英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

acumen [acumen 词源字典]: acumen: [16] Acumen is a direct borrowing from Latin acūmen, which meant both literally ‘point’ and figuratively ‘sharpness’. It derived from the verb acuere ‘sharpen’, which was also the source of English acute. The original pronunciation of acumen in English was /ə_kjūmen/, with the stress on the second syllable, very much on the pattern of the Latin original; it is only relatively recently that a pronunciation with the stress on the first syllable has become general.
=> acute[acumen etymology, acumen origin, 英语词源]
amber: amber: [14] Amber was borrowed, via Old French, from Arabic ‘anbar, which originally meant ‘ambergris’ (and in fact until the early 18th century amber was used for ‘ambergris’ too). A perceived resemblance between the two substances had already led in Arabic to ‘amber’ ousting ‘ambergris’ as the main meaning of ‘anbar, and this was reflected as soon as English acquired it.

In Scotland until as recently as the early 19th century lamber was the usual form. This arose from borrowing the French word for ‘amber’ complete with its definite article le: l’ambre. Before the introduction of the Arabic term into European languages, the ancestor of modern English glass appears to have been the word used for ‘amber’.
=> ambergris
ambergris: ambergris: [15] The original term for ambergris (a waxy material from the stomach of the sperm whale) was amber. But as confusion began to arise between the two substances amber and ambergris, amber came to be used for both in all the languages that had borrowed it from Arabic, thus compounding the bewilderment. The French solution was to differentiate ambergris as ambre gris, literally ‘grey amber’, and this eventually became the standard English term. (Later on, the contrastive term ambre jaune ‘yellow amber’ was coined for ‘amber’ in French.) Uncertainty over the identity of the second element, -gris, has led to some fanciful reformulations of the word.

In the 17th century, many people thought ambergris came from Greece – hence spellings such as amber-degrece and amber-greece. And until comparatively recently its somewhat greasy consistency encouraged the spelling ambergrease.
=> amber
antique: antique: [16] Originally, in Latin, antique was an adjectivized version of the adverb and preposition ‘before’: to ante ‘before’ was added the adjective suffix -īcus, to produce the adjective antīquus (somewhat later an exactly parallel formation, using the suffix -ānus rather than -īcus, produced the adjective which became English ancient).

English acquired the word either via French antique or directly from Latin. To begin with, and until relatively recently, it meant simply ‘ancient’, or specifically ‘of the ancient world’; it was only towards the end of the 18th century that the modern sense ‘made long ago and therefore collectable’ began to become established. In Italian, antico (from Latin antīquus) was often applied to grotesque carvings found in ancient remains.

It was borrowed into English in the 16th century as an adjective, antic, meaning ‘bizarre’, but also as a noun, usually used in the plural, in the sense ‘absurd behaviour’.
=> ancient, antic
bimbo: bimbo: [20] Bimbo most recently made its mark on the English language in the 1980s, when it was in heavy use among journalists to denigrate buxom young women of limited IQ who sold the secrets of their affairs with the rich and famous to the press. It was by no means a newcomer, though. It first crossed the Atlantic to America, from Italy, in the late 1910s. In Italian it means ‘baby’, and US slang took it up in the colloquial sense of baby, for referring to a usually hapless fellow.

By the 1920s it was being applied equally to young women, especially promiscuous or empty-headed ones (the latter feature probably reinforced by the appearance of dumbo ‘fool’ in the early 1930s).
can: can: [OE] English has two distinct words can. The verb ‘be able to’ goes back via Old English cunnan and Germanic *kunnan to an Indo- European base *gn-, which also produced know. The underlying etymological meaning of can is thus ‘know’ or more specifically ‘come to know’, which survived in English until comparatively recently (in Ben Jonson’s The Magnetick Lady 1632, for example, we find ‘She could the Bible in the holy tongue’).

