英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

arctic [arctic 词源字典]: arctic: [14] Etymologically, the Arctic is the region of the ‘bear’. Nothing to do with polar bears, though. The characteristic constellations of the northern hemisphere are the ‘Little Bear’ (Latin Ursa Minor), which contains the northern celestial pole, and the Plough, otherwise known as the ‘Great Bear’ (Latin Ursa Major). The perception that they resemble a bear (Greek arktos) goes back to ancient times, and the Greeks used the derived adjective arktikos, literally ‘relating to bears’, to denote ‘northern’.

By the time this reached English, via Latin ar(c)ticus and Old French artique, it was being applied specifically to the northern polar regions. (The original English spelling, reflecting the French form, was artic. The more etymologically ‘correct’ arctic came in in the 17th century, but uncertain spellers are still apt to regress to artic.) Antarctic [14] for the corresponding southern polar region likewise comes ultimately from Greek (antarktikos, with the prefix anti- ‘opposite’). Arcturus [14], the name of a very bright star in the constellation Boötes, means literally ‘bear watcher’ or ‘bear guardian’ (Greek Arktouros), a reference to the fact that the tail of the Great Bear points towards it.
[arctic etymology, arctic origin, 英语词源]
become: become: [OE] Become is a compound verb found in other Germanic languages (German bekommen, for instance, and Dutch bekomen), which points to a prehistoric Germanic source *bikweman, based on *kweman, source of English come. Originally it meant simply ‘come, arrive’, but the modern senses ‘come to be’ and ‘be suitable’ had developed by the 12th century. A parallel semantic development occurred in French: Latin dēvenīre meant ‘come’, but its modern French descendant devenir means ‘become’.
=> come
blade: blade: [OE] The primary sense of blade appears to be ‘leaf’ (as in ‘blades of grass’, and German blatt ‘leaf’). This points back to the ultimate source of the word, the Germanic stem *bhlō-, from which English also gets bloom, blossom, and the now archaic blow ‘come into flower’. However, the earliest sense recorded for Old English blæd was the metaphorical ‘flattened, leaflike part’, as of an oar, spade, etc. The specific application to the sharp, cutting part of a sword or knife developed in the 14th century.
=> bloom, blossom, blow
blaze: blaze: There are three distinct words blaze in English. The commonest, meaning ‘fire, flame’ [OE], comes from a prehistoric Germanic *blasōn. Its original signification was ‘torch’ (in the sense, of course, of a burning piece of wood or bunch of sticks), but by the year 1000 the main current meaning was established. The precise source of blaze ‘light-coloured mark or spot’ [17] is not known for certain, but there are several cognate forms in other Germanic languages, including Old Norse blesi and German blässe; perhaps the likeliest candidate as far as blaze is concerned is Middle Low German bles.

The verbal usage, as in ‘blaze a trail’ (that is, by making conspicuous marks on trees) originated in the mid 18th century. The related German adjective blass ‘pale’, which originally meant ‘shining’, points up the fact that ultimately these two words blaze are related, the primeval sense ‘shining’ having diverged on the one hand through ‘pale’, on the other through ‘glowing, burning’.

The third blaze, ‘proclaim’ [14], as in ‘blaze abroad’, is now seldom encountered. It originally meant ‘blow a trumpet’, and comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhlā- (source of blow). Its immediate source in English was Middle Dutch blāsen. Despite its formal and semantic similarity, it does not appear to have any connection with blazon [13], which comes from Old French blason ‘shield’, a word of unknown origin.

A blazer [19] got its name from being a brightly coloured jacket (from blaze meaning ‘fire, flame’). It originated among English university students in the late 19th century. According to a correspondent in the Daily News 22 August 1889, the word was originally applied specifically to the red jackets worn by members of the ‘Lady Margaret, St John’s College, Cambridge, Boat Club’.

