quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- apricot[apricot 词源字典]
- apricot: [16] The word apricot reached English by a peculiarly circuitous route from Latin. The original term used by the Romans for the apricot, a fruit which came ultimately from China, was prūnum Arminiacum or mālum Arminiacum ‘Armenian plum or apple’ (Armenia was an early source of choice apricots). But a new term gradually replaced these: mālum praecocum ‘early-ripening apple’ (praecocus was a variant of praecox, from which English gets precocious). Praecocum was borrowed by a succession of languages, making its way via Byzantine Greek beríkokkon and Arabic al birqūq ‘the apricot’ to Spanish albaricoque and Portuguese albricoque.
This was the source of the English word, but its earliest form, abrecock, shows that it had already acquired the initial abrof French abricot, and the final -t followed almost immediately. Spellings with p instead of b are also found in the 16th century.
=> precocious[apricot etymology, apricot origin, 英语词源] - fetch (n.1)
- "apparition of a living person, specter, a double," 1787, an English dialect word of unknown origin (see OED for discussion).
A peculiarly weird type of apparition is the wraith (q.v.) or double, of which the Irish fetch is a variant. The wraith is an exact facsimile of a living person, who may himself see it. Goethe, Shelley, and other famous men are said to have seen their own wraiths. The fetch makes its appearance shortly before the death of the person it represents, either to himself or his friends, or both. [Lewis Spence, "An Encyclopedia of Occultism," 1920]
- peculiar (adj.)
- mid-15c., "belonging exclusively to one person," from Latin peculiaris "of one's own (property)," from peculium "private property," literally "property in cattle" (in ancient times the most important form of property), from pecu "cattle, flock," related to pecus "cattle" (see pecuniary). Meaning "unusual" is first attested c. 1600 (earlier "distinguished, special," 1580s; for sense development, compare idiom). Related: Peculiarly.