’ [19], originally a French word based ultimately on *belbel, a reduplication of Old French bel ‘beautiful’.

English beautiful is 15th century.
=> beau, belle, beatific, bibelot, bonus, bounty, embellish
biscuit: biscuit: [14] Biscuit means literally ‘twicecooked’ – from the method of cooking, in which the biscuits are returned to the oven after the initial period of baking in order to become dry or crisp. The original source of the word was probably a medieval Latin *biscoctus, from bis ‘twice’ and coctus ‘cooked’, the past participle of coquere (which is related to English cook). It reached English via Old French biscut.
=> cook
born: born: [OE] The Old English past participle of the verb meaning ‘bear’ was boren. By Middle English times this had become contracted to born(e), but no distinction in meaning was made on the basis of spelling. This did not come about until around 1600, since when born has become established as the obstetric orthography, while borne remains the straightforward past participle of bear ‘carry’.
=> bear
bound: bound: English has no fewer than four separate words bound. The only one which goes back to Old English is the adjective, meaning ‘obliged’ or ‘destined’, which comes from the past participle of bind (in Old English this was bunden, which survives partially in ‘bounden duty’). Next oldest is the adjective meaning ‘going or intending to go’ [13]. Originally meaning ‘ready’, this was borrowed from Old Norse búinn, the past participle of búa ‘prepare’, which derived from the same ultimate source (the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell, cultivate’) as be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, bye-law, and byre.

The final -d of bound, which appeared in the 16th century, is probably due to association with bound ‘obliged’. Virtually contemporary is the noun bound ‘border, limit’ [13]. It originally meant ‘landmark’, and came via Anglo-Norman bounde from early Old French bodne (source also of Old French borne, from which English got bourn, as in Hamlet’s ‘undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’).

Its ultimate source was medieval Latin bodina, perhaps from a prehistoric Gaulish *bodina. Boundary [17] seems to have been formed from the dialectal bounder, an agent noun derived from the verb bound ‘form the edge or limit of’. Finally, bound ‘leap’ [16] comes from Old French bondir. It originally meant ‘rebound’ in English (rebound [14] began as an Old French derivative of bondir), but this physical sense was a metaphorical transference from an earlier sense related to sound.

Old French bondir ‘resound’ came from Vulgar Latin *bombitīre ‘hum’, which itself was a derivative of Latin bombus ‘booming sound’ (source of English bomb).
=> band, bend, bind, bond, bundle; be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, byre, neighbour; boundary, bourn; bomb, rebound
break: break: [OE] Break comes via prehistoric Germanic *brekan from the Indo-European base *bhreg-, which also produced Latin frangere ‘break’ (source of English fraction and fracture). Possibly related words include brake, bark ‘sound made by a dog’, and brigade, while the Germanic derived noun *brecho passed into English via Old French as breach [14] (Old English had the parallel form bryce, which died out). The application of broke (originally a variant of the past participle broken) to ‘insolvency’ dates from the 18th century.
=> bark, brake, breach, brigade, fraction, fracture
brothel: brothel: [14] Originally, brothel was a general term of abuse for any worthless or despised person (John Gower, in his Confessio Amantis 1393, writes: ‘Quoth Achab then, there is one, a brothel, which Micheas hight [who is called Micheas]’); it was a derivative of the Old English adjective brothen ‘ruined, degenerate’, which was originally the past participle of the verb brēothan ‘deteriorate’ (possibly a relative of brēotan ‘break’, which may be connected with brittle).

In the late 15th century we have the first evidence of its being applied specifically to a ‘prostitute’. Thence came the compound brothel-house, and by the late 16th century this had been abbreviated to brothel in its current sense.
bully: bully: [16] Bullies have undergone a sad decline in status. In the 16th century the word meant ‘sweetheart’: ‘Though she be somewhat old, it is my own sweet bully’, John Bale, Three laws 1538. But gradually the rot set in, its meaning passing through ‘fine fellow’ to ‘blusterer’ to the present-day harasser of inferiors. In the 18th and 19th centuries it also meant ‘pimp’.