But by the 1880s its more general application had become widely established: in the Durham University Journal of 21 February 1885 we read that ‘the latest novelty … for the river is flannels, a blazer, and spats’.
=> blow
case: case: [13] There are two distinct words case in English, both acquired via Old French from Latin and both members of very large families. Case ‘circumstance’ was borrowed from Old French cas, which in turn came from Latin cāsus ‘fall, chance’. This was formed from the base of the verb cadere ‘fall’. The progression of senses is from the concrete ‘that which falls’ to the metaphorical ‘that which befalls, that which happens (by chance)’ (and English chance is also derived ultimately from Latin cadere).

Other related words in English include accident, cadence, cadaver, cheat, chute, coincide, decadent, decay, deciduous, and occasion. Case ‘container’ comes via Old French casse from Latin capsa ‘box’, a derivative of the verb capere ‘hold’ (which is related to English heave).

At various points during its history it has produced offshoots which in English have become capsule [17], a diminutive form, cash, chassis, and perhaps capsicum [18] and chase ‘engrave’.
=> accident, cadaver, cheat, chute, decay, deciduous, occasion, occident; capsicum, capsule, cash, chassis
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.
cob: cob: [15] Cob has a bizarre range of meanings – ‘nut’, ‘horse’, ‘male swan’, ‘loaf’, ‘ear of maize’ – but a distillation of them points back to an original ‘head, or something similarly rounded’ (cobnuts and cobloaves, for example, are spherical, and the male swan is the ‘chief’ or ‘leader’). It is therefore tempting to see a connection with the now obsolete cop ‘top, head’ (probably represented in cobweb), and even with Latin caput ‘head’.
=> cobble
cord: cord: [13] Cord ‘string’ and chord ‘straight line’ were originally the same word. They go back to Greek khordé ‘string’, which came into English via Latin chorda and Old French corde. In English it was originally written cord, a spelling which included the sense ‘string of a musical instrument’. But in the 16th century the spelling of this latter sense was remodelled to chord, on the basis of Latin chorda, and it has been retained for its semantic descendants ‘straight line joining two points on a curve’ and ‘straight line joining the front and rear edges of a wing’. (Chord ‘combination of musical notes’ [15] is no relation: it is a reduced version of accord, which comes via Old French acorder from Vulgar Latin *accordāre, a compound verb based on Latin cors ‘heart’, and ironically was originally spelled cord.) Related words include cordon [16], from the French diminutive form cordon, and cordite [19], so named from its often being shaped into cords resembling brown twine.
=> chord, cordite, cordon, yarn
council: council: [12] Etymologically, a council is a body that has been ‘called together’ or ‘summoned’. Latin concilium meant ‘assembly, meeting’; it was formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and calāre ‘call, summon’. It passed into English via Anglo-Norman cuncile. It has no direct etymological connection with counsel, but the two are so similar that their meanings have tended to merge at various points down the centuries. Latin concilium also formed the basis of the verb conciliāre, which originally meant ‘bring together, unite’. Its metaphorical sense ‘make more friendly, win over’ is preserved in English conciliate [16].
=> conciliate
daft: daft: [13] Daft was not always a term of reproach. It originally meant ‘mild, gentle’, and only in late Middle English slid to ‘stupid’ (in a semantic decline perhaps paralleling that of silly, which started off as ‘happy, blessed’). Middle English dafte corresponds directly to an Old English gedæfte, whose underlying sense seems to have been ‘fit, suitable’ (the sense connection was apparently that mild unassuming people were considered as behaving suitably).