This developed into ‘know how to do something’, from which we get the current ‘be able to do something’. The past tense could comes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic *kuntha, via Old English cūthe (related to English uncouth) and late Middle English coude; the l is a 16th-century intrusion, based on the model of should and would. (Canny [16] is probably a derivative of the verb can, mirroring a much earlier but parallel formation cunning.) Can ‘container’ appears to come from a prehistoric Germanic *kannōn-.
=> canny, cunning, ken, know, uncouth
cattle: cattle: [13] Ultimately, cattle is the same word as chattel [13], and when it first entered English it had the same meaning, ‘property’. From earliest times, however, it was applied specifically to livestock thought of as property. In the Middle Ages it was a wide-ranging term in animal husbandry, being used for horses, sheep, pigs, and even poultry and bees, as well as cows, and such usages survived dialectally until comparatively recently, but from the mid 16th century onwards there is increasing evidence of the word’s being restricted solely to cows.

Its ultimate source is medieval Latin capitāle ‘property’, which came to English via Old French chatel as chattel and via Anglo-Norman catel as cattle. Capitāle itself goes back to classical Latin capitālis (from caput ‘head’), from which English gets capital.
=> capital, chattel
dizzy: dizzy: [OE] Dizzy originally signified ‘foolish, stupid’, a meaning which from the 13th century retreated into dialectal use and has only comparatively recently returned to the mainstream language in the milder form ‘scatterbrained’. The now central sense ‘giddy’ is recorded from the 14th century. The word comes from a West Germanic base *dus-, which also produced Dutch duizelen ‘be giddy’. Its formal and semantic similarity to doze and tizzy are obvious, but no actual etymological link between the three seems ever to have been established.
dusk: dusk: [OE] In Anglo-Saxon times, dusk was an adjective meaning ‘dark in colour’ (a sense preserved today in the derived adjective dusky [16]). Its modern noun use ‘twilight’ is not recorded until as recently as the early 17th century. The Old English form of the word was dox, which was descended from the same ultimate Indo-European ancestor as Latin fuscus ‘dark’ (source of English obfuscate [16]).
=> dun, obfuscale
dye: dye: [OE] Dye is something of a mystery word. Its original meaning seems to have been simply ‘colour’, its modern connotations of ‘artificially changing colour’ a secondary development, but its source remains unknown. A connection has been suggested with Old English dēagol ‘secret, hidden’, but what the implications of that would be for its semantic history are not clear. The convention of spelling the word dye did not become established until as recently as the 19th century; until then die was equally common, and orthographic confusion with die ‘cease to live’ was rife.
ecstasy: ecstasy: [14] Etymologically, someone who is ecstatic is out of his or her mind. The word comes, via Old French extasie and late Latin extasis, from Greek ékstasis, a derivative of the verb existánai ‘displace, drive out of one’s mind’. This was a compound formed from the prefix ek- ‘out’ and histánai ‘place’ (a distant relative of English stand).

The underlying notion of being ‘beside oneself, in the grip of extreme passion’ survives in modern English in relation to mystic experiences or trances, and also, albeit archaically, in such phrases as ‘an ecstasy of rage’, and the specific sense ‘delight’ developed only comparatively recently, apparently in the 17th century.
=> stand
eke: eke: [12] No Old English evidence of this verb, which originally meant ‘increase’, has been found, but related forms in other Germanic languages, such as Old Norse auka and Gothic aukan, suggest that it did exist. Both these and a range of non-Germanic verbs, such as Latin augēre (source of English auction, augment, and author) and Greek aúkhein, point to an ultimate Indo-European ancestor *aug- (from which comes English wax ‘grow’).

The first syllable of nickname was originally eke. Until comparatively recently English had another word eke [OE], which meant ‘also’ (German auch and Dutch ook ‘also’ are related to it). It is not clear whether it is ultimately the same word as the verb eke.
=> auction, augment, author, nickname, wax
errand: errand: [OE] Despite the passing similarity, errand has no etymological connection with err and error. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *ǣrundjam, which meant ‘message’ – a sense which in fact survived in English until as recently as the 18th century (Miles Coverdale, for example, in his 1535 translation of 1 Samuel 11:5 wrote ‘So they told him the errand of the men of Jabesh’ – where the Authorized Version has ‘tidings’).

The main modern meaning, ‘task one goes to perform’, developed in the 13th century (in American English it has latterly gained specific connotations of ‘shopping’). The source of the Germanic word is not known, but it is no doubt related to Swedish ärende and Danish ærinde ‘errand, message, business’.
forlorn: forlorn: [12] Forlorn began life as the past participle of Old English forlēosan ‘lose completely, forfeit, abandon’, a compound verb formed in prehistoric Germanic times from the intensive prefix *fer- and *leusan (a relative of modern English lose). It retains some of its early connotations of being ‘abandoned’, but the main modern sense ‘miserable, downcast’ developed in the 14th century.

