英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

alligator [alligator 词源字典]: alligator: [16] The Spanish, on encountering the alligator in America, called it el lagarto ‘the lizard’. At first English adopted simply the noun (‘In this river we killed a monstrous Lagarto or Crocodile’, Job Hortop, The trauailes of an Englishman 1568), but before the end of the 16th century the Spanish definite article el had been misanalysed as part of the noun – hence, alligator. Spanish lagarto derived from Latin lacerta ‘lizard’, which, via Old French lesard, gave English lizard.
=> lizard[alligator etymology, alligator origin, 英语词源]
alliteration: alliteration: [17] Alliteration is an anglicization of alliterātiō, a modern Latin coinage based on the prefix ad- ‘to’ and litera ‘letter’ – from the notion of an accumulation of words beginning with the same letter. The verb alliterate is an early 19th-century back-formation from alliteration.
=> letter
allopathy: allopathy: see homeopathy
allow: allow: [14] Allow comes ultimately from two completely different Latin verbs, allaudāre and allocāre, which became blended in Old French alouer. The first, allaudāre, was based on laudāre ‘praise’ (source of English laud, laudable, and laudatory); the second, allocāre (source of English allocate [17]) on locāre ‘place’.

The formal similarity of the Latin verbs gradually drew their meanings closer together. The notion of ‘placing’, and hence ‘allotting’ or ‘assigning’, developed via the now obsolete ‘place to somebody’s credit’ to ‘take into account, admit’. Meanwhile, the idea of ‘praising’ moved through ‘commending’ or ‘approving’ to ‘accepting as true or valid’, and ultimately to ‘permitting’.
=> allocate, laudable, location
alloy: alloy: [16] The notion of ‘mixing’ in alloy originated in the idea of ‘binding’ in Latin ligāre ‘tie’ (source of English ligament, ligature, and lien – via Old French loien from Latin ligāmen ‘bond’). Addition of the prefix ad- gave alligāre ‘bind one thing to another’, hence ‘combine’. This passed into Old French as aleier, where it eventually became aloier – hence English alloy.
=> ally, lien, ligament, ligature
allusion: allusion: see illusion
alluvial: alluvial: [19] Alluvial material is material that has been washed down and deposited by running water. Hence the term; for its ultimate source, Latin lavere (a variant of lavāre, which produced English latrine, laundry, lava, lavatory, lavish, and lotion), meant ‘wash’. Addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’ changed lavere to luere, giving alluere ‘wash against’.

Derived from this were the noun alluviō (source of the English technical term alluvion ‘alluvium’) and the adjective alluvius, whose neuter form alluvium became a noun meaning ‘material deposited by running water’. English adopted alluvium in the 17th century, and created the adjective alluvial from it in the 19th century. If Latin alluere meant ‘wash against’, abluere meant ‘wash away’.

Its noun form was ablūtiō, which English acquired as ablution in the 14th century.
=> ablution, latrine, laundry, lavatory, lavish, lotion
ally: ally: [13] The verb ally was borrowed into English from Old French alier, an alteration of aleier (a different development of the Old French word was aloier, which English acquired as alloy). This came from Latin alligāre ‘bind one thing to another’, a derivative of ligāre ‘tie’; hence the idea etymologically contained in being ‘allied’ is of having a bond with somebody else.

The noun ally seems originally to have been independently borrowed from Old French allié in the 14th century, with the meaning ‘relative’. The more common modern sense, ‘allied person or country’, appeared in the 15th century, and is probably a direct derivative of the English verb.
=> alloy, ligament
alma mater: alma mater: [17] Alma mater literally means ‘mother who fosters or nourishes’. The Latin adjective almus ‘giving nourishment’, derives from the verb alere ‘nourish’ (source of English alimony and alimentary). The epithet alma mater was originally applied by the Romans to a number of goddesses whose particular province was abundance, notably Ceres and Cybele.

In the 17th century it began to be used in English with reference to a person’s former school or college, thought of as a place of intellectual and spiritual nourishment (Alexander Pope was amongst its earliest users, although the reference is far from kind: ‘Proceed, great days! ’till Learning fly the shore … ’Till Isis’ Elders reel, their pupils’ sport, And Alma mater lie dissolv’d in Port!’ Dunciad 1718).

If that which nourishes is almus, those who are nourished are alumni (similarly derived from the verb alere). Alumnus was first applied in English to a pupil – and more specifically a former pupil or graduate – in the 17th century; an early reference combines the notions of alumnus and alma mater: ‘Lieutenant Governor … promised his Interposition for them, as become such an Alumnus to such an Alma Mater’, William Sewall’s Diary 12 October 1696.

The first example of the feminine form, alumna, comes in the 1880s.
=> alimentary, alimony, alumnus
almanac: almanac: [14] One of the first recorded uses of almanac in English is by Chaucer in his Treatise on the astrolabe 1391: ‘A table of the verray Moeuyng of the Mone from howre to howre, every day and in every signe, after thin Almenak’. At that time an almanac was specifically a table of the movements and positions of the sun, moon, and planets, from which astronomical calculations could be made; other refinements and additions, such as a calendar, came to be included over succeeding centuries.