There is no direct evidence of its use with this meaning, but Old English had a verb gedæftan ‘make fit or ready, prepare’ which, together with the Gothic verb gedaban ‘be suitable’, points to its origin in a Germanic base *dab- ‘fit, suitable’. This ties in with the semantic development of deft, a variant of daft, which has moved from a prehistoric ‘fit, suitable’ to ‘skilful’.
=> deft
dandelion: dandelion: [13] Dandelion means literally ‘lion’s tooth’. It was borrowed from French dent-de-lion, which itself was a translation of medieval Latin dēns leōnis. It was presumably so called from the toothlike points of its leaves (although some have speculated that the name comes from the long taproot). The plant has a variety of local dialectal names, many of them (clock, farmer’s clocks, schoolboy’s clock, telltime, time flower) reflecting the traditional practice of telling the time by blowing off all the plant’s tufted seeds (the number of puffs needed indicates the hour). Piss-a-bed, like its French counterpart pissenlit, betrays the plant’s diuretic properties.
=> dentist, lion
deuce: deuce: [15] The underlying meaning of deuce emerges most clearly in its application to playing cards and dice: the number two. It comes from Old French deus ‘two’, which goes back to duōs, the accusative case of Latin duo ‘two’ (English two comes ultimately from the same source). Its use in tennis comes from the French phrase à deux, literally ‘at two’, which signifies that a player must score two successive points to win a game. It is generally thought that the mild oath deuce came from duus, the Low German descendant of Latin duōs, which gamblers supposedly cried out in disgust when they threw the lowest score, a two.
drift: drift: [13] Drift comes ultimately from the same Germanic base as produced drive, and etymologically means ‘driving or being driven’, but as far as we can tell it did not exist in Old English, and the word as we now have it is a borrowing from other Germanic languages. Its first recorded use is in the sense ‘snowdrift’, which points to Old Norse drift as the source, but later more general applications were probably reinforced by Dutch drift.
=> drive
file: file: The file for smoothing and rubbing [OE] and the file for storing things in [16] are quite different words. The former comes from a prehistoric Germanic *fikhalā (source also of German feile and Dutch vijl), which goes back ultimately to Indo-European *pik-, *peik-, denoting ‘cut’. The latter, on the other hand, comes from Old French fil, a descendant of Latin filum ‘thread’, which was applied to a piece of string or wire suspended from two points and used for hanging documents and records on for easy reference.

As methods of document storage and retrieval became more sophisticated, the word file followed them. The later file ‘(military) column’, first recorded at the end of the 16th century, probably represents a reborrowing from French, but it is ultimately the same word. Fillet [14] originated as a diminutive form of Latin filum.
=> filigree, fillet
fog: fog: [16] The word fog is something of a mystery. It first appears in the 14th century meaning ‘long grass’, a use which persists in Yorkshire fog, the name of a species of grass. This may be of Scandinavian origin. The relationship, if any, between fog ‘grass’ and fog ‘mist’ is not immediately clear, but it has been speculated that the adjective foggy, which to begin with referred to places overgrown with long grass, and then passed via ‘of grassy wetlands’ to ‘boggy, marshy’ may have given rise via this last sense to a noun fog denoting the misty exhalations from such marshy ground.

A rather far-fetched semantic chain, perhaps, lacking documentary evidence at crucial points, and perhaps Danish fog ‘spray, shower’ may be closer to the real source.
grisly: grisly: [OE] Middle English had a verb grise ‘be terrified’, which points back via an unrecorded Old English *grīsan to a West Germanic *grīdenoting ‘fear, terror’, from which grisly would have been formed. Dutch has the parallel formation grijzelijk. In 1900, the Oxford English Dictionary described grisly as ‘now only arch and lit’, but since then its fortunes have recovered strongly, and it is now firmly part of the general language.
loo: loo: [20] Loo presents one of the more celebrated puzzles of English etymology. Not the least of its problematical points is that there is no reliable evidence of its existence before the 1920s, whereas most of its suggested sources have a more dated air than that. Amongst them, the most widely touted is of course gardy loo!, a shout of warning (based on French gardez l’eau ‘beware of the water’) supposedly used when emptying chamber pots from upper-storey windows in the days before modern plumbing; but that is chronologically most unlikely.

