英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

cake [cake 词源字典]: cake: [13] Originally, cake was a term for a flat round loaf of bread (it is this ‘shape’ element in its meaning that lies behind more modern usages such as ‘cake of soap’). It is not until the 15th century that we find it being applied to foodstuffs we would now recognize as cakes, made with butter, eggs, and some sort of sweetening agent. English borrowed the word from Old Norse kaka; it is related to cookie (from Dutch koekje), but not, despite the similarity, to cook. The expression piece of cake ‘something easy’ seems to have originated in the 1930s.
=> cookie[cake etymology, cake origin, 英语词源]
doily: doily: [17] In the latter part of the 17th century a certain Mr Doily kept a celebrated draper’s shop in the Strand, London, not too far from where the Aldwych now is (‘The famous Doily is still fresh in every one’s Memory, who raised a Fortune by finding out Materials for such Stuffs as might be at once cheap and genteel’, Spectator 1712). He gave his name first to a sort of light fabric used for summer wear (‘Some Doily Petticoats and Manto’s we have’, John Dryden, Kind Keeper 1678) and then, early in the 18th century, to a variety of ornamental table napkin (‘After dinner we had coarse Doily-napkins, fringed at each end, upon the table to drink with’, Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella 1711).
ginger: ginger: [OE] Few foodstuffs can have been as exhaustively etymologized as ginger – Professor Alan Ross, for instance, begetter of the U/non-U distinction, wrote an entire 74-page monograph on the history of the word in 1952. And deservedly so, for its ancestry is extraordinarily complex. Its ultimate source was Sanskrit śrngavēram, a compound formed from śrngam ‘horn’ and vẽra- ‘body’; the term was applied to ‘ginger’ because of the shape of its edible root.

This passed via Prakrit singabēra and Greek ziggíberis into Latin as zinziberi. In postclassical times the Latin form developed to gingiber or gingiver, which Old English borrowed as gingifer. English reborrowed the word in the 13th century from Old French gingivre, which combined with the descendant of the Old English form to produce Middle English gingivere – whence modern English ginger.

Its verbal use, as in ‘ginger up’, appears to come from the practice of putting a piece of ginger into a lazy horse’s anus to make it buck its ideas up.
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
chip (n.1): Old English cipp "piece of wood," perhaps from PIE root *keipo- "sharp post" (cognates: Dutch kip "small strip of wood," Old High German kipfa "wagon pole," Old Norse keppr "stick," Latin cippus "post, stake, beam;" the Germanic words perhaps borrowed from Latin).

Meaning "counter used in a game of chance" is first recorded 1840; electronics sense is from 1962. Used for thin slices of foodstuffs (originally fruit) since 1769; specific reference to potatoes is found by 1859 (in "A Tale of Two Cities"); potato chip is attested by 1879. Meaning "piece of dried dung" first attested 1846, American English.

Chip of the old block is used by Milton (1642); earlier form was chip of the same block (1620s); more common modern phrase with off in place of of is early 20c. To have a chip on one's shoulder is 1830, American English, from the custom of a boy determined to fight putting a wood chip on his shoulder and defying another to knock it off. When the chips are down (1940s) is from the chips being down on the table after the final bets are made in a poker match.
ergotism (n.): "disease caused by eating ergot-infected breadstuffs," 1816; see ergot + -ism.
foodstuff (n.): "substance or material suitable for food," 1870, from food + stuff (n.). Related: Foodstuffs.
manmade (adj.): also man-made, c. 1718, from man (n.) + made. In early use typically of institutions, etc., and opposed to what is natural or god-made. Of fibers, foodstuffs, etc., from mid-20c.
perishable (adj.): late 15c., perysabyl, from Middle French périssable, and later (in modern form), 1610s, directly from perish + -able. As a noun, perishables, in reference to foodstuffs, is attested from 1895.
substitute (n.): "one who acts in place of another," early 15c., from Middle French substitut (noun use) and directly from Latin substitutus, past participle of substituere "put in place of another" (see substitution). Military draft sense is from 1777, American English. Team sports sense is from 1849. Of foodstuffs, from 1879. As an adjective from early 15c.