The earliest authenticated reference to an almanac comes in the (Latin) works of the English scientist Roger Bacon, in the mid 13th century. But the ultimate source of the word is obscure. Its first syllable, al-, and its general relevance to medieval science and technology, strongly suggest an Arabic origin, but no convincing candidate has been found.
almond: almond: [13] The l in almond is a comparatively recent addition; its immediate source, Latin amandula, did not have one (and nor, correspondingly, do French amande, Portuguese amendoa, Italian mandola, or German mandel). But the relative frequency of the prefix al- in Latin-derived words seems to have prompted its grafting on to amandula in its passage from Latin to Old French, giving a hypothetical *almandle and eventually al(e)mande.

French in due course dropped the l, but English acquired the word when it was still there. Going further back in time, the source of amandula was Latin amygdula, of which it was an alteration, and amygdula in turn was borrowed from the Greek word for ‘almond’, amygdálē. The Latin and Greek forms have been reborrowed into English at a much later date in various scientific terms: amygdala, for instance, an almond-shaped mass of nerve tissue in the brain; amygdalin, a glucoside found in bitter almonds; and amygdaloid, a rock with almondshaped cavities.
almoner: almoner: see alms
almost: almost: [OE] Almost is simply a combination of all and most. In Anglo-Saxon times, and up until the 17th century, it meant ‘mostly all’ or ‘nearly all’ (thus one could say ‘My best friends are almost men’, meaning most of them are men); but already by the 13th century the modern sense ‘nearly, not quite’ was well in place.
=> all, most
alms: alms: [OE] The word alms has become much reduced in its passage through time from its ultimate Greek source, eleēmosúnē ‘pity, alms’. This was borrowed into post-classical (Christian) Latin as eleēmosyna, which subsequently became simplified in Vulgar Latin to *alimosina (source of the word for ‘alms’ in many Romance languages, such as French aumône and Italian limosina).

At this stage Germanic borrowed it, and in due course dispersed it (German almosen, Dutch aalmoes). It entered Old English as ælmesse, which became reduced in Middle English to almes and finally by the 17th century to alms (which because of its -s had come to be regarded as a plural noun). The original Greek eleēmosúnē is itself a derivative, of the adjective eleémōn ‘compassionate’, which in turn came from the noun éleos ‘pity’.

From medieval Latin eleēmosyna was derived the adjective eleēmosynarius (borrowed into English in the 17th century as the almost unpronounceable eleemosynary ‘giving alms’). Used as a noun, this passed into Old French as a(u)lmonier, and eventually, in the 13th century, became English aumoner ‘giver of alms’. The modern sense of almoner as a hospital social worker did not develop until the end of the 19th century.
=> almoner, eleemosynary
alone: alone: [13] Although partly disguised by its pronunciation, alone is in fact simply a compound of all and one (whose /wun/ pronunciation began to develop around the 15th century). In Old English it was a completely separate phrase, all āna, literally ‘completely by oneself’, but by the 13th century this had coalesced into a single word. Loss of its initial ain the 14th century gave rise to the adjective lone.
=> all, lone, one
along: along: [OE] The a- in along is related to the prefix anti-, and the original notion contained in the word is of ‘extending a long way in the opposite direction’. This was the force of Old English andlang, a compound formed from and- ‘against, facing’ (whose original source was Greek anti- ‘against’) and lang ‘long’. The meaning gradually changed via simply ‘extending a long way’, through ‘continuous’ and ‘the whole length of something’ to ‘lengthwise’.

At the same time the and- prefix was gradually losing its identity: by the 10th century the forms anlong and onlong were becoming established, and the 14th century saw the beginnings of modern English along. But there is another along entirely, nowadays dialectal. Used in the phrase along of ‘with’ (as in ‘Come along o’me!’), it derives from Old English gelong ‘pertaining, dependent’.

This was a compound formed from the prefix ge-, suggesting suitability, and long, of which the notions of ‘pertaining’ and ‘appropriateness’ are preserved in modern English belong.
=> long
aloof: aloof: [16] Aloof was originally a nautical term, a command to steer to windward. Its second syllable is a variant of luff ‘sail closer to the wind’ [13]. This was borrowed from Old French lof, ‘windward side of a ship’, which may itself have been, like so many maritime expressions, of Dutch origin. The modern figurative meaning ‘reserved, uninvolved’ developed via an intermediate physical sense ‘away, at a distance’.
=> luff
alopecia: alopecia: [14] This word appears to derive from the resemblance observed by the Greeks between baldness in human beings and mange in foxes. The Greek for ‘fox’ was alōpēx, hence alōpekía, borrowed into Latin as alopēcia. Alōpēx is related to Latin vulpēs ‘fox’, from which English gets vulpine ‘foxlike’ [17].
=> vulpine
aloud: aloud: [14] Aloud was formed in Middle English from the adjective loud and the prefix a-, as in abroad; it does not appear to have had a direct Old English antecedent *on loud. Its opposite, alow ‘quietly’, did not survive the 15th century.
=> loud
alpaca: alpaca: [18] English gets the term alpaca (for a South American animal related to the llama) from Spanish, which in turn got it from alpako, the word for the animal in the Aymara language of Bolivia and Peru. Alpako was a derivative of the adjective pako ‘reddish-brown’, a reference to the colour of the animal’s hair.