英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

avalanche [avalanche 词源字典]: avalanche: [18] Not surprisingly, avalanche originated in the Alps. The French dialect of Savoy, an area near the Italian border in the western Alps, had a term lavantse, apparently derived from a Vulgar Latin *labanca (whence Provençal lavanca). Through association with the verb avaler ‘descend’ (see DOWN), this underwent metathesis (transposition of l and v) to produce in the Romansh language of Switzerland avalantze, which was borrowed into French as avalanche.
[avalanche etymology, avalanche origin, 英语词源]
axle: axle: [17] The word axle emerges surprisingly late considering the antiquity of axles, but related terms had existed in the language for perhaps a thousand years. Old English had eax, which came from a hypothetical Germanic *akhsō, related to Latin axis. This survived in the compound ax-tree until the 17th century (later in Scotland); tree in this context meant ‘beam’.

But from the early 14th century the native ax-tree began to be ousted by Old Norse öxultré (or as it became in English axle-tree); the element öxull came from a prehistoric Germanic *akhsulaz, a derivative of *akhsō. Axle first appeared on its own in the last decade of the 16th century (meaning ‘axis’, a sense it has since lost), and became firmly established in the early 17th century.
brick: brick: [15] For what is today such a common phenomenon, the word brick made a surprisingly late entry into the English language. But of course until the later Middle Ages, bricks were very little used in Britain. It was not until the mid-15th century that they were introduced by Flemish builders, and they appear to have brought the word, Middle Dutch bricke, with them. The ultimate source of the word is not clear, although some have tried to link it with break.
cabin: cabin: [14] English acquired cabin from Old French cabane, which had it via Provençal cabana from late Latin capanna or cavanna ‘hut, cabin’. Surprisingly, despite their formal and semantic similarity, which has grown closer together over the centuries, cabin has no ultimate connection with cabinet [16], whose immediate source is French cabinet [16], whose immediate source is French cabinet ‘small room’.

The etymology of the French word is disputed; some consider it to be a diminutive form of Old Northern French cabine ‘gambling house’, while others take it as a borrowing from Italian gabbinetto, which perhaps ultimately comes from Latin cavea ‘stall, coop, cage’ (from which English gets cage). Its modern political sense derives from a 17th-century usage ‘private room in which the sovereign’s advisors or council meet’; the body that met there was thus called the Cabinet Council, which quickly became simply Cabinet.
carry: carry: [14] For such a basic and common word, carry has a surprisingly brief history. It does not go back to some prehistoric Indo-European root, but was formed less than 1000 years ago in Anglo-Norman or Old Northern French, on the basis of carre or car (immediate source of English car). The verb carier thus meant literally ‘transport in a wheeled vehicle’. This sense was carried over into English, and though it has since largely given way to the more general ‘convey’, it is preserved in the derivative carriage, in such expressions as ‘carriage paid’.
=> car, carriage
cede: cede: [17] Cede comes, either directly or via French céder, from Latin cēdere ‘go away, withdraw, yield’. The Latin verb provided the basis for a surprisingly wide range of English words: the infinitive form produced, for instance, accede, concede, precede, proceed, and succeed, while the past participle cessus has given ancestor, cease, excess, recession, etc.
=> accede, ancestor, cease, concession, excess, necessary, proceed, recession, succeed
cemetery: cemetery: [14] Not surprisingly for a word having associations with death, cemetery’s origins are euphemistic. It comes via late Latin coemētērium from Greek koimētérion, which originally meant ‘dormitory’ (it was a derivative of the verb koiman ‘put to sleep’); it was apparently early Greek Christian writers who first applied the word to burial grounds.
child: child: [OE] For a word of so central importance, child is surprisingly isolated, having no known living relatives in other Germanic languages. Its prehistoric Germanic ancestor has been reconstructed as *kiltham, which some have linked with Gothic kilthei ‘womb’ and even with Sanskrit jathara ‘belly’. The plural children is not an original feature; it developed in the 12th century. In earliest Old English times the plural was unchanged, like sheep.
Christian: Christian: [16] Christian is derived, of course, from the name of Christ. It is a surprisingly recent word, having been introduced in the 16th century from Latin Chrīstiānus, replacing the existing English adjective christen, which came from Old English crīsten. The latter was the basis of the Old English verb crīstnian, from which we get modern English christen.