Other possibilities are that it is short for Waterloo, which was a trade name for cast-iron lavatory cisterns in the early part of the 20th century (‘O yes, mon loup. How much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset’, James Joyce, Ulysses 1922), and that it comes from louvre, from the use of slatted screens for a makeshift lavatory. But perhaps the likeliest explanation is that it derives from French lieux d’aisances, literally ‘places of ease’, hence ‘lavatory’ (perhaps picked up by British servicemen in France during World War I).
pike: pike: English has two pikes now in common usage, which are probably ultimately the same word. Pike ‘spear’ [OE] goes back to an Old English pīc ‘pointed object’, which is closely related to English peak and pick ‘sharp implement’. It had various specific applications in Old and Middle English, now long defunct, including ‘pickaxe’, ‘spike’, ‘thorn’, ‘point of a shoe’, and ‘pitchfork’ (and pitchfork [13] itself was originally pickfork, a fork with ‘sharp points’; its current form, which emerged in the 16th century, is due to the association with ‘pitching’ or tossing hay on to a cart).

But the sense ‘weapon consisting of a long pole with a spike on top’ did not appear until the 16th century, partly inspired by the related Old French pique ‘pike’. Pike the fish [14] was probably also named with the descendant of Old English pīc, in allusion to its long pointed jaws (a similar inspiration can be seen in French brochet ‘pike’, a derivative of broche ‘spit’).
=> peak, pick, pitchfork
punctuation: punctuation: [16] Punctuation is one of a small family of English words that go back to punctus, the past participle of Latin pungere ‘prick’ (source of English expunge [17], poignant [14], and pungent [16]). They include point, which arrived via Old French; punctilious [17] (which comes via Italian and may be related to pun) and punctual [14], both of them containing the etymological notion of ‘adherence to a precise point’; puncture [14]; punt ‘bet’; and punctuation itself, whose present-day meaning comes from the insertion of ‘points’ or dots into written texts to indicate pauses (also termed pointing from the 15th to the 19th centuries).
=> expunge, poignant, point, pungent, punt
quibble: quibble: [17] Quibble probably originated as a rather ponderous learned joke-word. It is derived from an earlier and now obsolete quib ‘pun’, which appears to have been based on quibus, the dative and ablative plural of Latin quī ‘who, what’. The notion is that since quibus made frequent appearances in legal documents written in Latin, it became associated with pettifogging points of law.
quote: quote: [14] Latin quot meant ‘how many’. From it was derived the adjective quotus ‘of what number’, whose feminine form quota was used in post-classical times as a noun, denoting literally ‘how great a part’ – whence English quota [17]. Quotus also formed the basis of the medieval Latin verb quotāre ‘number’, which was used specifically for the practice of marking sections of text in manuscripts with numbers, as reference points.

English took the verb over as quote, and by the 16th century was using it for ‘cite’ or ‘refer to’. The derived unquote is first recorded in a letter by e e cummings, dated 1935. Also based on quot was Latin quotiēns ‘how many times’, which has given English quotient [15]; and quotidian ‘daily’ [14] goes back ultimately to a Latin compound formed from quotus and diēs ‘day’.

But the archaic quoth [OE], despite a certain similarity in form and sense, is not related; it comes from cwæth, the past tense of Old English cwethan ‘say’.
=> quota, quotient
schedule: schedule: [14] Late Latin scedula meant ‘small piece of paper’. It was a diminutive form of Latin sceda ‘papyrus leaf, piece of paper, page’, itself a borrowing from Greek skhedē. By the time it reached English via Old French cedule it had moved on semantically to ‘small piece of paper with writing on it, used as a ticket or label’; and this subsequently developed through ‘supplementary sheet giving a summary, list of additional points, etc’ to any ‘list giving details of what has been arranged’.

