英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

alcove [alcove 词源字典]: alcove: [17] Alcove is of Arabic origin. It reached English, via French alcôve and Spanish alcoba (where it means ‘recessed area for a bed’), from Arabic al-qobbah ‘the arch, the vault’, hence ‘the vaulted room’, which was derived from the verb qubba ‘vault’.
[alcove etymology, alcove origin, 英语词源]
apse: apse: [19] Apse ‘vaulted recess in a church’ is an anglicization of Latin apsis. This was a borrowing of Greek apsís or hapsís, which meant literally ‘a fastening together’ (it was derived from the verb háptein ‘join’). The notion that underlies its application to a vaulted space seems to be the joining together of arcs to form a circle; an early Greek use was as a ‘felloe’, part of the rim of a wheel, and this later came to mean, by extension, the wheel itself.

Further metaphoricization led to the sense ‘orbit’, and, more semicircularly, ‘arch’ or ‘vault’. The Latin/Greek form apsis itself was borrowed into English at the beginning of the 17th century, and remains in use as a technical term in astronomy, ‘extreme point of an orbit’.
camera: camera: [18] Latin camera originally meant ‘vaulted room’ (a sense preserved in the Radcliffe Camera, an 18th-century building housing part of Oxford University library, which has a vaulted roof). It came from Greek kamárā ‘vault, arch’, which is ultimately related to English chimney. In due course the meaning ‘vaulted room’ became weakened to simply ‘room’, which reached English, via Old French chambre, as chamber, and is preserved in the legal Latin phrase in camera ‘privately, in judge’s chambers’.

In the 17th century, an optical instrument was invented consisting of a small closed box with a lens fixed in one side which produced an image of external objects on the inside of the box. The same effect could be got in a small darkened room, and so the device was called a camera obscura ‘dark chamber’. When the new science of photography developed in the 19th century, using the basic principle of the camera obscura, camera was applied to the picture-forming box.
=> chamber, chimney
chamber: chamber: [13] The ultimate source of chamber is Greek kamárā ‘something with an arched cover, room with a vaulted roof’. This passed into Latin as camara or camera (source of English camera), and in Old French became transformed into chambre, the immediate source of the English word. Related forms in English include comrade (from Spanish camarada), originally ‘someone sharing a room’; chamberlain [13], which was originally coined in the West Germanic language of the Franks as *kamerling using the diminutive suffix -ling, and came into English via Old French chamberlenc; and chimney.
=> camera, chamberlain, chimney
chimney: chimney: [14] Greek kámīnos meant ‘furnace’ (it was related to kamárā ‘vaulted room’, source of English camera and chamber). It was borrowed into Latin as camīnus, from which the adjective camīnātus ‘having a furnace, oven, etc’ was derived. By late Latin times this had become a noun, camīnāta, which passed into Old French as cheminee, and thence into English. The original meanings ‘fireplace’ and ‘stove’ persisted until the 19th century, but already in Old French the sense ‘flue’ had developed, which was finally to win out.
=> camera, chamber
convex: convex: [16] Convex was borrowed from Latin convexus, mainly an architectural term meaning ‘arched, vaulted’. The element -vexus probably came from vehere ‘carry’ (source of English vehicle), the notion being that vaults are ‘carried together’ (Latin com- ‘together’) to meet at a point at the centre of a roof, although some have speculated that it is related to Latin vārus ‘bent, knock-kneed’ (source of English prevaricate).
=> vehicle, vex
fornication: fornication: [13] Latin fornix denoted an ‘arch’ or ‘vault’, and hence came to be used in the late republican period for the sort of vaulted underground dwellings where the dregs of Roman society – tramps, prostitutes, petty criminals, etc – lived. Early Christian writers homed in on the prostitutes, and employed the term with the specific meaning ‘brothel’, whence the verb fornicārī ‘have illicit sexual intercourse’ and its derivative fornicatiō, source of English fornication.
vault: vault: Vault ‘arched roof’ [14] and vault ‘jump’ [16] are distinct words, although they share a common ancestor: Latin volvere ‘roll, turn’ (source also of English involve, revolve, etc). Its feminine past participle volūta evolved in Vulgar Latin into *volta, which was used as a noun meaning ‘turn’, hence ‘curved roof’.