The name Christ itself was borrowed into Old English from Latin Chrīstus, which in turn came from Greek Khrīstós. This meant literally ‘anointed’, and came from the verb khríein ‘anoint’. It was a direct translation of Hebrew māshīah (source of English messiah), which also meant literally ‘anointed’. Christmas comes from late Old English crīstes mæsse, literally ‘Christ’s mass’.
=> cretin
coarse: coarse: [14] For such an everyday word, the origins of coarse are surprisingly clouded. It first appears in the forms corse or course, and meaning ‘ordinary, everyday’, which has led to speculation that it is an application of the noun course, in the sense ‘the ordinary run of things, the usual practice’; however, not all etymologists accept this. The modern spelling coarse became established in the 18th century.
contact: contact: [17] The underlying notion of contact is not surprisingly one of ‘touching’. It comes ultimately from Latin tangere ‘touch’, source of English tactile, tangent, and tangible. Using the prefix com- ‘together’ this was formed into a compound verb contangere ‘touch, border on’, whose past participle contāctus was borrowed into English, originally as a noun (its use as a verb is a surprisingly late development, which did not happen until the late 19th century). Also derived from Latin contangere is contagion [14], and contaminate is probably related.
=> contagion, contaminate, tactile, tangent, tangible
cool: cool: [OE] Cool comes from the same source as cold, namely Indo-European *gel-, *gol- (from which English also gets congeal, gel, and jelly). The Germanic descendants of this Indo- European base were *kal-, *kōl-. From these were derived the Germanic adjective *kōluz, which passed into Old English as cōl. Its use for ‘fashionable, hip’ is mid-20th-century, but its nonchalant application to large sums of money is of surprisingly long standing: ‘I just made a couple of bets with him, took up a cool hundred, and so went to the King’s Arms’, John Vanbrugh and Colly Cibber, The Provok’d Husband 1728.
=> cold, congeal, gel, jelly
crenellate: crenellate: [19] The 19th century seems a surprisingly late date for English to have acquired a term so closely associated with medieval battlements, but it is a little misleading. For essentially the same word entered the language in the 13th century as kernel. Both come ultimately from late Latin crēna ‘notch’ (probable source also of English cranny [15]). In Vulgar Latin this developed the diminutive form *crenellus, metathesized in medieval Latin as kernellus.
=> cranny
do: do: [OE] Not surprisingly, do is a verb of great antiquity. It goes back to the Indo-European base *dhē- (source also of English deed and doom), which signified ‘place, put’. This sense remains uppermost in descendants such as Sanskrit dhāand Greek títhēmi (related to English theme), but a progression to ‘make, do’ shows itself in Latin facere (source of English fact and a host of other words) and West Germanic *dōn. ‘Make’ is now the central signification of English do, although traces of the earlier ‘put, place’ survive in such fossilized forms as don and doff, and ‘do someone to death’.

Other Germanic relatives include German tun and Dutch doen, but the Scandinavian languages have not adopted the verb, preferring instead for ‘do’ one which originally meant ‘make ready’ (Danish gøre, Swedish gåra) and which is related to English gear.
=> deed, doom, fact, fashion, theme
druid: druid: [16] Druid is, not surprisingly, of Celtic origin, although English probably acquired it via French druide or the Latin plural druides. The source of these forms was Gaulish druides, which came ultimately from Old Celtic *derwíjes. There are two opposing theories on the derivation of this: one is that it comes from an Old Celtic adjective derwos ‘true’ (source of Welsh derw ‘true’), in which case its etymological meaning would be ‘someone who says the truth’ (a parallel formation to English soothsayer); the other is that it was formed from the Old Celtic base *dru- ‘tree’ (source of Welsh derwen and Irish daur ‘oak-tree’ and related to Greek drus ‘oak’ and English tree) in reference to the central role played by oak-trees in druidic ceremonies.
egg: egg: English has two distinct words egg, but surprisingly the noun, in the form in which we now have it, has not been in the language as long as the verb. Egg ‘reproductive body’ [14] was borrowed from Old Norse egg. Old English had a related word, ǣg, which survived until the 16th century as eye (plural eyren). Although it does not begin to show up in the written records until the 14th century, the form egg was presumably introduced into English by Norse immigrants considerably earlier, but even so, as late as the end of the 15th century there was still considerable competition between the native eye and the imported egg: ‘What sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren, certaynly it is harde to playse every man’, William Caxton, Eneydos 1490.