Until around 1800 the word was pronounced /sed-/; but then in Britain, apparently under French influence, it changed to /shed-/, while Americans reverted to the original Greek with /sked-/.
score: score: [11] The etymological notion underlying score is of ‘cutting’ – for it is related to English shear. It was borrowed from Old Norse skor, which went back to the same prehistoric Germanic base – *skur-, *sker- ‘cut’ – that produced shear (not to mention share, shore, and short). It had a range of meanings, from ‘notch’ to ‘record kept by cutting notches’, but it was specifically the ‘number twenty’ (presumably originally ‘twenty recorded by cutting notches’) that English at first took over.

The other senses followed, perhaps as a result of reborrowing, in the 14th century, but the main modern meaning, ‘number of points made in a game’ (originally as recorded by cutting notches), is a purely English development of the 18th century. Roughly contemporary is ‘written music’, which is said to come from the linking together of related staves with a single common bar line or ‘score’ (in the sense ‘mark’).

The verb score ‘mark with lines’ was borrowed in the 14th century from Old Norse skora.
=> share, shear, shirt, short, skirt
straight: straight: [14] Straight began life as the past participle of stretch. Nowadays this verb has a perfectly normal past form (stretched), but in Middle English it was straught (source of distraught [14], an alteration of distract) or straight – whence the adjective straight. The sense ‘not bent or curved’ derives from the notion of stretching something between two points. Straightaway [15] originally meant ‘by a straight path’; the temporal sense ‘immediately’ emerged in the 16th century.
=> distract, distraught, stretch
switch: switch: [16] Switch originally denoted a ‘thin flexible twig’; it may have been borrowed from Middle Dutch swijch ‘bough, twig’. From the noun was derived the verb switch. This originally meant ‘beat with a switch’, but in the early 19th century the sense ‘bend or waggle to and fro like a flexible stick’ emerged, and this led on in the middle of the century via ‘divert’ to ‘turn off a train on to another track’ (the usage developed in American English, where the apparatus used for this is still known as a switch, as opposed to British English points).

By the end of the century this had broadened out to ‘connect or disconnect by pushing a contact to or fro’. The notion of ‘exchanging’ or ‘swopping’ did not emerge until as recently as the 1890s.
tide: tide: [OE] Tide originally meant ‘time’ – as in the tautologous ‘time and tide wait for no man’. Like the related German zeit, Dutch tijd, and Swedish and Danish tid, all of which mean ‘time’, it comes from a prehistoric Germanic *tīdiz. This was derived from the base *tī- (source also of English time), which in turn went back to the Indo-European base *dī- ‘divide, cut up’ – so etymologically the word denotes ‘time cut up, portion of time’.

This notion of a ‘period’ or ‘season’ is preserved in now rather archaic expression such as Christmastide, Whitsuntide, and noontide. The application to the rise and fall of the sea, which emerged in the 14th century, is due to the influence of the related Middle Low German tīde and Middle Dutch ghetīde, where it presumably arose from the notion of the ‘fixed time’ of the high and low points of the tide. Betide [13] was formed from the now archaic verb tide ‘happen’, a derivative of the noun.
=> betide, tidy, time
tropic: tropic: [14] The etymological notion underlying the word tropic is of ‘turning’, and the reason for its application to the hot regions of the world is that the two lines of latitude which bound them (the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn) mark the points at which the sun reaches its zenith at the solstices and then ‘turns’ back. The word comes via Latin tropicus from Greek tropikós, a derivative of tropé ‘turning’ (source also of English trophy and related to the second syllable of contrive).
=> contrive, trophy, troubadour
airline (n.): also air-line, 1813, "beeline, straight line between two points on the earth's surface" (as through the air, rather than over terrain; from 1853 and in later 19c. especially in reference to railways that ran directly between big cities in the U.S. instead of meandering from town to town in search of stock subscriptions as early railways typically did), from air (n.1) + line (n.). Meaning "public aircraft transportation company" is from 1914.
anthem (n.): Old English ontemn, antefn, "a composition (in prose or verse) sung antiphonally," from Late Latin antefana, from Greek antiphona "verse response" (see antiphon). Sense evolved to "a composition set to sacred music" (late 14c.), then "song of praise or gladness" (1590s). Used in reference to the English national song (technically, as OED points out, a hymn) and extended to those of other nations. Modern spelling is from late 16c., perhaps an attempt to make the word look more Greek.
APB: also a.p.b., 1960, police jargon initialism (acronym) for all-points bulletin, itself attested by 1953 (perhaps more in the jargon of detective novels than in actual police use).
barbed wire (n.): also barb wire, "fencing wire with sharp edges or points," 1863, American English, from barb + wire (n.).
bun (n.): late 14c., origin obscure, perhaps from Old French buignete "a fritter," originally "boil, swelling," diminutive of buigne "swelling from a blow, bump on the head," from a Germanic source (compare Middle High German bunge "clod, lump"), or from Gaulish *bunia (compare Gaelic bonnach). Spanish buñelo "a fritter" apparently is from the same source. Of hair coiled at the back of the head, first attested 1894. To have a bun in the oven "be pregnant" is from 1951.

