英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

anachronism [anachronism 词源字典]: anachronism: [17] The Greek prefix anameant ‘up’, and hence, in terms of time, ‘back’; Greek khrónos meant ‘time’ (as in English chronicle): hence Greek anakhronismós ‘reference to a wrong time’. From the point of view of its derivation it should strictly be applied to the representation of something as happening earlier than it really did (as if Christ were painted wearing a wristwatch), but in practice, ever since the Greek term’s adoption into English, it has also been used for things surviving beyond their due time.
=> chronicle[anachronism etymology, anachronism origin, 英语词源]
anacolouthon: anacolouthon: see acolyte
anaconda: 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.
analysis: analysis: [16] The underlying etymological notion contained in analysis is of ‘undoing’ or ‘loosening’, so that the component parts are separated and revealed. The word comes ultimately from Greek análusis, a derivative of the compound verb analúein ‘undo’, which was formed from the prefix ana- ‘up, back’ and the verb lúein ‘loosen, free’ (related to English less, loose, lose, and loss).

It entered English via medieval Latin, and in the 17th century was anglicized to analyse: ‘The Analyse I gave of the contents of this Verse’, Daniel Rogers, Naaman the Syrian 1642. This did not last long, but it may have provided the impetus for the introduction of the verb analyse, which first appeared around 1600; its later development was supported by French analyser.
=> dialysis, less, loose, lose, loss
anathema: anathema: [16] Originally in Greek anáthēma was a ‘votive offering’ (it was a derivative of the compound verb anatithénai ‘set up, dedicate’, formed from the prefix ana- ‘up’ and the verb tithénai ‘place’, source of English theme and related to English do). But from being broadly ‘anything offered up for religious purposes’, the word gradually developed negative associations of ‘something dedicated to evil’; and by the time it reached Latin it meant ‘curse’ or ‘accursed person’.
=> do, theme
anatomy: anatomy: [14] Etymologically, anatomy means ‘cutting up’ (the Greek noun anatomíā was compounded from the prefix ana- ‘up’ and the base *tom-, which figures in several English surgical terms, such as tonsillectomy [19], as well as in atom and tome), and when it first came into English it meant literally ‘dissection’ as well as ‘science of bodily structure’.

From the 16th century to the early 19th century it was also used for ‘skeleton’, and in this sense it was often misanalysed as an atomy, as if the initial anwere the indefinite article: ‘My bones … will be taken up smooth, and white, and bare as an atomy’, Tobias Smollett, Don Quixote 1755.
=> atom, tome
ancestor: ancestor: [13] Ultimately, ancestor is the same word as antecedent [14]: both come from the Latin compound verb antecēdere ‘precede’, formed from the prefix ante- ‘before’ and the verb cēdere ‘go’ (source of English cede and a host of related words, such as proceed and access). Derived from this was the agent noun antecessor ‘one who precedes’, which was borrowed into Old French at two distinct times: first as ancessour, and later as ancestre, which subsequently developed to ancêtre. Middle English had examples of all three of these forms. The modern spelling, ancestor, developed in the 16th century.
=> access, antecedent, cede, precede, proceed
anchor: anchor: [OE] English borrowed this word from Latin in the 9th century, but its ultimate source is Greek ágkūra (which goes back to an Indo- European base *angg- ‘bent’, also the source of angle and ankle). Originally it was spelled ancor, reflecting Latin ancora; the inauthentic h began to creep in in the 16th century, in imitation of the learned-looking but misguided Latin spelling anchora.
=> angle, ankle
anchovy: anchovy: [16] English acquired anchovy from Spanish anchova (the word first turns up as an item on Falstaff’s bill at the Boar’s Head: ‘Anchovies and sack after supper … 2s 6d’, 1 Henry IV 1596), but before that its history is disputed. One school of thought holds that it comes via Italian dialect ancioa from Vulgar Latin *apjua, which in turn was derived from Greek aphúē ‘small fry’; but another connects it with Basque anchu, which may mean literally ‘dried fish’.
ancient: ancient: [14] Like antique, ancient was originally, in Latin, an adjectivized version of the adverb and preposition ‘before’: to ante ‘before’ was added the adjective suffix -ānus, to produce the adjective *anteānus ‘going before’. In Old French this became ancien, and it passed into English via Anglo-Norman auncien. The final -t began to appear in the 15th century, by the same phonetic process as produced it in pageant and tyrant. The now archaic use of ancient as ‘standard, flag’ and as ‘standard-bearer’ (as most famously in Shakespeare’s ‘ancient Pistol’) arose from an alteration of ensign.
=> antique
and: and: [OE] A word as ancient as the English language itself, which has persisted virtually unchanged since at least 700 AD, and has cognates in other Germanic languages (German und, Dutch en), but no convincing ultimate ancestor for it has been identified
anecdote: anecdote: [17] In Greek, anékdotos meant ‘unpublished’. It was formed from the negative prefix an- and ékdotos, which in turn came from the verb didónai ‘give’ (a distant cousin of English donation and date) plus the prefix ek- ‘out’ – hence ‘give out, publish’. The use of the plural anékdota by the 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius as the title of his unpublished memoirs of the life of the Emperor Justinian, which revealed juicy details of court life, played a major part in the subsequent use of Latin anecdota for ‘revelations of secrets’, the sense which anecdote had when it first came into English.

