英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

antidote [antidote 词源字典]: antidote: see date
[antidote etymology, antidote origin, 英语词源]
antimacassar: antimacassar: [19] An antimacassar was a cloth spread over chairbacks in the 19th and early 20th centuries to protect them from greasy hair. It took its name from Macassar oil, a proprietary brand of hair oil made by Rowland and Son, allegedly from ingredients obtained from Makassar, a region of the island of Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) in Indonesia.
antimony: antimony: [15] Antimony, from medieval Latin antimōnium, was used by alchemists of the Middle Ages for ‘stibnite’, the mineral from which antimony is obtained, and for ‘stibium’, or ‘black antimony’, a heated and powdered version of the mineral used for eye make-up. The element antimony itself was first described in the late 18th century, when it was called regulus of antimony; the British chemist Humphry Davy appears to have been the first to apply the simple term antimony to it, in 1812.

The ultimate origins of the word antimony are obscure, but attempts have been made to link it with Latin stibium (source of Somebody, the chemical symbol for antimony). It has been speculated that Latin antimōnium may have been a modification of Arabic ithmid, which was perhaps borrowed from Greek stimmi or stíbi (source of Latin stibium).

This in turn has been conjecturally traced back to an Egyptian word stm, which was used for a sort of powder applied to the eyelids as make-up.
antiphon: antiphon: see anthem
antipodes: antipodes: [16] Greek antípodes meant literally ‘people who have their feet opposite’ – that is, people who live on the other side of the world, and therefore have the soles of their feet ‘facing’ those of people on this side of the world. It was formed from the prefix anti- ‘against, opposite’ and poús ‘foot’ (related to English foot and pedal). English antipodes, borrowed via either French antipodes or late Latin antipodes, originally meant ‘people on the other side of the world’ too, but by the mid 16th century it had come to be used simply for the ‘opposite side of the globe’.
=> foot, pedal
antique: antique: [16] Originally, in Latin, antique was an adjectivized version of the adverb and preposition ‘before’: to ante ‘before’ was added the adjective suffix -īcus, to produce the adjective antīquus (somewhat later an exactly parallel formation, using the suffix -ānus rather than -īcus, produced the adjective which became English ancient).

English acquired the word either via French antique or directly from Latin. To begin with, and until relatively recently, it meant simply ‘ancient’, or specifically ‘of the ancient world’; it was only towards the end of the 18th century that the modern sense ‘made long ago and therefore collectable’ began to become established. In Italian, antico (from Latin antīquus) was often applied to grotesque carvings found in ancient remains.