The first record of buns in the sense of "male buttocks" is from 1960s, perhaps from a perceived similarity; but bun also meant "tail of a hare" (1530s) in Scottish and northern England dialect and was transferred to human beings (and conveniently rhymed with nun in ribald ballads). This may be an entirely different word; OED points to Gaelic bun "stump, root."
cardinal (adj.): "chief, pivotal," early 14c., from Latin cardinalis "principal, chief, essential," from cardo (genitive cardinis) "that on which something turns or depends; pole of the sky," originally "door hinge," which is of unknown origin. Related: Cardinally.

The cardinal points (1540s) are north, south, east, west. The cardinal sins (c. 1600) are too well known to require rehearsal. The cardinal virtues (c. 1300) were divided into natural (justice prudence, temperance, fortitude) and theological (faith, hope, charity). The natural ones were the original classical ones, which were amended by Christians. But typically in Middle English only the first four were counted as the cardinal virtues:
Of þe uour uirtues cardinales spekeþ moche þe yealde philosofes. ["Ayenbite of Inwyt," c. 1340]
By analogy of this, and cardinal points, cardinal winds, cardinal signs (four zodiacal signs marking the equinoxes and the solstices), the adjective in Middle English acquired an association with the number four.
carnation (n.): "Dianthus Caryophyllus," commonly also called "pink," herbaceous perennial flowering plant native to southern Europe and abundant in Normandy, 1530s, of uncertain origin. The early forms are confused; perhaps (on evidence of early spellings) it is a corruption of coronation, from the flower's being used in chaplets or from the toothed crown-like look of the petals.

Or it might be called for its pinkness and derive from Middle French carnation "person's color or complexion" (15c.), which probably is from Italian dialectal carnagione "flesh color," from Late Latin carnationem (nominative carnatio) "fleshiness," from Latin caro "flesh" (see carnage). This carnation had been borrowed separately into English as "color of human flesh" (1530s) and as an adjective meaning "flesh-colored" (1560s; the earliest use of the word in English was to mean "the incarnation of Christ," mid-14c.). OED points out that not all the flowers are this color.
carom (n.): 1779, earlier carambole (1775), from French carambole "the red ball in billiards," from Spanish carombola "the red ball in billiards," perhaps originally "fruit of the tropical Asian carambola tree," which is round and orange and supposed to resemble a red billiard ball; from Marathi (southern Indian) karambal. Originally a type of stroke involving the red ball:
If the Striker hits the Red and his Adversary's Ball with his own Ball he played with, he wins two Points; which Stroke is called a Carambole, or for Shortness, a Carrom. ["Hoyle's Games Improved," London, 1779]
case (n.2): "receptacle," early 14c., from Anglo-French and Old North French casse (Old French chasse "case, reliquary;" Modern French châsse), from Latin capsa "box, repository" (especially for books), from capere "to take, hold" (see capable).

