英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

anaconda [anaconda 词源字典]: anaconda: [18] The term anaconda has a confused history. It appears to come from Sinhalese henakandayā, literally ‘lightningstem’, which referred to a type of slender green snake. This was anglicized as anaconda by the British naturalist John Ray, who in a List of Indian serpents 1693 described it as a snake which ‘crushed the limbs of buffaloes and yoke beasts’.

And the 1797 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica notes it as a ‘very large and terrible snake [from Ceylon] which often devours the unfortunate traveller alive’. However, in the early 19th century the French zoologist François Marie Daudin for no known reason transferred the name to a large South American snake of the boa family, and that application has since stuck.
[anaconda etymology, anaconda origin, 英语词源]
banyan: banyan: [17] Banyan originally meant ‘Hindu trader’. It is an arabization of Gujarati vāniyān ‘traders’, which comes ultimately from Sanskrit vanija ‘merchant’ (the Portuguese version, banian, produced an alternative English spelling). When European travellers first visited Bandar Abbas, a port on the Persian Gulf, they found there a pagoda which the banyans had built in the shade of a large Indian fig tree. They immediately applied the name banyan to this particular tree, and the term later widened to include all such trees.
bound: bound: English has no fewer than four separate words bound. The only one which goes back to Old English is the adjective, meaning ‘obliged’ or ‘destined’, which comes from the past participle of bind (in Old English this was bunden, which survives partially in ‘bounden duty’). Next oldest is the adjective meaning ‘going or intending to go’ [13]. Originally meaning ‘ready’, this was borrowed from Old Norse búinn, the past participle of búa ‘prepare’, which derived from the same ultimate source (the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell, cultivate’) as be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, bye-law, and byre.

The final -d of bound, which appeared in the 16th century, is probably due to association with bound ‘obliged’. Virtually contemporary is the noun bound ‘border, limit’ [13]. It originally meant ‘landmark’, and came via Anglo-Norman bounde from early Old French bodne (source also of Old French borne, from which English got bourn, as in Hamlet’s ‘undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’).

Its ultimate source was medieval Latin bodina, perhaps from a prehistoric Gaulish *bodina. Boundary [17] seems to have been formed from the dialectal bounder, an agent noun derived from the verb bound ‘form the edge or limit of’. Finally, bound ‘leap’ [16] comes from Old French bondir. It originally meant ‘rebound’ in English (rebound [14] began as an Old French derivative of bondir), but this physical sense was a metaphorical transference from an earlier sense related to sound.