Both the Old English and the Old Norse forms came from a prehistoric Germanic *ajjaz (source also of German and Dutch ei). This in turn was a descendant of an Indo- European *ōwo- (whence Greek ōión, Latin ōvum, French oeuf, Italian uovo, Spanish huevo, and Russian jajco), which was probably derived ultimately from a base signifying ‘bird’ (source of Sanskrit vís and Latin avis ‘bird’, the ancestor of English aviary). Egg ‘incite’ [10], as in ‘egg on’, is a Scandinavian borrowing too.

It comes from Old Norse eggja, which was a relative or derivative of egg ‘edge’ (a cousin of English edge).
=> aviary; edge
ever: ever: [OE] For such a common and longestablished word, the origins of ever are surprisingly obscure. It has no relatives in other Germanic languages, so it must be a purely English creation. Its first element probably comes from Germanic *aiwō (which is also represented in English aye ‘ever’ [12] and either, and is related to Latin aevum ‘age’, source of English eternal).

The second element is a puzzle, though. Candidates that have been put forward include Old English feorh ‘life’ (thus, ‘ever in life’) and Old English byre ‘occasion’ (giving the underlying sense ‘on any occasion’). Never was formed in the Old English period with the negative particle ne.
=> aye, either, eternal
exist: exist: [17] The ‘existential’ use of exist is a secondary development; to begin with it had the more concrete meaning ‘stand out, so as to be perceptible’. It comes from Latin existere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and sistere ‘be placed, stand firm or still’ (a distant relative of English stand). Its original sense ‘stand out, stand forth’ developed through ‘emerge’ and ‘be visible’ to ‘exist’. The available evidence suggests that it entered English at a surprisingly late date, some centuries after the derivative existence [14] (of which the English verb may be a backformation).
=> stand, statue
farm: farm: [13] The specifically agricultural connotations of farm are surprisingly recent. The word comes ultimately from Latin firmāre ‘make firm, fix’, which produced a medieval Latin derived noun firma, denoting ‘fixed payment’. English acquired the word via Old French ferme, and originally used it in just this sense (‘I will each of them all have 4d to drink when they pay their farm’, Bury Wills 1463); something of this early sense is preserved in the verbal usage farm out, which to begin with signified ‘rent out’.

By the 16th century the noun was shifting semantically from ‘fixed (rental) payment’ to ‘land leased for such payment, for the purpose of cultivation’, but only very gradually did the notion of a farm being specifically a leased piece of land die out.
=> firm
feather: feather: [OE] The concept of ‘feathers’ is closely bound up with those of ‘wings’ and ‘flying’, and not surprisingly feather belongs to a word family in which all three of these meanings are represented. Its ultimate source is the prehistoric Indo-European base *pet-, which also produced Greek ptéron ‘wing’ (as in English pterodactyl), Latin penna ‘feather, wing’ (source of English pen), and Sanskrit pátati ‘fly’. Its Germanic descendant was *fethrō, from which came German feder, Dutch veer, Swedish fjäder and English feather (itself used in the plural for ‘wings’ in Anglo-Saxon times).
=> pen, pterodactyl
glove: glove: [OE] Not surprisingly, most words for ‘glove’ in European languages are related in some way to words for ‘hand’; German handschuh and Dutch handschoen, for example, mean literally ‘handshoe’; Greek kheirís was derived from kheíris ‘hand’; and Romanian manusa was based on Latin manus ‘hand’. And glove appears to be no exception; it probably goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *galōfō, in which *ga- was a collective prefix and lōfō meant ‘hand’ (Swedish dialect loof ‘palm of the hand’ comes from it).
grape: grape: [13] Not surprisingly, given the northerliness of the British Isles, English does not have its own native word for ‘grape’. In Old English it was was called wīnberige, literally ‘wineberry’, and the Old French word grape which Middle English borrowed as grape meant ‘bunch of grapes’, not ‘grape’. It was probably a derivative of the verb graper ‘gather grapes’, which itself was based on the noun grape ‘hook’ (a relative of English cramp, crampon, and grapnel [14]).