The forlorn of forlorn hope [16], incidentally, is a translation of the related Dutch verloren ‘lost’, but hope has no etymological connection with English hope. It is simply an anglicization of Dutch hoop ‘troop, band’ (to which English heap is related). The word was originally used for a squad of soldiers sent out on a very dangerous mission, with little hope that they would return.

The modern sense ‘hopeless undertaking’ developed in the 17th century, ‘misguided hope’ probably even more recently.
=> lose
glycerine: glycerine: [19] Greek glukús meant ‘sweet’ (its derivative gleukos ‘sweet thing’ is the ancestor of English glucose [19]). It had a variant glukerōs, which the French chemist Michel- Eugène Chevreul took as the basis of a name of a recently discovered syrupy liquid obtained from fats or oils – glycerin (adopted by English as glycerine or glycerin).
=> glucose
harbour: harbour: [OE] Etymologically, a harbour is a ‘shelter for a crowd of people’. English acquired it in the late Anglo-Saxon period as herebeorg, perhaps borrowed from Old Norse herbergi, but it began life as a compound of prehistoric Germanic *kharjaz, originally ‘crowd’, later specifically ‘army’ (source also of English harry and related to harness) and *berg- ‘protect’ (which occurs in a range of English words, including barrow ‘mound’, borough, borrow, and bury).

The original sense ‘shelter for a crowd or army’ had broadened out by historic times to the more general ‘shelter, lodging’. That is what Old English herebeorg meant, and gradually it underwent further semantic development, via ‘place in which shelter can be obtained’, to (as recently as the 16th century) ‘place of shelter for ships, port’.
=> barrow, borough, borrow, bury, harbinger, harness, harry, herald
harvest: harvest: [OE] The idea underlying the word harvest is of ‘plucking, gathering, cropping’ – it comes ultimately from Indo-European *karp-, which also produced Greek karpós ‘fruit, crop, harvest’ (whence English carpel [19]) and Latin carpere ‘pluck’ (source of English carpet, excerpt, and scarce) – but its original meaning in English was ‘time of gathering crops’ rather than ‘act of gathering crops’.

Indeed, until as recently as the 18th century it was used as the name for the season now known as autumn (as its German relative herbst still is), and it was not until the 16th century that the present-day senses ‘act of gathering crops’ and ‘crops gathered’ began to develop.
=> carpet, excerpt, scarce
immune: immune: [15] The -mune of immune is the same as that of remunerate and of commune (and hence of common). It represents Latin mūnis ‘ready to give service’. The addition of the negative prefix in- gave immūnis, which in classical Latin denoted literally ‘exempt from a service, charge, etc’, and hence by metaphorical extension ‘free from something, devoid of something’. This general sense still survives, of course, in English (as in ‘grant immunity from prosecution’); and the more specific ‘not liable to infection’ did not emerge until as recently as the 1870s, probably under the influence of French or German.
=> common, commune, remunerate
jettison: jettison: [15] Etymologically, to jettison something is to ‘throw’ it overboard. Like jet, as in ‘jet engine’, the word comes from Latin jactāre ‘throw’. The abstract noun derived from this was jactātiō, which entered English via Anglo-Norman getteson. It was used for the ‘action of throwing cargo overboard, especially in order to lighten a ship’, but it was not converted to its familiar modern role, as a verb, until as recently as the 19th century. The contracted form jetson, later jetsam, emerged in the 16th century, and later came to be used for such jettisoned material washed ashore.
=> jet, jctsam
lobster: lobster: [OE] The Latin word locusta denoted both the voracious grasshopper, the ‘locust’, and the ‘lobster’ or similar crustaceans, such as the crayfish (if, as has been suggested, the word is related to Greek lēkan ‘jump’, then presumably the ‘grasshopper’ sense was primary, and the ‘lobster’ application arose from some supposed resemblance between the two creatures).

