英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

asparagus [asparagus 词源字典]: asparagus: [15] Asparagus comes ultimately from Greek aspáragos (a word related to the Greek verb spargan ‘swell’, to the Latin verb spargere ‘scatter’ – ultimate source of English sparse, disperse, and aspersions – and also to English spark), and has over the past 150 years or so returned to the full Latin form, asparagus, in which it was originally borrowed by English.

In the intervening centuries, however, it went through several metamorphoses: in the 16th century, the truncated medieval Latin variant sparagus was current (it also occurs in one isolated example from a book of Anglo-Saxon remedies of around 1000 AD); from then until the 18th century an anglicized version, sperage, was used; and in the 17th century folk etymology (the process by which an unfamiliar word is assimilated to one more familiar) turned asparagus into sparrowgrass.

This gradually died out during the 19th century, but the abbreviation grass remains current in the jargon of the grocery trade.
=> aspersion, spark[asparagus etymology, asparagus origin, 英语词源]
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
borrow: borrow: [OE] Modern English borrow is a descendant of Old English borgian, which came from the Germanic base *borg-. This was a variant of *berg- (source of English barrow ‘mound’) and *burg- (source of English borough and bury). The underlying sense of the Germanic base was ‘protection, shelter’, and the development of meaning in the case of borrow seems to have been like this: originally, to borrow something from somebody was to receive it temporarily from them in return for some sort of security, which would be forfeited if the thing borrowed were not kept safe and eventually returned.

Gradually, the notion of giving some sort of concrete security, such as money, weakened into a spoken pledge, which by modern times had become simply the unspoken assumption that anything that has been borrowed must by definition be returned.
=> barrow, borough, bury
brooch: brooch: [13] English acquired brooch from Old French broche, a source it returned to a century later to borrow broach. The French word meant ‘long needle’, and at first a brooch was simply a decorative pin whose main function was to fasten a garment. Over the centuries the decorative role has replaced the practical one.
=> broach
display: display: [14] Display originally meant ‘unfold’, and it is related not to modern English play but to ply. It comes via Old French despleier (whose modern French descendant, déployer, is the source of English deploy [18]) from Latin displicāre. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘un-’ and plicāre ‘fold’ (source of or related to English accomplish, complicated, ply, and simple), and in classical Latin seems only to have had the metaphorical meaning ‘scatter’.

In medieval Latin, however, it returned to its underlying literal sense ‘unfold’, which was originally retained in English, particularly with reference to sails or flags. The notion of ‘spreading out’ is retained in splay, which was formed by lopping off the first syllable of display in the 14th century.
=> accomplish, complicate, deploy, ply, simple
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.
eureka: eureka: [16] The Greek mathematician Archimedes (c. 287–212 BC) was commissioned by King Hiero II of Syracuse to find out whether the goldsmith who had made a new crown for him had fraudulently mixed some silver in with the gold. In order to do so, Archimedes needed to ascertain the metal’s specific gravity. But how to do this? According to Plutarch, he decided to take a bath to ponder the problem.

He filled the bath too full, and some of the water overflowed – and it suddenly occurred to Archimedes that a pure-gold crown would displace more water if immersed than one made from an alloy. Elated at this piece of lateral thinking, Archimedes is said to have leapt out of the bath shouting heúrēka! ‘I have found!’, the perfect indicative of Greek heurískein ‘find’ (source of English heuristic [19]).