Meaning "outer protective covering" is from late 14c. Also used from 1660s with a sense "frame" (as in staircase, casement). Artillery sense is from 1660s, from case-shot "small projectiles put in cases" (1620s). Its application in the printing trade (first recorded 1580s) to the two trays where compositors keep their types in separate compartments for easy access led to upper-case letter for a capital (1862) and lower-case for small letters.
"The cases, or receptacles, for the type, which are always in pairs, and termed the 'upper' and the 'lower,' are formed of two oblong wooden frames, divided into compartments or boxes of different dimensions, the upper case containing ninety-eight and the lower fifty-four. In the upper case are placed the capital, small capital, and accented letters, also figures, signs for reference to notes &c.; in the lower case the ordinary running letter, points for punctuation, spaces for separating the words, and quadrats for filling up the short lines." ["The Literary Gazette," Jan. 29, 1859]
center (n.): late 14c., "middle point of a circle; point round which something revolves," from Old French centre (14c.), from Latin centrum "center," originally fixed point of the two points of a drafting compass, from Greek kentron "sharp point, goad, sting of a wasp," from kentein "stitch," from PIE root *kent- "to prick" (cognates: Breton kentr "a spur," Welsh cethr "nail," Old High German hantag "sharp, pointed").

Figuratively from 1680s. Meaning "the middle of anything" attested from 1590s. Spelling with -re popularized in Britain by Johnson's dictionary (following Bailey's), though -er is older and was used by Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope. Center of gravity is recorded from 1650s. Center of attention is from 1868.
century (n.): 1530s, "one hundred (of anything)," from Latin centuria "group of one hundred" of things of one kind (including a measure of land and a division of the Roman army, one-sixteenth of a legion, headed by a centurion), from centum "hundred" (see hundred) on analogy of decuria "a company of ten."

Used in Middle English from late 14c. as a division of land, from Roman use. The Modern English meaning is attested from 1650s, short for century of years (1620s). The older, general sense is preserved in the meaning "score of 100 points" in cricket and some other sports. Related: Centurial.
chaw (v.): 1520s, unexplained phonetic variant of chew (v.). OED points out the variant form chow was "very common in 16-17th c." Bartlett's "Dictionary of Americanisms" [1859] says chaw, "Although found in good authors, ... is retained, in this country as in England, only by the illiterate." Related: Chawed; chawing. The noun meaning "that which is chewed" (especially a quid of tobacco) first recorded 1709.
circum-: word-forming element meaning "around, all around, on all sides," from Latin circum- a common element in word-formation, from adverb and preposition circum "around, round about," literally "in a circle," probably accusative form of circus "ring" (see circus). In French, the element became circon-; Kitchin points out that con for cum is common even in classical Latin.
Clovis: type of prehistoric stone spearpoints, 1943, from Clovis, New Mexico, U.S., near which place they were found. The town is said to have been named for the Frankish king Clovis (Latinized from Frankish Chlodovech, from Germanic masc. proper name *hluda-wigaz "famous in battle," cognate with Ludwig and Louis).
club (n.): c. 1200, "thick stick used as a weapon," from Old Norse klubba "cudgel" or a similar Scandinavian source (compare Swedish klubba, Danish klubbe), assimilated from Proto-Germanic *klumbon, related to clump (n.). Old English words for this were sagol, cycgel. Specific sense of "bat used in games" is from mid-15c.

The club suit in the deck of cards (1560s) bears the correct name (Spanish basto, Italian bastone), but the pattern adopted on English cards is the French trefoil. Compare Danish klőver, Dutch klaver "a club at cards," literally "a clover."