Old French bondir ‘resound’ came from Vulgar Latin *bombitīre ‘hum’, which itself was a derivative of Latin bombus ‘booming sound’ (source of English bomb).
=> band, bend, bind, bond, bundle; be, boor, booth, bower, build, burly, byre, neighbour; boundary, bourn; bomb, rebound
caravan: caravan: [16] Caravans have no etymological connection with cars, nor with char-a-bancs. The word comes ultimately from Persian kārwān ‘group of desert travellers’, and came into English via French caravane. Its use in English for ‘vehicle’ dates from the 17th century, but to begin with it referred to a covered cart for carrying passengers and goods (basis of the shortened form van [19]), and in the 19th century it was used for the basic type of thirdclass railway carriage; its modern sense of ‘mobile home’ did not develop until the late 19th century. Caravanserai ‘inn for accommodating desert caravans’ [16] comes from Persian kārwānserāī: serāī means ‘palace, inn’, and was the source, via Italian, of seraglio ‘harem’ [16].
=> caravanserai, van
drub: drub: [17] Drub appears to have been introduced to the English language by Sir Thomas Herbert (1606–82), a traveller in the Orient, who used the word several times in his Relation of some yeares travaile into Afrique and the greater Asia 1634: ‘[The pasha] made the Petitioner be almost drub’d to death’. It came from Arabic dáraraba, which meant not just ‘beat’, but also specifically ‘bastinado’ – ‘beat on the soles of the feet as a punishment or torture’.
knapsack: knapsack: [17] The -sack of knapsack is no doubt essentially the same word as English sack, but the knap- presents slightly more of a problem. The term was borrowed from Low German knappsack, and so probably knapprepresents Low German knappen ‘eat’ – the bag having originally been named because it carried a traveller’s supply of food.
orang-utan: orang-utan: [17] Malay ōrang ūtan means literally ‘wild man’. It probably originated as a term used by those who lived in open, more densely populated areas for the ‘uncivilized’ tribes who lived in the forest, but was taken by early European travellers to refer to the large red-haired ape that inhabits the same forests. The word may well have reached English via Dutch.
pal: pal: [17] Pal is a Travellers’ contribution to English. It was borrowed from British Romany pal ‘brother, friend’, an alteration of continental Romany pral. This was descended ultimately from Sanskrit bhrátar- ‘brother’, a member of the same Indo-European word-family as English brother.
=> brother
pilgrim: pilgrim: [12] Etymologically, a pilgrim is someone who goes on a journey. The word comes via Provençal pelegrin from Latin peregrīnus ‘foreign’. This was a derivative of pereger ‘on a journey, abroad’, a compound formed from per ‘through’ and ager ‘country’ (source of English agriculture). When it arrived in English it was still being used for ‘traveller’ (a sense which survives in the related peregrinations [16]), but the specific ‘one who journeys for religious purposes’ was well established by the 13th century.

The peregrine falcon [14] got its name because falconers took its young for hunting while they were ‘journeying’ from their breeding places, rather than from their nests.
=> peregrine
polo: polo: [19] In Balti, a Tibetan language of northern Kashmir, polo means ‘ball’. English travellers in Kashmir in the 1840s observed a game being played on horseback which involved trying to knock a wooden polo into a goal using a longhandled mallet. The English sahibs lost no time in taking the game up themselves, and by 1871 it was being played back home in England, under the name ‘polo’.
sphinx: sphinx: [16] The original Sphinx was a monster, half woman and half lion, which terrorized the country around Thebes in ancient Greece. According to legend, it would waylay travellers and ask them a riddle; and if they could not solve it, it killed them. One of its favoured methods was strangulation, and its name supposedly means ‘the strangler’ – as if it were derived from Greek sphíggein ‘bind tight’ (source of English sphincter [16]).

However, this account of its name sounds as mythological as the account of its existence, and a more likely explanation is perhaps that the word was derived from the name of Mount Phikion, not far from ancient Thebes. One of the first yachts to carry a spinnaker sail, in the mid-1860s, was the Sphinx, and it has been conjectured that its name (or rather a mispronunciation /spingks/) formed the basis of the term spinnaker [19], perhaps as a partial blend with spanker, the name of another type of sail.
=> spinnaker
sputnik: sputnik: [20] Russian sputnik means literally ‘travelling companion’ (it is formed from s ‘with’ and put ‘way, journey’, with the agent suffix -nik). The Soviets gave the name to the series of Earth-orbiting satellites that they launched between 1957 and 1961. The first bleeps from space in October 1957 came as a severe shock to the West, which had not thought Soviet science capable of such a thing, and immediately propelled sputnik into the English language (the politically charged English version ‘fellow traveller’, which is more strictly a translation of Russian popútchik, was tried for a time, but never caught on).