The earliest occurrence of the word in an English text as an exclamation of delight at discovery is in John Dee’s Preface, but there it appears in Greek characters; the first English author to fully naturalize it was probably Henry Fielding in Joseph Andrews 1742; ‘Adams returned overjoyed cring out “Eureka!”’ (The goldsmith, incidentally, had adulterated the gold.)
=> heuristic
lunch: lunch: [16] When lunch first appeared on the scene, at the end of the 16th century, it was used for a ‘slice or hunk of food’ (‘He shall take bread and cut it into little lunches into a pan with cheese’, Richard Surfleet, Country Farm 1600). It appears to have been borrowed from Spanish lonja ‘slice’. The roughly contemporaneous luncheon, probably just an arbitrary lengthening of lunch, came to be used in the early 17th century for a ‘snack’ (the link with ‘hunk or piece of food’ is obvious), and eventually for a ‘light meal’. Lunch returned to the language in this sense at the beginning of the 19th century, as an abbreviation of luncheon.
titchy: titchy: [20] Titchy commemorates the ‘Tichborne claimant’, the title given to Arthur Orton, who, in an English cause célèbre of the 1860s, returned from Australia claiming to be Roger Tichborne, the heir to an English baronetcy who had supposedly been lost at sea. The diminutive music-hall comedian Harry Relph (1868–28) bore some resemblance to Orton, and so he acquired the nickname ‘Little Tich’.

This in due course spread to other small people (the tiny Kent and England leg-spinner A P Freeman (1888–1965) was called ‘Tich’), but it does not appear to have been until the 1950s that tich, or titch, established itself as a colloquial generic term for a ‘small person’. With it came the derived adjective titchy.
alchemy (n.): mid-14c., from Old French alchimie (14c.), alquemie (13c.), from Medieval Latin alkimia, from Arabic al-kimiya, from Greek khemeioa (found c.300 C.E. in a decree of Diocletian against "the old writings of the Egyptians"), all meaning "alchemy." Perhaps from an old name for Egypt (Khemia, literally "land of black earth," found in Plutarch), or from Greek khymatos "that which is poured out," from khein "to pour," related to khymos "juice, sap" [Klein, citing W. Muss-Arnolt, calls this folk etymology]. The word seems to have elements of both origins.
Mahn ... concludes, after an elaborate investigation, that Gr. khymeia was probably the original, being first applied to pharmaceutical chemistry, which was chiefly concerned with juices or infusions of plants; that the pursuits of the Alexandrian alchemists were a subsequent development of chemical study, and that the notoriety of these may have caused the name of the art to be popularly associated with the ancient name of Egypt. [OED]
The al- is the Arabic definite article, "the." The art and the name were adopted by the Arabs from Alexandrians and thence returned to Europe via Spain. Alchemy was the "chemistry" of the Middle Ages and early modern times; since c. 1600 the word has been applied distinctively to the pursuit of the transmutation of baser metals into gold, which, along with the search for the universal solvent and the panacea, were the chief occupations of early chemistry.
apprehend (v.): mid-14c., "to grasp in the senses or mind," from Old French aprendre (12c.) "teach; learn; take, grasp; acquire," or directly from Latin apprehendere "to take hold of, grasp," from ad- "to" + prehendere "to seize" (see prehensile). Metaphoric extension to "seize with the mind" took place in Latin, and was the sole sense of cognate Old French aprendre (Modern French apprendre "to learn, to be informed about;" also compare apprentice). Original sense returned in English in meaning "to seize in the name of the law, arrest," recorded from 1540s, which use probably was taken directly from Latin. Related: Apprehended; apprehending.
change (n.): c. 1200, "act or fact of changing," from Anglo-French chaunge, Old French change "exchange, recompense, reciprocation," from changier (see change (v.)).

Meaning "a different situation" is from 1680s. Meaning "something substituted for something else" is from 1590s. The financial sense of "balance returned when something is paid for" is first recorded 1620s; hence to make change (1865). Bell-ringing sense is from 1610s. Related: changes. Figurative phrase change of heart is from 1828.
chauvinism (n.): 1840, "exaggerated, blind nationalism; patriotism degenerated into a vice," from French chauvinisme (1839), from the character Nicholas Chauvin, soldier of Napoleon's Grand Armee, notoriously attached to the Empire long after it was history, in the Cogniards' popular 1831 vaudeville "La Cocarde Tricolore." Meaning extended to "sexism" via male chauvinism (1969).