It was borrowed into English in the 16th century as an adjective, antic, meaning ‘bizarre’, but also as a noun, usually used in the plural, in the sense ‘absurd behaviour’.
=> ancient, antic
antirrhinum: antirrhinum: [16] Antirrhinum means literally ‘similar to a nose’. The Greek compound antirrhīnon was formed from the prefix anti- ‘against, simulating’ and rhīn-, the stem of rhīs ‘nose’ (also found in English rhinoceros). The English word was borrowed from the latinized form, antirrhinum. The name comes, of course, from the snapdragon flower’s supposed resemblance to an animal’s nose or muzzle (another early name for the plant was calf ’s snout).
=> rhinoceros
antler: antler: [14] English acquired antler via Anglo- Norman auntelere from Old French antoillier (modern French has andouiller). Its previous history is not altogether clear; it has been speculated that it comes originally from Latin *anteoculāris, which would have meant literally ‘positioned before (ante) the eye (oculus)’, but this derivation is rather dubious.
anvil: anvil: [OE] Etymologically, an anvil is ‘something on which you hit something else’. The Old English word was anfīlte, which came from a prehistoric West Germanic compound formed from *ana ‘on’ and a verbal component meaning ‘hit’ (which was also the source of English felt, Latin pellere ‘hit’, and Swedish dialect filta ‘hit’). It is possible that the word may originally have been a loan-translation based on the Latin for ‘anvil’, incūs; for this too was a compound, based on in ‘in’ and the stem of the verb cūdere ‘hit’ (related to English hew).
=> appeal
any: any: [OE] Any is descended from a prehistoric Germanic compound meaning literally ‘one-y’ (a formation duplicated in unique, whose Latin source ūnicus was compounded of ūnus ‘one’ and the adjective suffix -icus). Germanic *ainigaz was formed from *ain- (source of English one) and the stem *-ig-, from which the English adjective suffix -y is ultimately derived. In Old English this had become ǣnig, which diversified in Middle English to any and eny; modern English any preserves the spelling of the former and the pronunciation of the latter.
=> one
aorta: aorta: see artery
apart: apart: [14] English acquired apart from Old French apart, where it was based on the Latin phrase ā parte ‘at or to the side’ (Latin pars, part- is the source of English part). By the time it came into English it already contained the notion of separation.
=> part
apartheid: apartheid: [20] Apartheid is a direct borrowing from Afrikaans apartheid, literally ‘separateness’, which is a compound based on Dutch apart and the suffix -heid (related to English -hood). The first record of its use in Afrikaans is in 1929, but it does not appear in English-language contexts until 1947.
ape: ape: [OE] Ape (in Old English apa) has cognates in several Germanic languages (German affe, Dutch aap, Swedish apa), and comes from a prehistoric West and North Germanic *apan (perhaps originally borrowed from Celtic). Until the early 16th century, when English acquired the word monkey, it was the only term available for any of the non-human primates, but from around 1700 it began to be restricted in use to the large primates of the family Pongidae.
aphorism: aphorism: see horizon
aplomb: aplomb: [18] Originally, aplomb meant literally ‘quality of being perpendicular’. It was borrowed from French, where it was a lexicalization of the phrase à plomb ‘according to the plumb line’ (plomb came from Latin plumbum ‘lead’, also the ultimate source of English plumb, plumber, plumbago, and plummet). The notion of ‘uprightness’ gave rise in the 19th century to the metaphorical sense ‘composure’.
=> plumb, plumber, plummet
apocalypse: apocalypse: [13] A ‘catastrophic event, such as the end of the world’ is a relatively recent, 20thcentury development in the meaning of apocalypse. Originally it was an alternative name for the book of the Bible known as the ‘Revelation of St. John the divine’, which describes a vision of the future granted to St John on the island of Patmos. And in fact, the underlying etymological meaning of apocalypse is literally ‘revelation’.

It comes, via Old French and ecclesiastical Latin, from Greek apokálupsis, a derivative of the verb apokalúptein ‘uncover, reveal’, which was formed from the prefix apo- ‘away, off’ and the verb kalúptein ‘cover’ (related to English conceal).
=> conceal
apocrypha: apocrypha: see crypt
apocryphal: apocryphal: [16] Apocryphal is a ‘secondgeneration’ adjective; the original adjective form in English was apocrypha (‘The writing is apocrypha when the author thereof is unknown’, John de Trevisa 1387). This came, via ecclesiastical Latin, from Greek apókruphos ‘hidden’, a derivative of the compound verb apokrúptein ‘hide away’, which was formed from the prefix apo- ‘away, off’ and the verb krúptein ‘hide’ (source of English crypt and cryptic).

It was applied as a noun to writings in general that were of unknown authorship, and in the 16th century came to be used specifically as the collective term for the uncanonical books of the Old Testament. It was perhaps confusion between the adjectival and nominal roles of apocrypha that led to the formation of the new adjective apocryphal towards the end of the 16th century.
=> crypt, cryptic
apogee: apogee: [17] In its original, literal sense, a planet’s or satellite’s apogee is the point in its orbit at which it is furthest away from the Earth; and this is reflected in the word’s ultimate source, Greek apógaios or apógeios ‘far from the Earth’, formed from the prefix apo- ‘away’ and gē ‘earth’ (source of English geography, geology, and geometry).

From this was derived a noun, apógaion, which passed into English via Latin apogeum or French apogée. The metaphorical sense ‘culmination’ developed in the later 17th century. The opposite of apogee, perigee [16], contains the Greek prefix peri- ‘around’, in the sense ‘close around’, and entered English at about the same time as apogee.
=> geography, perigee