English has borrowed the Latin word twice. Most recently it came in the easily recognizable guise locust [13], but lobster too goes back to the same source. The radical change of form may be due to the influence of the Old English word loppe ‘spider’ – the Old English precursor of lobster was loppestre or lopystre.
=> locust
manor: manor: [13] Etymologically, a manor is a place where one ‘stays’ or ‘dwells’. It goes back ultimately to the Latin verb manēre ‘remain, stay’, which in post-classical times was used for ‘dwell, live’. Its Old French descendant maneir came to be used as a noun, meaning ‘dwelling place’. This passed into English via Anglo- Norman maner, and was originally used for ‘country house’.

In the 14th century it came to be incorporated into the terminology of the feudal system, from which its present-day meanings come. The past participle stem of manēre was māns-, from which was derived the Latin noun mānsiō ‘place to stay’. Old French took this over in two forms: maison (whence the modern French word for ‘house’, source of English maisonette [19]) and mansion.

English borrowed this as mansion [14], and originally used it for ‘place of abode, house’. The present-day connotations of a ‘large stately house’ did not emerge until as recently as the 19th century. Manse [15] comes from the same ultimate source, as do menagerie [18] (whose immediate French source originally denoted the ‘management of domestic animals’), permanent, and remain.
=> maisonette, manse, mansion, menagerie, permanent, remain
merge: merge: [17] Merge comes from Latin mergere, which meant ‘dive, plunge’ (it was also the source of English emerge [16], which etymologically means ‘rise out of a liquid’, immerse [17], and submerge [17]). Merge was originally used for ‘immerse’ in English too, and the modern meaning ‘combine into one’ did not emerge fully until as recently as the 20th century. It arose from the notion of one thing ‘sinking’ into another and losing its identity; in the 1920s this was applied to two business companies amalgamating, and the general sense ‘combine’ followed from it.
=> emerge, immerse, submerge
mess: mess: [13] Mess comes via Old French mes from late Latin missus, a derivative of the verb mittere ‘send’ (source of English admit, mission, transmit, etc). This meant ‘sending, placement’, and its original metaphorical application was to a ‘round or heat of a contest’, but it was also used for a ‘course of a meal’, and this was the sense in which it originally entered English.

Traces of the food connection survive in the mess of pottage (literally a ‘dish of porridge or gruel’ made from lentils) for which Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, and in the sense ‘communal eating place’ (as in ‘sergeants’ mess’), which developed in the 16th century. But the main present-day meaning, ‘disorderly thing or condition’, did not emerge until as recently as the 19th century, apparently based on the notion of a mess as a ‘dish of assorted foodstuffs dumped unceremoniously and without thought on to a plate’.
=> admit, commit, mission, permit, transmit
mole: mole: English has four distinct words mole. The oldest is ‘brown spot’ [OE]. It is the descendant of Old English māl, which meant broadly ‘discoloured mark’. This developed in Middle English to ‘spot on the skin’, but the specific sense ‘brown mark’ did not emerge until fairly recently. The word goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *mailam, a derivative of a base meaning ‘spot, mark’ which also produced German malen ‘paint’ and Dutch maalen ‘paint’ (source of English maulstick ‘stick used as a rest by painters’ [17]). Mole the animal [14] was borrowed from Middle Dutch mol.

No one knows for sure where this came from, but its similarity to the now obsolete mouldwarp ‘mole’ [14] (a compound noun whose etymological meaning is ‘earththrower’) suggests that it could represent a truncated version of mouldwarp’s prehistoric Germanic ancestor. The metaphorical application of the word to a ‘traitor working secretly’ has been traced back as far as the 17th century, but its modern currency is due to its use by the British espionage writer John le Carré. Mole ‘harbour wall’ [16] comes via French môle and medieval Greek mólos from Latin mōlēs ‘mass, massive structure’.

The diminutive form of this, coined in modern times, is mōlēcula, from which, via French molécule, English gets molecule [18]. Other relatives are demolish and, possibly, molest [14], which comes ultimately from Latin molestus ‘troublesome’, connected by some scholars with mōlēs. And German mol, a convenient shortening of molekulargewicht ‘molecular weight’, has given English its fourth mole [20], used as the basic unit of measurement for the amount of a substance.
=> maulstick; molecule, molest
more: more: [OE] The Indo-European term for ‘more’ was *meis (it was formed from the same base as produced Latin magis ‘more’, source of Spanish mas ‘more’ and English master, and Latin magnus ‘large’, source of English magnitude). Its Germanic descendant was *maiz, which evolved into modern German mehr ‘more’, and also into Old English mā ‘more’, which survived dialectally until fairly recently as mo. From the adverb *maiz was derived the adjective *maizon, and it was this that has given English more. Most is, of course, closely related.
=> magnitude, master, most
mummy: mummy: English has two words mummy. The one meaning ‘mother’ [19], although not recorded in print until comparatively recently, is one of a range of colloquial ‘mother’-words, such as mama and mammy, that go back ultimately to the syllable ma, imitative of a suckling baby (see MAMMAL and MOTHER), and was probably common in dialect speech much earlier. The 19th century saw its adoption into the general language.