The social club (1660s) apparently evolved from this word from the verbal sense "gather in a club-like mass" (1620s), then, as a noun, "association of people" (1640s).
We now use the word clubbe for a sodality in a tavern. [John Aubrey, 1659]

Admission to membership of clubs is commonly by ballot. Clubs are now an important feature of social life in all large cities, many of them occupying large buildings containing reading-rooms, libraries, restaurants, etc. [Century Dictionary, 1902]

I got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it. [Rufus T. Firefly]
Club soda is by 1881, originally a proprietary name (Cantrell & Cochrane, Dublin). Club sandwich recorded by 1899, apparently as a type of sandwich served in clubs. Club car is from 1890, American English, originally one well-appointed and reserved for members of a club run by the railway company; later of any railway car fitted with chairs instead of benches, and other amenities (1917). Hence club for "class of fares between first-class and transit" (1978).
The club car is one of the most elaborate developments of the entire Commuter idea. It is a comfortable coach, which is rented to a group of responsible men coming either from a single point or a chain of contiguous points. The railroad charges from $250 to $300 a month for the use of this car in addition to the commutation fares, and the "club" arranges dues to cover this cost and the cost of such attendants and supplies as it may elect to place on its roving house. [Edward Hungerford, "The Modern Railroad," 1911]
clue (n.): 1590s, spelling variant of clew "a ball of thread or yarn," in this sense with reference to the one Theseus used as a guide out of the Labyrinth. The purely figurative sense of "that which points the way" is from 1620s. As something which a bewildered person does not have, by 1948.
concentration camp (n.): 1901, "compound for noncombatants in a war zone" (see concentration); a term for a controversial idea in the second Boer War (1899-1902), and the term emerged with a bad odor.
The concentration camp now definitely taken its place side by side with Black Hole of Calcutta as one of those of horror at which humanity will never cease shudder. ["The Review of Reviews," London, March 1902]
It also was used 1902 in reference to then-current U.S. policies in the Philippines, and retroactively in reference to Spanish policies in Cuba during the insurrection there of 1896-98. The phrase was used in U.S. during the Spanish-American war, but in reference to designated rendezvous points for U.S. troops headed overseas. In reference to prisons for dissidents and minorities in Nazi Germany from 1934, in Soviet Russia from 1935.
constituent (n.): 1620s, "one who appoints or elects a representative," from Latin constituentem (nominative constituens), present participle of constituere (see constitute). The notion is "to make up or compose" a body by appointing or electing a representative. As an adjective, "essential, characteristic," from 1660s; "that appoints or elects a representative to a body," from 1714.
demonstrator (n.): 1610s, "one who points out," agent noun in Latin form from demonstrate. From 1680s as "one who uses exhibits as a method of teaching;" 1870 as "one who participates in public demonstrations."
diametrically (adv.): 1630s, "completely" (opposed, contrary, etc.); see diametric. Mostly in figurative use; the two points that mark the ends of a line of diameter across a circle are opposite one another.
disappointment (n.): 1610s, "fact of disappointing;" see disappoint + -ment. Meaning "state or feeling of being disappointed" is from 1756. Meaning "a thing that disappoints" is from 1756.
dolmen (n.): 1859, from French dolmin applied 1796 by French general and antiquarian Théophile Malo Corret de La Tour d'Auvergne (1743-1800), perhaps from Cornish tolmen "enormous stone slab set up on supporting points," such that a man may walk under it, literally "hole of stone," from Celtic men "stone."

Some suggest the first element may be Breton taol "table," a loan-word from Latin tabula "board, plank," but the Breton form of this compound would be taolvean. "There is reason to think that this [tolmen] is the word inexactly reproduced by Latour d'Auvergne as dolmin, and misapplied by him and succeeding French archaeologists to the cromlech" [OED]. See cromlech, which is properly an upright flat stone, often arranged as one of a circle.
due (adj.): early 14c., "customary, regular;" mid-14c., "owing, payable," from Old French deu, past participle of devoir "to owe," from Latin debere "to owe" (see debt).

In reference to points of the compass (as in due east) it is attested from c. 1600, originally nautical, from notion of "fitting, rightful." As an adverb from 1590s; as a noun from early 15c. Prepositional phrase due to (much maligned by grammarians) is from 1897.