The name is a French form of Latin Calvinus and thus Calvinism and chauvinism are, etymologically, twins. The name was a common one in Napoleon's army, and if there was a real person at the base of the character in the play, he has not been certainly identified by etymologists, though memoirs of Waterloo (one published in Paris in 1822) mention "one of our principal piqueurs, named Chauvin, who had returned with Napoleon from Elba," which implies loyalty.
devotion (n.): early 13c., from Old French devocion "devotion, piety," from Latin devotionem (nominative devotio), noun of action from past participle stem of devovere "dedicate by a vow, sacrifice oneself, promise solemnly," from de- "down, away" (see de-) + vovere "to vow," from votum "vow" (see vow (n.)).

In ancient Latin, "act of consecrating by a vow," also "loyalty, fealty, allegiance;" in Church Latin, "devotion to God, piety." This was the original sense in English; the etymological sense, including secular situations, returned 16c. via Italian and French.
festival (n.): 1580s, "a festal day, appointed day of festive celebration," short for festival day (late 14c.), from Old French festival (adj.) "suitable for a feast; solemn, magnificent, joyful, happy," and directly from Medieval Latin festivalis "of a church holiday," from festum "festival, holiday" (see festivity). The English word returned to French 19c. in certain specialized senses.
journalism (n.): 1821, regarded as a French word at first, from French journalisme (1781), from journal (see journal).
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it. [Horace Greely (1811-1872), U.S. journalist]
Journalese "language typical of newspaper articles or headlines" is from 1882.
Where men are insulated they are easily oppressed; when roads become good, and intercourse is easy, their force is increased more than a hundred fold: when, without personal communication, their opinions can be interchanged, and the people thus become one mass, breathing one breath and one spirit, their might increases in a ratio of which it is difficult to find the measure or the limit. Journalism does this office .... ["New Monthly Magazine," London, 1831]

[Géo] London was in western France covering the trial of a parricide that began in mid-afternoon. Because he had an early deadline, he telephoned a story that he was certain would take place: an angry crowd cursing the accused as he was marched to the courthouse from his holding cell at the police station. London then relaxed over lunch until he saw with dismay the guards and the prisoner coming but "not even the shadow of a gawker." His reputation at stake, he stalked to the door, cried out, "Kill him!" and returned to his table. [Benjamin F. Martin, "France in 1938"]
OK: 1839, only survivor of a slang fad in Boston and New York c. 1838-9 for abbreviations of common phrases with deliberate, jocular misspellings (such as K.G. for "no go," as if spelled "know go;" N.C. for "'nuff ced;" K.Y. for "know yuse"). In the case of O.K., the abbreviation is of "oll korrect."

Probably further popularized by use as an election slogan by the O.K. Club, New York boosters of Democratic president Martin Van Buren's 1840 re-election bid, in allusion to his nickname Old Kinderhook, from his birth in the N.Y. village of Kinderhook. Van Buren lost, the word stuck, in part because it filled a need for a quick way to write an approval on a document, bill, etc. Spelled out as okeh, 1919, by Woodrow Wilson, on assumption that it represented Choctaw okeh "it is so" (a theory which lacks historical documentation); this was ousted quickly by okay after the appearance of that form in 1929. Greek immigrants to America who returned home early 20c. having picked up U.S. speech mannerisms were known in Greece as okay-boys, among other things.

The noun is first attested 1841; the verb 1888. Okey-doke is student slang first attested 1932.
palmer (n.): "pilgrim who has returned from the Holy Land," late 12c. (as a surname), from Anglo-French palmer (Old French palmier), from Medieval Latin palmarius, from Latin palma "palm tree" (see palm (n.2)). So called because they wore palm branches in commemoration of the journey.
pantheism (n.): "belief that God and the universe are identical," from pantheist (n.), which was coined (1705) by Irish deist John Toland (1670-1722), from Greek pan- "all" (see pan-) + theos "god" (see theo-).

