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affray [affray 词源字典]: affray: [14] Affray is a word of mixed Germanic and Romance origin. The noun comes from the verb, ‘alarm’ (now obsolete, but still very much with us in the form of its past participle, afraid), which was borrowed into English from Anglo- Norman afrayer and Old French effreer and esfreer. These go back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb *exfridāre, which was composed of the Latin prefix ex- ‘out’ and an assumed noun *fridus, which Latin took from the Frankish *frithuz ‘peace’ (cognate with German friede ‘peace’, and with the name Frederick). The underlying meaning of the word is thus ‘take away someone’s peace’.
=> afraid, belfry[affray etymology, affray origin, 英语词源]
affront: affront: [14] The present-day notion of ‘insulting someone’ has replaced the more direct action of hitting them in the face. Affront comes, via Old French afronter, from Vulgar Latin *affrontāre ‘strike in the face’, which was formed from the Latin phrase ad frontem, literally ‘to the face’.
=> front
after: after: [OE] In the first millennium AD many Germanic languages had forms cognate with Old English æfter (Gothic aftra, for example, and Old Norse aptr), but, with the exception of Dutch achter, none survive. It is not clear what their ultimate origin is, but the suffix they share may well be a comparative one, and it is possible that they derive from a Germanic base *af- (represented in Old English æftan ‘from behind’).

It has been suggested that this goes back to Indo-European *ap- (source of Latin ab ‘away, from’ and English of(f)), in which case after would mean literally ‘more off’ – that is, ‘further away’. Nautical aft is probably a shortening of abaft, formed, with the prefixes a- ‘on’ and be- ‘by’, from Old English æftan.
=> of, off
aftermath: aftermath: [16] Originally, and literally, an aftermath was a second crop of grass or similar grazing vegetation, grown after an earlier crop in the same season had been harvested. Already by the mid 17th century it had taken on the figurative connotations of ‘resulting condition’ which are today its only living sense. The -math element comes from Old English mǣth ‘mowing’, a noun descended from the Germanic base *mǣ, source of English mow.
=> mow
again: again: [OE] The underlying etymological sense of again is ‘in a direct line with, facing’, hence ‘opposite’ and ‘in the opposite direction, back’ (its original meaning in Old English). It comes from a probable Germanic *gagin ‘straight’, which was the source of many compounds formed with on or in in various Germanic languages, such as Old Saxon angegin and Old Norse íg gegn.

The Old English form was ongēan, which would have produced ayen in modern English; however, Norse-influenced forms with a hard g had spread over the whole country from northern areas by the 16th century. The meaning ‘once more, anew’ did not develop until the late 14th century. From Old English times until the late 16th century a prefix-less form gain was used in forming compounds.

It carried a range of meanings, from ‘against’ to ‘in return’, but today survives only in gainsay. The notion of ‘opposition’ is carried through in against, which was formed in the 12th century from again and what was originally the genitive suffix -es, as in always and nowadays. The parasitic -t first appeared in the 14th century.
age: age: [13] Age has undergone considerable transmutations and abbreviations since its beginnings in Latin. Its immediate source in English is Old French aage, which was the product of a hypothetical Vulgar Latin form *aetāticum (the t is preserved in Provençal atge). This was based on Latin aetāt- (stem of aetās), which was a shortening of aevitās, which in turn came from aevum ‘lifetime’.

This entered English in more recognizable form in medieval, primeval, etc; it is related to Greek aión ‘age’, from which English gets aeon [17], and it can be traced back to the same root that produced (via Old Norse eí) the now archaic adverb ay(e) ‘ever’ (as in ‘will aye endure’).
=> aeon, aye
agenda: agenda: [17] Agenda is the plural of Latin agendum, which is the gerundive form of the verb agere ‘do’ (see AGENT); it thus means literally ‘things to be done’. When the word first entered the language it was given an anglicized singular form, agend, with the plural agends, but this seems to have disappeared by the 18th century. The formal plurality of agenda is still often insisted on by purists, but it has been used as a singular noun since the mid 18th century.
=> act, agent
agent: agent: [15] Latin agere, a verb of great semantic breadth (‘drive, lead, act, do’), has been a prolific source of English words. Its past participle, āctus, produced act, action, active, actor, actual, cachet, and exact, while other parts of its paradigm lie behind agile, agitate, ambiguous, coagulate, cogent, cogitate, examine, exigent, exiguous, and prodigal.