The abbreviation mum [19] has a parallel history. The Egyptian mummy [14] comes ultimately from Arabic mūmiyā ‘embalmed body’, a derivative of mūm ‘embalming wax’, but when it first arrived in English (via medieval Latin mumia and Old French mumie) it was used for a ‘medicinal ointment prepared from mummified bodies’ (‘Take myrrh, sarcocol [a gum-resin], and mummy … and lay it on the nucha [spinal cord]’, Lanfranc’s Science of Cirurgie, c. 1400).

The word’s original sense ‘embalmed body’ did not emerge in English until the early 17th century.
=> mama, mammy
operate: operate: [17] Operate belongs to a small family of English words that trace their history back to Latin opus ‘work’, which may be related to Sanskrit ápas ‘work’, Old English afol ‘power’, and Latin ops ‘wealth’ (source of English copious, copy, and opulent [17]). Its most direct English descendant is of course opus [18] itself, which was originally adopted in the phrase magnum opus ‘great work’. Opera [17] goes back to the Latin plural, which came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun meaning ‘that which is produced by work’.

Italian gave it its musical sense, and passed it on to English. Operate itself came from the past-participial stem of the derived Latin verb operārī ‘work’. It was originally used in English for ‘produce an effect’, and the transitive sense, as in ‘operate a machine’, did not emerge until as recently as the mid-19th century, in American English. The surgical sense is first recorded in the derivative operation [16] at the end of the 16th century.

Other English descendants of opus include cooperate [17] and manoeuvre.
=> copious, copy, manoeuvre, opera, opulent
ordeal: ordeal: [OE] The ‘meting out of judgement’ is the etymological notion immediately underlying ordeal, but at a more primitive level still than that it denotes simply ‘distribution, giving out shares’. It comes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic *uzdailjan ‘share out’, a compound verb formed from *uz- ‘out’ and *dailjan, ancestor of English deal.

The noun derived from this was *uzdailjam, and it came to be used over the centuries for the ‘handing out of judgements’ (modern German urteil, for instance, means among other things ‘judicial verdict or sentence’). Its Old English descendant, ordāl, denoted specifically a ‘trial in which a person’s guilt or innocence were determined by a hazardous physical test, such as holding on to red-hot iron’, but the metaphorical extension to any ‘trying experience’ did not take place until as recently as the mid-17th century.
=> deal
ought: ought: [OE] Ought began life as the past tense of owe, but the two have diverged widely over the centuries. The Old English ancestor of owe was āgan, and its past form was āhte. This originally shared all the meanings of its parent verb, of course, and continued to do so well into the 17th century (‘He said this other day, you ought him a thousand pound’, Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV 1596). Indeed, it survived dialectally until comparatively recently. But steadily since the 1600s its role as a quasi-modal auxiliary verb, denoting ‘obligation’, has come to the fore.
=> owe
paste: paste: [14] Greek pástē denoted a sort of ‘porridge made from barley’ (it was a derivative of the verb pássein ‘sprinkle’). Late Latin borrowed it as pasta, by which time it had come to mean ‘dough’. From this were descended Italian pasta (acquired by English in the late 19th century) and Old French paste, source of English paste. This at first meant ‘pastry, dough’, a sense now largely taken over by the related pastry.

