sterileyoudaoicibaDictYouDict[sterile 词源字典]
sterile: [16] Sterile is a word of ancient ancestry, which goes right back to the prehistoric Indo- European base *ster- (source also of Greek stériphos and Gothic stairō ‘infertile’). The Latin descendant of the base was sterilis, acquired by English via French stérile.
[sterile etymology, sterile origin, 英语词源]
sterile (adj.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
mid-15c., "barren," from Middle French stérile "not producing fruit," from Latin sterilis "barren, unproductive, unfruitful; unrequited; unprofitable," from PIE *ster- (1) "stiff, rigid, firm, strong" (see stereo-). Also see torpor. Originally in English with reference to soil; of persons (chiefly females), from 1530s. The sense of "sterilized, free from living germs" is first recorded 1877.