It is probably a modification of Dutch boele ‘lover’ which, as a term of endearment, may have originated as baby-talk. This bully has no connection with the bully of bully beef [18], which comes from French bouilli, the past participle of bouillir ‘boil’. The bully of bully off [19], a now discontinued way of starting play in hockey, appears to come from a term for ‘scrummage’ in Eton football, but whether that is related to the cruel bully is not clear.
caesarian: caesarian: [17] The application of the adjective caesarian to the delivery of a baby by surgical incision through the abdomen and womb arises from the legend that Julius Caesar (c. 100–44 BC) himself or an earlier ancestor of his was born in this way. The name Caesar comes from the Latin phrase a caeso mātrisūtere, literally ‘from the mother’s cut womb’ (caesus was the past participle of the Latin verb caedere ‘cut’, from which English gets concise, incise, precise, etc). The abbreviation caesar for ‘caesarian section’ is mid 20th-century.
=> concise, incise, precise
capture: capture: [16] Along with its relatives captive, captivity, captivate, and captor, capture is the English language’s most direct lineal descendant of Latin capere ‘take, seize’ (others include capable, case for carrying things, cater, and chase, and heave is distantly connected). First to arrive was captive [14], which was originally a verb, meaning ‘capture’; it came via Old French captiver from Latin captīvus, the past participle of capere.

Contemporary in English was the adjectival use of captive, from which the noun developed. (The now archaic caitiff [13] comes from the same ultimate source, via an altered Vulgar Latin *cactivus and Old French caitiff ‘captive’.) Next on the scene was capture, in the 16th century; originally it was only a noun, and it was not converted to verbal use until the late 18th century, when it replaced captive in this role.

Also 16th-century is captivate, from the past participle of late Latin captivāre, a derivative of captīvus; this too originally meant ‘capture’, a sense which did not die out until the 19th century: ‘The British … captivated four successive patrols’, John Neal, Brother Jonathan 1825.
=> captive, cater, chase, cop, heave
catch: catch: [13] Originally catch meant ‘chase, hunt’ (and in fact it is etymologically related to the English word chase). However, it remarkably quickly moved on to be applied to the next logical step in the procedure, ‘capture’, and by the early 16th century ‘chase’ was becoming obsolete (although it remains the only sense of related words in other languages, such as French chasser and Italian cacciare).

Looked at from another point of view, however, catch might be said to be harking back to its ultimate roots in Latin capere ‘take’, source of English capture. Its past participle, captus, provided the basis for a new verb captāre ‘try to seize, chase’. In Vulgar Latin this became altered to *captiāre, source of Old French chacier (whence English chase) and the corresponding Anglo-Norman cachier (whence English catch).
=> capture, chase
cease: cease: [14] Cease comes via Old French cesser from Latin cessāre ‘delay, stop’. This was derived from cessus, the past participle of cēdere ‘go away, withdraw, yield’, which was also the basis of cessation [14], from Latin cessātiō.
=> cessation
cede: cede: [17] Cede comes, either directly or via French céder, from Latin cēdere ‘go away, withdraw, yield’. The Latin verb provided the basis for a surprisingly wide range of English words: the infinitive form produced, for instance, accede, concede, precede, proceed, and succeed, while the past participle cessus has given ancestor, cease, excess, recession, etc.
=> accede, ancestor, cease, concession, excess, necessary, proceed, recession, succeed
certain: certain: [13] Certain comes ultimately from Latin certus ‘sure, fixed’, which derived from the past participle of the verb cernere ‘decide’. The Latin adjective was extended in Vulgar Latin to *certānus, which passed into English via Old French certain. Other English words based on certus include certify [14] (from late Latin certificāre) and its derivative certificate, and certitude [15] (from late Latin certitūdō).
=> crime, crisis, decree, discern, discrete, discriminate, excrement, riddle, secret