The meaning ‘glue’ did not emerge until the 16th century, ‘soft mixture’ until as recently as the 17th century. Other related forms in English include pastel [17], which comes via French from the Italian diminutive pastello; pastiche [19], which comes, again via French, from Italian pasticcio ‘pie’, hence ‘hotchpotch’; and pasty [13], paté [18], and patty [18], all of which go back to medieval Latin *pastāta.
=> pasta, pastel, pastiche, pasty, paté, patty
pastry: pastry: [16] The original word in English for ‘pastry’ in English was paste. This is still in use as a technical term, but in everyday usage it has gradually been replaced by pastry. This was derived from paste, modelled apparently on Old French pastaierie ‘pastry’, a derivative of pastaier ‘pastry cook’. It originally meant ‘article made from pastry’ (as in Danish pastries), and not until as recently as the mid- 19th century did it start being used for simply ‘pastry’.
=> paste
pond: pond: [13] Pond is historically the same word as pound ‘enclosure’. The differentiation between the two was established early on, although pound continued to be used for ‘pond’ in Scotland and in some English dialects until quite recently. The common denominator is that ponds were originally specifically used for keeping fish in. The reason for the phonetic change from pound to pond is not known.
=> pound
posh: posh: [20] Although it only appeared as recently as the early 20th century, posh is one of the oldest chestnuts of English etymology. The story got around that it was an acronym for port out, starboard home, an allusion to the fact that wealthy passengers could afford the more expensive cabins on the port side of the ships going out to India, and on the starboard side returning to Britain, which kept them out of the heat of the sun.

Pleasant as this story is, though, it has never been substantiated. Another possibility is that posh may be the same word as the now obsolete posh ‘dandy, swell’, a slang term current around the end of the 19th century. This too is of unknown origin, but it has been tentatively linked with the still earlier 19thcentury slang term posh ‘halfpenny’, hence broadly ‘money’, which may have come ultimately from Romany posh ‘half’.
quite: quite: [14] Quite is essentially the same word as the adjective quit ‘free, absolved, discharged, cleared’ (which in Middle English commonly took the alternative form quite). It came to be used as an adverb meaning ‘thoroughly, clearly’. The weaker modern sense ‘fairly’ did not develop until as recently as the mid-19th century.
=> quit
rather: rather: [OE] Rather originated as the comparative form of the now obsolete adjective rathe ‘quick’, and so to begin with meant ‘more quickly’, hence ‘earlier, sooner’. Its most frequent modern meaning, ‘more willingly’, emerged as recently as the 16th century. Rathe itself went back to a prehistoric Germanic *khrathaz, which may have been derived from the same base as produced English rash ‘impetuous’.
=> rash
religion: religion: [12] Latin religiō originally meant ‘obligation, bond’. It was probably derived from the verb religāre ‘tie back, tie tight’ (source of English rely), a compound formed from the prefix re- ‘back’ and ligāre ‘tie’ (source of English liable, ligament, etc). It developed the specialized sense ‘bond between human beings and the gods’, and from the 5th century it came to be used for ‘monastic life’ – the sense in which English originally acquired it via Old French religion. ‘Religious practices’ emerged from this, but the word’s standard modern meaning did not develop until as recently as the 16th century.
=> ally, liable, ligament, ligature, rely
shamble: shamble: [17] Shamble ‘slouch’ and the noun shambles [15] are probably related. The latter originally meant ‘meat market’. It arose out of the plural of the now obsolete shamble ‘meat stall, meat table’, which represented a semantic specialization of Old English sceamul ‘stool, table’. This was descended from prehistoric Germanic *skamul (source also of German schemel ‘stool’), which in turn was borrowed from Latin scamellum, a diminutive form of scamnum ‘bench’.