English acquired it via Old French voute or vaute. The use of vaulted ceilings in underground rooms led in the 16th century to the application of vault to ‘burial chamber’. Also from volvere came Vulgar Latin *volvitāre ‘turn a horse’, hence ‘leap, gambol’. This passed via Italian voltare and French volter into English as vault.
=> involve, revolve, volume
alcove (n.): 1670s, "vaulted recess," from French alcôve (17c.), from Spanish alcoba, from Arabic al-qobbah "the vaulted chamber," from Semitic base q-b-b "to be bent, crooked, vaulted."
author (n.): c. 1300, autor "father," from Old French auctor, acteor "author, originator, creator, instigator (12c., Modern French auteur), from Latin auctorem (nominative auctor) "enlarger, founder, master, leader," literally "one who causes to grow," agent noun from auctus, past participle of augere "to increase" (see augment). Meaning "one who sets forth written statements" is from late 14c. The -t- changed to -th- 16c. on mistaken assumption of Greek origin.
...[W]riting means revealing onesself to excess .... This is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why even night is not night enough. ... I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp. Food would be brought and always put down far away from my room, outside the cellar's outermost door. The walk to my food, in my dressing gown, through the vaulted cellars, would be my only exercise. I would then return to my table, eat slowly and with deliberation, then start writing again at once. And how I would write! From what depths I would drag it up! [Franz Kafka]
camera (n.): 1708, "vaulted building," from Latin camera "vaulted room" (source of Italian camera, Spanish camara, French chambre), from Greek kamara "vaulted chamber."

The word also was used early 18c. as a short form of Modern Latin camera obscura "dark chamber" (a black box with a lens that could project images of external objects), contrasted with camera lucida (Latin for "light chamber"), which uses prisms to produce on paper beneath the instrument an image, which can be traced. It became the word for "picture-taking device" when modern photography began, c. 1840 (extended to television filming devices 1928). Camera-shy is attested from 1890. Old Church Slavonic komora, Lithuanian kamara, Old Irish camra all are borrowings from Latin.
concave (adj.): early 15c., from Old French concave (14c.) or directly from Latin concavus "hollow, arched, vaulted, curved," from com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + cavus "hollow" (see cave (n.)).
convex (adj.): 1570s, from Middle French convexe, from Latin convexus "vaulted, arched," past participle of convehere "to bring together," from com- "together," or "thoroughly" (see com-) + vehere "to bring" (see vehicle). Possibly from the idea of vaults carried together to meet at the point of a roof. Related: Convexity. Convex lens is from 1822.
dome (n.): "round, vaulted roof," 1650s, from French dome (16c.), from Provençal doma, from Greek doma "house, housetop" (especially a style of roof from the east), related to domos "house" (see domestic).

In the Middle Ages, German dom and Italian duomo were used for "cathedral" (on the notion of "God's house"), so English began to use this word in the sense "cupola," an architectural feature characteristic of Italian cathedrals. Used in U.S. also with reference to round summits of mountains.
fornication (n.): c. 1300, from Old French fornicacion "fornication, lewdness; prostitution; idolatry" (12c.), from Late Latin fornicationem (nominative fornicatio), noun of action from past participle stem of fornicari "to fornicate," from Latin fornix (genitive fornicis) "brothel" (Juvenal, Horace), originally "arch, vaulted chamber, a vaulted opening, a covered way," probably an extension, based on appearance, from a source akin to fornus "brick oven of arched or domed shape" (see furnace). Strictly, "voluntary sex between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman;" extended in the Bible to adultery. The sense extension in Latin is perhaps because Roman prostitutes commonly solicited from under the arches of certain buildings.
fornix (n.): from 1680s in reference to various arched formations (especially in anatomy), from Latin fornix "arch, vaulted chamber, cellar, vaulted opening" (see fornication).
pole-vault (n.): 1877, from pole (n.1) + vault (n.2). As a verb from 1892 (implied in pole-vaulting). Related: Pole-vaulted.
thalamus (n.): plural thalami, 1753, "the receptacle of a flower," Modern Latin, from Latin thalamus "inner chamber, sleeping room" (hence, figuratively, "marriage, wedlock"), from Greek thalamos "inner chamber, bedroom," related to thalame "den, lair," tholos "vault, vaulted building." Used in English since 1756 of a part of the forebrain where a nerve appears to originate.
vault (n.1): "arched roof or ceiling," c. 1300, vaute, from Old French voute "arch, vaulting, vaulted roof or chamber," from Vulgar Latin *volta, contraction of *volvita, noun use of fem. of *volvitus, alteration of Latin volutus "bowed, arched," past participle of volvere "to turn, turn around, roll" (see volvox). The -l- appeared in English c. 1400, an etymological insertion in imitation of earlier forms (compare fault (n.)).
vault (v.1): "jump or leap over," especially by aid of the hands or a pole, 1530s, transitive (implied in vaulting); 1560s, intransitive, from Middle French volter "to gambol, leap," from Italian voltare "to turn," from Vulgar Latin *volvitare "to turn, leap," frequentative of Latin volvere "to turn, turn around, roll" (see volvox). Related: Vaulted; vaulting.
vault (v.2): "to form with a vault or arched roof," late 14c., from Old French vaulter, volter, from voute "arch, vaulted roof" (see vault (n.1)). Related: Vaulted; vaulting.