Toland's word was borrowed into French, which from it formed panthéisme (1712) which returned to English as pantheism "the doctrine that all is god" in 1732 (no evidence that Toland used pantheism).

Greek pantheios meant "common to all gods" (see pantheon). Other words used at various times for similar notions include panentheism, "philosophy founded on the notion that all things are in God" (1874), from German (1828), coined by Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781-1832).
pogo (n.): 1921, originally a registered trademark (Germany, 1919), of unknown origin, perhaps formed from elements of the names of the designers.
Hopping Stilts Are the New French Playthings. ... For France and especially Paris has taken to the "pogo" stick, a stick equipped with two rests for the feet. Inside of the stick is a strong spring so that the "pogoer" may take a series of jumps without straining his powers. The doctors claim that the jarring produced by the successive jumps do not serve to injure the spine, as one might at first suppose. This jumping habit is spreading through France and England and the eastern part of the United States. ["Illustrated World," Sept., 1921]
The fad periodically returned in U.S., but with fading intensity. As a leaping style of punk dance, attested from 1977. The newspaper comic strip by Walt Kelly debuted in 1948 and ran daily through 1975.
Q: 16th letter of the classical Roman alphabet, from the Phoenician equivalent of Hebrew koph, qoph, which was used for the more guttural of the two "k" sounds in Semitic.

The letter existed in Greek, but was little used and not alphabetized; the stereotypical connection with -u- began in Latin. Anglo-Saxon scribes adopted the habit at first, but later used spellings with cw- or cu-. The qu- pattern returned to English with the Norman Conquest and had displaced cw- by c. 1300. In some spelling variants of late Middle English, quh- also took work from wh-, especially in Scottish and northern dialects, for example Gavin Douglas, Provost of St. Giles, in his vernacular "Aeneid" of 1513:
Lyk as the rois in June with hir sueit smell
The marygulde or dasy doith excell.
Quhy suld I than, with dull forhede and vane,
With ruide engine and barrand emptive brane,
With bad harsk speche and lewit barbour tong,
Presume to write quhar thi sueit bell is rong,
Or contirfait sa precious wourdis deir?
Scholars use -q- alone to transliterate Semitic koph (as in Quran, Qatar, Iraq ). In Christian theology, Q has been used since 1901 to signify the hypothetical source of passages shared by Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark; in this sense probably it is an abbreviation of German Quelle "source."
raven (n.): Old English hræfn (Mercian), hrefn; hræfn (Northumbrian, West Saxon), from Proto-Germanic *khrabanaz (cognates: Old Norse hrafn, Danish ravn, Dutch raaf, Old High German hraban, German Rabe "raven," Old English hroc "rook"), from PIE root *ker- (2), imitative of harsh sounds (cognates: Latin crepare "to creak, clatter," cornix "crow," corvus "raven;" Greek korax "raven," korone "crow;" Old Church Slavonic kruku "raven;" Lithuanian krauklys "crow").
Raven mythology shows considerable homogeneity throughout the whole area [northern regions of the northern hemisphere] in spite of differences in detail. The Raven peeps forth from the mists of time and the thickets of mythology, as a bird of slaughter, a storm bird, a sun and fire bird, a messenger, an oracular figure and a craftsman or culture hero. [Edward A. Armstrong, "The Folklore of Birds," 1958]
Old English also used hræmn, hremm. The raven standard was the flag of the Danish Vikings. The Quran connects the raven with Cain's murder of Abel; but in Christianity the bird plays a positive role in the stories of St. Benedict, St. Paul the Hermit, St. Vincent, etc. It was anciently believed to live to great old age, but the ancients also believed it wanting in parental care. The vikings, like Noah, were said to have used the raven to discover land. "When uncertain of their course they let one loose, and steered the vessel in his track, deeming that the land lay in the direction of his flight; if he returned to the ship, it was supposed to be at a distance" [Charles Swainson, "The Folk Lore and Provincial Names of British Birds," London, 1886].
return (v.): early 14c., "to come back, come or go back to a former position" (intransitive), from Old French retorner "turn back, turn round, return" (Modern French retourner), from re- "back" (see re-) + torner "to turn" (see turn (v.)). Transitive sense of "report officially" is early 15c.; "to send back" is mid-15c.; that of "to turn back" is from c. 1500. Meaning "to give in repayment" is 1590s; that of "give back, restore" c. 1600. Related: Returned; returning.
sports (n.): atheltic games and contests, 1590s, from sport (n.). Meaning "sports section of a newspaper" is 1913. As an adjective from 1897. Sports fan attested from 1921. Sports car attested by 1914; so called for its speed and power:
I have just returned from the south of France, passing through Lyons, where I visited the [Berliet] works with my car, and was shown the new model 25 h.p. "sports" car, and was so impressed with this that I immediately ordered one on my return to London. [letter in "The Autocar," Jan. 7, 1914]
sweat (v.): Old English swætan "perspire," also "work hard," from Proto-Germanic *swaitjan "to sweat," from the source of sweat (n.). Compare Frisian swette, Dutch zweeten, Danish svede, German schwitzen. Meaning "to be worried, vexed" is recorded from c. 1400. Transitive sense is from late 14c. Related: Sweated; sweating. Sweating sickness was a sudden, often-fatal fever, accompanied by intense sweating, that struck England 1485 and returned periodically through mid-16c., described in the original citation (a chronicle from 1502) as "a grete deth and hasty."
th: A sound found chiefly in words of Old English, Old Norse or Greek origin, unpronounceable by Normans and many other Europeans. In Greek, the sound corresponds etymologically to Sanskrit -dh- and English -d-; and it was represented graphically by -TH- and at first pronounced as a true aspirate (as still in English outhouse, shithead, etc.). But by 2c. B.C.E. the Greek letter theta was in universal use and had the modern "-th-" sound. Latin had neither the letter nor the sound, however, and the Romans represented Greek theta by -TH-, which they generally pronounced, at least in Late Latin, as simple "-t-" (passed down to Romanic languages, as in Spanish termal "thermal," teoria "theory," teatro "theater").