The meaning ‘brief amusing story’ did not develop until the mid 18th century.
=> date, donation
anemone: anemone: [16] The wild wood anemone is sometimes called the wind flower, and this idea may be reflected in its standard name too. For it comes from Greek anemónē, which appears to be a derivative of ánemos ‘wind’ (also the source of English animal and animate). However, it has also been speculated that the Greek word may be an alteration of Hebrew Na’ amān, which was an epithet applied to Adonis, the beautiful youth beloved of Aphrodite from whose blood, according to Greek legend, the anemone sprang after he was killed while boar hunting.

According to this view, anemónē arose from a folk-etymological reformulation of the Hebrew word to make it approximate more closely to the Greek for ‘wind’. The application to sea anemone began in the late 18th century.
=> animal, animate
angel: angel: [12] In a sense, English already had this word in Anglo-Saxon times; texts of around 950 mention englas ‘angels’. But in that form (which had a hard g) it came directly from Latin angelus. The word we use today, with its soft g, came from Old French angele (the ‘hard g’ form survived until the 13th century). The French word was in its turn, of course, acquired from Latin, which adopted it from Greek ángelos or ággelos.

This meant literally ‘messenger’, and its use in religious contexts arises from its being used as a direct translation of Hebrew mal’ākh ‘messenger’, the term used in the scriptures for God’s intermediaries. The Greek word itself may be of Persian origin.
=> evangelist
anger: anger: [12] The original notion contained in this word was of ‘distress’ or ‘affliction’; ‘rage’ did not begin to enter the picture until the 13th century. English acquired it from Old Norse angr ‘grief’, and it is connected with a group of words which contain connotations of ‘constriction’: German and Dutch eng (and Old English enge) mean ‘narrow’, Greek ánkhein meant ‘squeeze, strangle’ (English gets angina from it), and Latin angustus (source of English anguish) also meant ‘narrow’. All these forms point back to an Indo-European base *angg- ‘narrow’.
=> angina, anguish
angina: angina: see anguish
angle: angle: There have been two distinct words angle in English. The older is now encountered virtually only in its derivatives, angler and angling, but until the early 19th century an angle was a ‘fishing hook’ (or, by extension, ‘fishing tackle’). It entered the language in the Old English period, and was based on Germanic *angg- (source also of German angel ‘fishing tackle’).

An earlier form of the word appears to have been applied by its former inhabitants to a fishhook-shaped area of Schleswig, in the Jutland peninsula; now Angeln, they called it Angul, and so they themselves came to be referred to as Angles. They brought their words with them to England, of course, and so both the country and the language, English, now contain a reminiscence of their fishhooks. Angle in the sense of a ‘figure formed by two intersecting lines’ entered the language in the 14th century (Chaucer is its first recorded user).

It came from Latin angulus ‘corner’, either directly or via French angle. The Latin word was originally a diminutive of *angus, which is related to other words that contain the notion of ‘bending’, such as Greek ágkūra (ultimate source of English anchor) and English ankle. They all go back to Indo-European *angg- ‘bent’, and it has been speculated that the fishhook angle, with its temptingly bent shape, may derive from the same source.
=> english; anchor, ankle
anguish: anguish: [13] English acquired anguish from Old French anguisse, changing its ending to -ish in the 14th century. Its central notion of ‘distress’ or ‘suffering’ goes back ultimately (as in the case of the related anger) to a set of words meaning ‘constriction’ (for the sense development, compare the phrase in dire straits, where strait originally meant ‘narrow’).

Old French anguisse came from Latin angustia ‘distress’, which was derived from the adjective angustus ‘narrow’. Like Greek ánkhein ‘squeeze, strangle’ (ultimate source of English angina [16]) and Latin angere ‘strangle’, this came originally from an Indo-European base *angg- ‘narrow’.
=> anger, angina
animal: animal: [14] Etymologically, an animal is a being which breathes (compare DEER). Its immediate source was the Latin adjective animālis ‘having a soul’, a derivative of the noun anima ‘breath, soul’ (which also gave English the verb and adjective animate [15]). Anima is a member of a set of related words in which the notions of ‘breath, wind’ and ‘spirit, life’ are intimately connected: for instance, Greek ánemos ‘wind’ (possible source of English anemone), Latin animus ‘spirit, mind, courage, anger’ (source of English animosity [15] and animus [19]), Sanskrit ániti ‘breathe’, Old English ōthian ‘breathe’, Swedish anda ‘breath, spirit’, and Gothic usanan ‘breathe out’.

The ‘breath’ sense is presumably primary, the ‘spirit, life’ sense a metaphorical extension of it.
=> anemone, animate, animosity, animus
ankle: ankle: [14] Ankle comes from a probable Old Norse word *ankula. It has several relatives in other Germanic languages (German and Dutch enkel, for instance, and Swedish and Danish ankel) and can be traced back to an Indo- European base *angg- ‘bent’ (ultimate source also of anchor and angle). Before the Old Norse form spread through the language, English had its own native version of the word: anclēow. This survived until the 15th century in mainstream English, and for much longer in local dialects.
=> anchor, angle