Its most obvious offspring, however, are agent (literally ‘(person) doing something’) and agency, formed from the Latin present participial stem agent-. Agere itself is of considerable antiquity, being related to other Indo-European verbs such as Greek ágein ‘drive, lead’, Old Norse aka ‘travel in a vehicle’, and Sanskrit ájati ‘drives’.
=> act, agile, ambiguous, cachet, cogent, demagogue, exact, examine, prodigal
agglutinate: agglutinate: see glue
aggravate: aggravate: [16] Aggravate originally meant literally ‘to weigh down’ or ‘to make heavier’ (it was modelled on Latin aggravare ‘to make heavier’, which in turn was based on gravis ‘heavy’, source of English gravity and grief; its first cousin is aggrieve [13], which came via Old French agrever). From the first it was generally used in a metaphorical sense, and by the end of the 16th century the meaning ‘to make worse’ was well established. The sense ‘to annoy’, which some purists still object to, dates from at least the early 17th century.
=> grave, gravity, grief
aggregate: aggregate: [15] Etymologically, aggregate contains the notion of a collection of animals. It comes from greg-, the stem of the Latin noun grex ‘flock, herd’ (also the source of gregarious). This formed the basis of a verb aggregāre ‘collect together’, whose past participle aggregātus passed into English as aggregate. Latin grex is related to Greek agorā ‘open space, market place’, from which English gets agoraphobia.
=> agoraphobia, egregious, gregarious, segregate
aggression: aggression: [17] The violent associations of aggression have developed from the much milder notion of ‘approaching’ somebody. The Latin verb aggredī ‘attack’ was based on the prefix ad- ‘towards’ and gradī ‘walk’, a verb derived in its turn from the noun gradus ‘step’ (from which English gets, among many others, grade, gradual, and degree).
=> degree, grade, gradual
aggrieve: aggrieve: see aggravate
aghast: aghast: [13] Aghast was originally the past participle of a verb, agasten ‘frighten’, which in turn was based on the Old English verb gǣstan ‘torment’. The spelling with gh did not finally become established until the 18th century, and in fact aghast was the last in a series of etymologically related words in the general semantic area of ‘fear’ and ‘horror’ to undergo this transformation. It seems to have acquired its gh by association with ghastly, which in turn got it from ghost (probably under the ultimate influence of Flemish gheest).
agiotage: agiotage: [19] Agiotage is the speculative buying and selling of stocks and shares. The term was borrowed from French, where it was based on agioter ‘speculate’, a verb formed from the noun agio ‘premium paid on currency exchanges’. English acquired agio in the 17th century (as with so many other banking and financial terms, directly from Italian – aggio). This Italian word is thought to be an alteration of a dialectal form lajjē, borrowed from medieval Greek allagion ‘exchange’. This in turn was based on Greek allagē ‘change’, which derived ultimately from állos ‘other’ (a word distantly related to English else).
=> else
agitate: agitate: [16] Agitate is one of a host of English words descended ultimately from Latin agere (see AGENT). Among the many meanings of agere was ‘drive, move’, and a verb derived from it denoting repeated action, agitāre, hence meant ‘move to and fro’. This physical sense of shaking was present from the start in English agitate, but so was the more metaphorical ‘perturb’.

The notion of political agitation does not emerge until the early 19th century, when the Marquis of Anglesey is quoted as saying to an Irish deputation: ‘If you really expect success, agitate, agitate, agitate!’ In this meaning, a derivative of Latin agitāre has entered English via Russian in agitprop ‘political propaganda’ [20], in which agit is short for agitatsiya ‘agitation’.
=> act, agent
agnostic: agnostic: [19] Agnostic is an invented word. It was coined by the English biologist and religious sceptic T H Huxley (1825–95) to express his opposition to the views of religious gnostics of the time, who claimed that the world of the spirit (and hence God) was knowable (gnostic comes ultimately from Greek gnōsis ‘knowledge’). With the addition of the Greek-derived prefix a- ‘not’ Huxley proclaimed the ultimate unknowability of God.

The circumstances of the coinage, or at least of an early instance of the word’s use by its coiner, were recorded by R H Hutton, who was present at a party held by the Metaphysical Society in a house on Clapham Common in 1869 when Huxley suggested agnostic, basing it apparently on St Paul’s reference to the altar of ‘the Unknown God’.
ago: ago: [14] Historically, ago is the past participle of a verb. Its earlier, Middle English, form – agone – reveals its origins more clearly. It comes from the Old English verb āgān ‘pass away’, which was formed from gān ‘go’ and the prefix ā- ‘away, out’. At first it was used before expressions of time (‘For it was ago five year that he was last there’, Guy of Warwick 1314), but this was soon superseded by the now current postnominal use.
=> go
agog: agog: [15] Agog probably comes from Old French gogue ‘merriment’. It was used in the phrase en gogue, meaning ‘enjoying oneself’ (Randle Cotgrave, in his Dictionarie of the French and English tongues 1611, defines estre en ses gogues as ‘to be frolicke, lustie, lively, wanton, gamesome, all-a-hoit, in a pleasant humour; in a veine of mirth, or in a merrie mood’), and this was rendered into English as agog, with the substitution of the prefix a- (as in asleep) for en and the meaning toned down a bit to ‘eager’.

It is not clear where gogue came from (it may perhaps be imitative of noisy merrymaking), but later in its career it seems to have metamorphosed into go-go, either through reduplication of its first syllable (gogue had two syllables) or through assimilation of the second syllable to the first: hence the French phrase à go-go ‘joyfully’, and hence too English go-go dancers.
agony: agony: [14] Agony is one of the more remote relatives of that prolific Latin verb agere (see AGENT). Its ultimate source is the Greek verb ágein ‘lead’, which comes from the same Indo- European root as agere. Related to ágein was the Greek noun agón, originally literally ‘a bringing of people together to compete for a prize’, hence ‘contest, conflict’ (which has been borrowed directly into English as agon, a technical term for the conflict between the main characters in a work of literature).

Derived from agón was agōníā ‘(mental) struggle, anguish’, which passed into English via either late Latin agōnia or French agonie. The sense of physical suffering did not develop until the 17th century; hitherto, agony had been reserved for mental stress. The first mention of an agony column comes in the magazine Fun in 1863.
=> antagonist