In Germanic languages it represents PIE *-t- and was common at the start of words or after stressed vowels. To represent it, Old English and Old Norse used the characters ð "eth" (a modified form of -d-) and þ "thorn," which originally was a rune. Old English, unlike Old Norse, seems never to have standardized which of the two versions of the sound ("hard" and "soft") was represented by which of the two letters.

The digraph -th- sometimes appears in early Old English, on the Roman model, and it returned in Middle English with the French scribes, driving out eth by c. 1250, but thorn persisted, especially in demonstratives (þat, þe, þis, etc.), even as other words were being spelled with -th-. The advent of printing dealt its death-blow, however, as types were imported from continental founders, who had no thorn. For a time y was used in its place (especially in Scotland), because it had a similar shape, hence ye for the in historical tourist trap Ye Olde _______ Shoppe (it never was pronounced "ye," only spelled that way).

The awareness that some Latin words in t- were from Greek th- encouraged over-correction in English and created unetymological forms such as Thames and author, while some words borrowed from Romanic languages preserve, on the Roman model, the Greek -th- spelling but the simple Latin "t" pronunciation (as in Thomas and thyme).
themselves (pron.): mid-15c. in northern dialect, standard from 1540s, alteration of Middle English tham-self, emphatic plural pronoun, also reciprocal pronoun (14c.); see them + self, with self, originally an inflected adjective, treated as a noun with a meaning "person" and pluralized. Displacing Old English heom selfum (dative). Themself returned late 20c. as some writers took to replacing himself with gender-neutral everyone, anyone, etc.
volleyball (n.): 1896, from volley (n.) in the sporting sense + ball (n.1). So called because the ball must be returned before it hits the ground.
grilse: "A salmon that has returned to fresh water after a single winter at sea", Late Middle English: of unknown origin.