In the 16th century, the signification of shambles moved on to ‘slaughterhouse’, and hence metaphorically to any ‘scene of bloodshed and slaughter’, but the milder modern sense ‘scene of disorder or ruin’ did not emerge until as recently as the early 20th century. The verb shamble is thought to come from the now obsolete expression shamble legs ‘ungainly legs’, an allusion to the rickety legs of the stalls or tables in meat markets.
stocking: stocking: [16] Stocking is a derivative of stock, in the now defunct sense ‘stocking’. This appears to have arisen in the 15th century from the blackly humorous comparison of the stocks in which one’s legs are restrained as a punishment with ‘leggings, hose’. Until comparatively recently stocking was a unisex term (as it still is in the expression in one’s stockinged feet); the restriction to ‘women’s hose’ is a 20th-century development.
=> stock
swing: swing: [OE] Swing goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic base *swinggw-, which denoted ‘violent circulatory movement’. One of its specific applications was to the wielding of a whip, and indeed the English verb swing originally meant ‘flog’ (‘They bind him and swing him and spit on his face’, Blickling Homilies 971). Another Old English sense was ‘rush’, but the main modern meaning ‘oscillate’ did not emerge until as recently as the 16th century. The ancestral notion of ‘flogging’ or ‘beating’ is better preserved in the related swinge [16].
=> swinge
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.
ton: ton: [14] Ton originated as a variant of tun ‘barrel’ [OE]. At first it was used for a unit of capacity, equal to the space occupied by a tun of wine, but by the end of the 15th century we find it being applied to a unit of weight. Tun itself was acquired from medieval Latin tunna, which was probably of Gaulish origin. Another of its descendants was Old French tonne, whose diminutive tonel was borrowed into English as tunnel [15]. This was originally used for a ‘tubular net for catching birds’, and then for a ‘chimney flue’ or ‘funnel’. It was not applied to an ‘underground passage’ until as recently as the late 18th century.
=> tun, tunnel
track: track: [15] Track was borrowed from Old French trac ‘trail, set of footprints, etc’. This too appears to have been a loanword, from Middle Dutch trek ‘pulling’ (ultimate source of English trek [19], via Afrikaans), which was derived from the verb trekken ‘pull’. The sense ‘path’ did not emerge until as recently as the 19th century.
=> trek
value: value: [14] To have value is etymologically to be ‘strong’ or ‘effective’, and hence to have ‘worth’. The word was borrowed from Old French value, a noun use of the feminine past participle of valoir ‘be worth’. This was descended from Latin valēre ‘be strong, be of value’, which also produced English avail [13], available [15] (which originally meant ‘advantageous’, and was not used for ‘accessible for use’ until as recently as the 19th century), convalesce [15], valency [19], valiant [14], valid, and valour [14].
=> available, convalesce, valency, valiant, valid, valour
aphasia (n.): "loss of ability to speak," especially as result of brain injury or disorder, 1867, from Modern Latin aphasia, from Greek aphasia "speechlessness," from a- "without" (see a- (3)) + phasis "utterance," from phanai "to speak," related to pheme "voice, report, rumor" (see fame (n.)).
APHASIA is the term which has recently been given to the loss of the faculty of articulate language, the organs of phonation and of articulation, as well as the intelligence, being unimpaired. The pathology of this affection is at the present time the subject of much discussion in the scientific world; the French Academy devoted several of their séances during the year 1865 to its special elucidation, and the Medical Journals of France and of our own country have lately contained a good deal of original matter bearing upon this obscure feature in cerebral pathology. [Frederic Bateman, M.D., "Aphasia," London, 1868]
apron (n.): mid-15c., faulty separation (as also in adder, umpire) of a napron (c. 1300), from Old French naperon "small table-cloth," diminutive of nappe "cloth," from Latin mappa "napkin." Napron was still in use as recently as late 16c. The shift of Latin -m- to -n- was a tendency in Old French (conter from computare, printemps from primum, natte "mat, matting," from matta). Symbolic of "wife's business" from 1610s. Apron-string tenure was in reference to property held in virtue of one's wife, or during her lifetime only.
Even at his age, he ought not to be always tied to his mother's apron string. [Anne Brontë, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," 1848]
bad (adj.): c. 1200, "inferior in quality;" early 13c., "wicked, evil, vicious," a mystery word with no apparent relatives in other languages.* Possibly from Old English derogatory term bæddel and its diminutive bædling "effeminate man, hermaphrodite, pederast," probably related to bædan "to defile." A rare word before 1400, and evil was more common in this sense until c. 1700. Meaning "uncomfortable, sorry" is 1839, American English colloquial.

Comparable words in the other Indo-European languages tend to have grown from descriptions of specific qualities, such as "ugly," "defective," "weak," "faithless," "impudent," "crooked," "filthy" (such as Greek kakos, probably from the word for "excrement;" Russian plochoj, related to Old Church Slavonic plachu "wavering, timid;" Persian gast, Old Persian gasta-, related to gand "stench;" German schlecht, originally "level, straight, smooth," whence "simple, ordinary," then "bad").

Comparative and superlative forms badder, baddest were common 14c.-18c. and used as recently as Defoe (but not by Shakespeare), but yielded to comparative worse and superlative worst (which had belonged to evil and ill).