The underlying notion is of a bunch of grapes being gathered with a sort of pruning hook. (The use of a word that originally meant ‘bunch’ for ‘grape’ is in fact fairly common: Czech hrozen, Romanian stugure, German traube, and Lithuanian keke all follow the same pattern, as does French raisin, source of English raisin.)
=> cramp, crampon, grapnel
hail: hail: Not surprisingly, hail ‘frozen rain’ [OE] and hail ‘call out’ [12] are quite unrelated. The former, together with its German and Dutch relative hagel, comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *hagalaz, which is related ultimately to Greek kákhlēx ‘pebble’. The verb hail is closely related to hale and whole. It comes from the noun hail, which in turn was a nominal use of the now obsolete adjective hail ‘healthy’ (preserved in wassail, literally ‘be healthy’). This was borrowed from heill, the Old Norse counterpart of English whole.
=> hale, wassail, whole
happen: happen: [14] Surprisingly for such a common verb, happen is a comparatively recent addition to the English language. Old English had a number of verbs denoting ‘occurrence’, all long since defunct, including gelimpan and gescēon, and in the 13th century befall began to be used for ‘happen’, but the first signs we see of the coming of happen are when English acquired the noun hap ‘chance, luck’ in the 13th century.

It was borrowed from Old Norse happ, a word of uncertain ancestry but probably related to Old Slavic kobu ‘fate’ and Old Irish cob ‘victory’, and represented in Old English by gehæp ‘fit’. In the 14th century it began to be used as a verb meaning ‘happen by chance’, and hence simply ‘happen’, and before the century was very old it had been extended with the verbal suffix -en to happen.
=> happy, perhaps
hectic: hectic: [14] The use of hectic for referring to ‘great haste or confusion’ is a surprisingly recent development, not recorded before the first decade of the 20th century. It originally meant in English ‘suffering from fever, particularly of the sort that characterizes tuberculosis or septicaemia’ (the metaphorical progression to ‘feverishly active’ is an obvious one). English acquired the word via Old French etique and late Latin hecticus from Greek hektikós, which meant literally ‘habitual’, and hence ‘suffering from a habitual or recurrent fever, consumptive’.

It was a derivative of héxis ‘condition, habit’, which in turn was formed from the verb ékhein ‘hold, be in a particular condition’, which has also given English epoch. (The original English form of the word was etik; hectic represents a 16th-century return to the Latin form.)
jaw: jaw: [14] Given that it is a fairly important part of the body, our knowledge of the origins of the word for ‘jaw’ is surprisingly sketchy. The Old English terms for ‘jaw’ were céace (modern English cheek) and ceafl (ancestor of modern English jowl), and when jaw first turns up towards the end of the 14th century it is in the form iowe. This strongly suggests a derivation from Old French joe ‘cheek’, but the connection has never been established for certain, and many etymologists consider it more likely that it is related to chew.
jungle: jungle: [18] Not surprisingly, jungle is a tropical word, but its ancestor denoted quite the opposite of the lush vegetation it now refers to. It comes from Sanskrit jangala, which originally meant ‘dry’, and hence ‘desert’. Its Hindi descendant jangal was used for an ‘area of wasteland’, and hence ‘such an area overgrown with scrub’, and when it was taken over into Anglo-Indian it was gradually extended to an ‘area of thick tangled trees’.
look: look: [OE] For such a common word, look is surprisingly isolated. It goes back to prehistoric West Germanic *lōkōjan, which has no other descendants in the modern Germanic languages, and its only distant relative is the German verb lugen ‘show, be visible’.
low: low: English has two words low, of which surprisingly the ‘noise made by cattle’ [OE] is the older. It goes back ultimately to the onomatopoeic Indo-European base *klā-. This also produced Latin clārus (which originally meant ‘loud’, and gave English clear and declare), clāmāre ‘cry out’ (source of English acclaim, claim, exclaim, etc), and calāre ‘proclaim, summon’ (source of English council).