It became one of the ‘in’ words of the late 1950s, and did much to popularize the suffix -nik in English (as in beatnik and peacenik).
wallet: wallet: [19] Etymologically, a wallet may be something ‘rolled’ up. The word originally denoted a ‘traveller’s pack’; its application to a ‘small flat case for money and papers’ arose in 19th-century American English. It was probably borrowed from an Anglo-Norman *walet, which could have been formed from the prehistoric Germanic base *wal- ‘roll’ (source also of English wallow).
Christopher: masc. proper name, Church Latin Christophoros, from Ecclesiastical Greek khristophoros, literally "Christ-bearing;" from phoros "bearer," from pherein "to carry" (see infer). In medieval legend he was a giant (one of the rare virtuous ones) who aided travellers by carrying them across a river. Medallions with his image worn by travellers are known from the Middle Ages (Chaucer's Yeoman had one). Not a common name in medieval England.
Hesperus: late 14c., poetic for "the evening star," from Latin Hesperus, from Greek hesperos (aster) "western (star)," from PIE *wes-pero- "evening, night" (see vesper). Hence also Hesperides (1590s), from Greek, "daughters of the West," the nymphs (variously numbered but originally three) who tended the garden with the golden apples. Their name has been mistakenly transferred to the garden itself.
The Hesperides were daughters of Atlas, an enormous giant, who, as the ancients believed, stood upon the western confines of the earth, and supported the heavens on his shoulders. Their mother was Hesperis, a personification of the "region of the West," where the sun continued to shine after he had set on Greece, and where, as travellers told, was an abundance of choice delicious fruits, which could only have been produced by a special divine influence. The Gardens of the Hesperides with the golden apples were believed to exist in some island in the ocean, or, as it was sometimes thought, in the islands on the north or west coast of Africa. They were far-famed in antiquity; for it was there that springs of nectar flowed by the couch of Zeus, and there that the earth displayed the rarest blessings of the gods; it was another Eden. As knowledge increased with regard to western lands, it became necessary to move this paradise farther and farther out into the Western Ocean. [Alexander Murray, "Manual of Mythology," 1888]
Nebraska: U.S. territory organized 1854, admitted as a state 1867, from a native Siouan name for the Platte River, either Omaha ni braska or Oto ni brathge, both literally "water flat." The modern river name is from French rivière platte, which means "flat river." Related: Nebraskan.
Bug eaters, a term applied derisively to the inhabitants of Nebraska by travellers on account of the poverty-stricken appearance of many parts of the State. If one living there were to refuse to eat bugs, he would, like Polonius, soon be "not where he eats but where he is eaten." [Walsh, 1892]
traveler (n.): also traveller, late 14c., agent noun from travel (v.). Traveler's check is from 1891.
aeronaut: "A traveller in a hot-air balloon, airship, or other flying craft", Late 18th century: from French aéronaute, from Greek aēr 'air' + nautēs 'sailor'. More see asterisk, nausea
Procrustes: "A robber who forced travellers to lie on a bed and made them fit it by stretching their limbs or cutting off the appropriate length of leg. Theseus killed him in like manner", From Greek prokroustēs, literally 'stretcher', from prokrouein 'beat out'.
Germanism: "An idiom, grammatical construction, word, or other linguistic feature particular to German, especially one used or adopted in another language", Early 17th cent.; earliest use found in Thomas Coryate (?1577–1617), traveller and writer. From German + -ism. Compare post-classical Latin germanismus.
agathodemon: "A beneficent spirit or divinity, especially one manifested or depicted as a serpent or dragon", Mid 18th cent.; earliest use found in Thomas Shaw (1694–1751), traveller. From (i) post-classical Latin agathodaemon kind of Egyptian serpent.
pikey: "A Gypsy or Traveller", Mid 19th century: from an old sense of pike, 'a road on which a toll is collected'.
subangular: "Somewhat or slightly angular; having an obtuse angle", Late 18th cent.; earliest use found in Thomas Pennant (1726–1798), naturalist, traveller, and writer. From post-classical Latin subangularis from classical Latin sub- + angulāris.
predicatory: "Of, relating to, or characteristic of a preacher or preaching; involving or derived from preaching", Early 17th cent.; earliest use found in Thomas Coryate (?1577–1617), traveller and writer. From post-classical Latin praedicatorius laudatory, of or relating to preaching from classical Latin praedicātor + -ius, suffix forming adjectives; compare -ory.