quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- potash[potash 词源字典]
- potash: [17] Potassium carbonate was originally obtained by burning wood or other vegetable matter, soaking the ashes in water, and evaporating the resulting liquid in iron pots. The resulting substance was hence called in early modern Dutch potasschen, literally ‘pot ashes’, and the word was adopted into English as potash. From it, or its French relative potasse, the chemist Sir Humphry Davy coined in 1807 the term potassium for the metallic element which occurs in potash.
=> ash, pot, potassium[potash etymology, potash origin, 英语词源] - sop
- sop: [OE] The word sop originally denoted a ‘piece of bread, cake, etc dipped into water, milk, wine, or similar liquid’. The modern metaphorical meaning ‘something given to gain favour, bribe’ did not emerge until the mid-17th century, in allusion to the piece of bread soaked in enticing honey but spiked with a soporific drug that was given to the guard dog Cerberus to put him to sleep so that Aeneas could visit the Underworld.
The word goes back ultimately to the same prehistoric Germanic base (*sup-) that produced English sip and sup ‘drink’, and also, via the Romance languages, soup and supper. The corresponding verb sop ‘dip in liquid’ now survives only in the present participial form sopping ‘soaking wet’ [19].
=> sip, soup, sup, supper - blanch (v.1)
- c. 1400, transitive, "to make white, turn pale," from Old French blanchir "to whiten, wash," from blanc "white" (11c.; see blank (adj.)). Originally "to remove the hull of (almonds, etc.) by soaking." Intransitive sense of "to turn white" is from 1768. Related: Blanched; blanching.
- potash (n.)
- 1751, earlier -pot-ashes (1640s), a loan-translation of older Dutch potaschen, literally "pot ashes" (16c.); so called because it was originally obtained by soaking wood ashes in water and evaporating the mixture in an iron pot. Compare German Pottasche, Danish potaske, Swedish pottaska, all also from Dutch. See also potassium. French potasse (1570s), Italian potassa are Germanic loan-words. The original plural was pot-ashes.
- soak (v.)
- Old English socian (intransitive) "to soak, to lie in liquid," from Proto-Germanic *sukon (cognates: West Flemish soken), possibly from PIE *sug-, from root *seue- (2) "to take liquid" (see sup (v.2)). Transitive sense "drench, permeate thoroughly" is from mid-14c.; that of "cause to lie in liquid" is from early 15c. Meaning "take up by absorption" is from 1550s. Slang meaning "to overcharge" first recorded 1895. Related: Soaked; soaking. As a noun, mid-15c., from the verb.
- watering (n.)
- Old English wæterunge "a carrying water," verbal noun from water (v.). From late 14c. as "a soaking with water;" mid-15c. as "a giving water to (an animal);" c. 1600 as "salivation." Watering-can is from 1690s (earlier water-can, late 14c.); watering-hole is from 1882 (earlier water-hole, 1670s, watering-place, mid-15c.); by 1965 in the figurative sense "place where people meet and socialize over drinks."