It produced a prehistoric Germanic *khlō-, whose only survivor other than English low is Dutch loeien. Low ‘not high’ [12] was borrowed from Old Norse lágr (source also of Swedish låg ‘low’). This goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *lǣgjaz, which was derived from the same base as produced the English verb lie ‘recline’.
=> acclaim, claim, clear, council, exclaim; lie
marzipan: marzipan: [19] The word marzipan has long puzzled etymologists. An elaborate theory was formulated in the early 20th century that traced it back to Arabic mawthabān ‘king who sits still’. That was applied by the Saracens to a medieval Venetian coin with a figure of the seated Christ on it. A series of fairly implausible semantic changes led from ‘coin’ via ‘box’ to ‘confectionery’, while the form of the word supposedly evolved in Italian to marzapane.

This turns out to be completely wide of the mark (not surprisingly), but the truth seems scarcely less remarkable. In Burma (now Myanmar) there is a port called Martaban, which was renowned in the Middle Ages for the jars of preserves and fruits exported from there to Europe. The name of the place came to be associated with its products, and in Italian, as marzapane, it denoted a type of sweetmeat (-pane for -ban suggests that some people subconsciously connected the word with Italian pane ‘bread’). Marzapane and its relatives in other languages (such as early modern French marcepain) entered English in the 16th century, and from the confusion of forms the consensus spelling marchpane emerged.

This remained the standard English word for ‘marzipan’ until the 19th century, when marzipan was borrowed from German; this was an alteration of Italian marzapane, based on the misconception that it came from Latin marci pānis ‘Mark’s bread’.
mosque: mosque: [17] Mosque means etymologically a place where you ‘bow down’ in prayer and is, not surprisingly, of Arabic origin. It comes from Arabic masjid ‘place of worship’, a derivative of the verb sajada ‘bow down’. English acquired the word via Italian moschea and French mosquée as mosquee, but soon dropped the final -e. (The Arabic form masjid or musjid has been intermittently used in English in the 19th and 20th centuries.)
navy: navy: [14] Latin nāvis ‘ship’ is the ultimate source of navy. In post-classical times it spawned an offspring nāvia ‘fleet’, which passed into English via Old French navie. Other Latin derivatives of nāvis were nāvālis, source of English naval [16], and the verb nāvigāre ‘manage a ship’, from which English gets navigate [16] (navvy [19] originated as a colloquial abbreviation for navigator, a term applied to someone who dug ‘navigation canals’).

In medieval Latin nāvis was applied to the central part of a church, from the passing resemblance in shape to a ship, and the word was anglicized as nave [17]. Nāvis was related to Greek naus ‘ship’, whose contributions to English include nautical [16], nautilus [17], nausea [16] (etymologically ‘seasickness’), and, somewhat surprisingly, noise.
=> nausea, nautical, navigate, noise
race: race: For such a common word – or rather two words, for ‘people, population’ [16] and ‘speed competition’ [13] are unrelated – surprisingly little is known about the origins of race. The former comes via French from Italian razza, but the antecedents of razza are obscure. The ‘running’ race originally meant ‘rush’, and was borrowed from Old Norse rás ‘rush, running, race’ – again, of unknown origin.
rise: rise: [OE] Not surprisingly, rise and raise are closely related. Both go back to a common prehistoric Germanic ancestor meaning ‘go up’. This reached English directly as rise, while its causative derivative, meaning ‘cause to go up’, has given English raise, and also rear. The derived arise is of long standing. It is not clear what the word’s ultimate ancestry may be; some have linked it with Latin rīvus ‘stream’ (source of English rivulet), from the notion of a stream ‘rising’ in a particular place.
=> raise, rear
sun: sun: [OE] Not surprisingly, considering the central importance of the sun to human life, the word for it in the vast majority of modern European languages goes back to a common Indo-European source – *sāu- or *su-. These variants have however differentiated into several distinct camps. The *sāu- form adopted an -lsuffix, and evolved into Greek hélios (source of English heliotrope), Latin sōl (whence French soleil, Italian sole, and Spanish sol, not to mention English solar, solarium, etc), Welsh haul, and Swedish and Danish sol.

The *suform with an -l- ending has given Russian solnce, Czech slunce, Serbo-Croat sunce, etc. But the modern West Germanic languages have inherited the *su- form with an -n- suffix, giving German sonne, Dutch zon, and English sun.
=> heliotrope, solar, solarium
surprising (adv.): 1660s, present participle adjective from surprise (v.). Related: Surprisingly.