As a noun, late 14c., "evil, wickedness." In U.S. place names, sometimes translating native terms meaning "supernaturally dangerous." Ironic use as a word of approval is said to be at least since 1890s orally, originally in Black English, emerging in print 1928 in a jazz context. It might have emerged from the ambivalence of expressions like bad nigger, used as a term of reproach by whites, but among blacks sometimes representing one who stood up to injustice, but in the U.S. West bad man also had a certain ambivalence:
These are the men who do most of the killing in frontier communities, yet it is a noteworthy fact that the men who are killed generally deserve their fate. [Farmer & Henley]
*Farsi has bad in more or less the same sense as the English word, but this is regarded by linguists as a coincidence. The forms of the words diverge as they are traced back in time (Farsi bad comes from Middle Persian vat), and such accidental convergences exist across many languages, given the vast number of words in each and the limited range of sounds humans can make to signify them. Among other coincidental matches with English are Korean mani "many," Chinese pei "pay," Nahuatl (Aztecan) huel "well," Maya hol "hole."
blond (adj.): late 15c., from Old French blont "fair, blond" (12c.), from Medieval Latin blundus "yellow," perhaps from Frankish *blund. If it is a Germanic word, it is possibly related to Old English blonden-feax "gray-haired," from blondan, blandan "to mix" (see blend (v.)). According to Littré, the original sense of the French word was "a colour midway between golden and light chestnut," which might account for the notion of "mixed."

Old English beblonden meant "dyed," so it is also possible that the root meaning of blonde, if it is Germanic, may be "dyed," as ancient Teutonic warriors were noted for dying their hair. Du Cange, however, writes that blundus was a vulgar pronunciation of Latin flavus "yellow." Another guess (discounted by German etymologists), is that it represents a Vulgar Latin *albundus, from alba "white."

The word was reintroduced into English 17c. from French, and was until recently still felt as French, hence blonde (with French feminine ending) for females. Italian biondo, Spanish blondo, Old Provençal blon all are of Germanic origin.
Fair hair was much esteemed by both the Greeks and Romans, and so they not only dyed and gold-dusted theirs ..., but also went so far as to gild the hair of their statues, as notably those of Venus de Medici and Apollo. In the time of Ovid (A.U.C. 711) much fair hair was imported from Germany, by the Romans, as it was considered quite the fashionable color. Those Roman ladies who did not choose to wear wigs of this hue, were accustomed to powder theirs freely with gold dust, so as to give it the fashionable yellow tint. [C. Henry Leonard, "The Hair," 1879]
blow job (n.): also blowjob, 1961, from blow + job. Exactly which blow is meant is the subject of some debate; the word might have begun as a euphemism for suck (thus from blow (v.1)), or it might refer to the explosive climax of an orgasm (thus blow (v.2)). Unlike much sex slang, its date of origin probably is pretty close to the date it first is attested in print: as recently as the early 1950s, military pilots could innocently talk of their jet planes as blow jobs according to the "Thesaurus of American Slang." Compare blow (v.1).
camouflage: 1917, noun, verb, and adjective, from French camoufler, Parisian slang, "to disguise," from Italian camuffare "to disguise," which is of uncertain origin, perhaps a contraction of capo muffare "to muffle the head." Probably altered by influence of French camouflet "puff of smoke," on the notion of "blow smoke in someone's face." The British navy in World War I called it dazzle-painting.
Since the war started the POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY has published photographs of big British and French field pieces covered with shrubbery, railway trains "painted out" of the landscape, and all kinds of devices to hide the guns, trains, and the roads from the eyes of enemy aircraft.

Until recently there was no one word in any language to explain this war trick. Sometimes a whole paragraph was required to explain this military practice. Hereafter one word, a French word, will save all this needless writing and reading. Camouflage is the new word, and it means "fooling the enemy." ["Popular Science Monthly," August 1917]
currant (n.): c. 1500, from raysyn of Curans (mid-14c.) "raisins of Corinth," with the -s- mistaken for a plural inflection. From Anglo-French reisin de Corauntz. The small, seedless raisins were exported from southern Greece. Then in 1570s the word was applied to an unrelated Northern European berry (genus Ribes), recently introduced in England, on its resemblance to the raisins.