英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

clock [clock 词源字典]: clock: [14] The clock appears to have been so named because it told the hours by the chiming of a ‘bell’, medieval Latin clocca. The Latin word, which emerged in the 7th century and may have been of Irish origin, probably reached English via Middle Dutch klocke. Besides being applied to time-pieces, it has also lent its name to two garments on account of their supposedly bell-like shape: cloak [13], which comes from the Old French dialect cloke or cloque, and cloche hat [20], from French cloche ‘bell’.
=> cloak, cloche[clock etymology, clock origin, 英语词源]
cloister: cloister: [13] A cloister was originally simply an enclosed place, a ‘close’. The word comes from Old French cloistre, a descendant of Latin claustrum ‘bar, bolt, enclosure’, which was formed from the past participial stem of Latin claudere ‘close’ (source of English close). The notion of ‘enclosure’ led to the word’s being applied to a place of religious seclusion, such as a monastery or convent, and hence to a covered walkway within a monastic building. It also lies behind claustrophobia [19], which was formed from Latin claustrum.
=> claustrophobia, close
close: close: [13] Close originally entered English as a verb. It came from clos-, the past participial stem of Old French clore ‘shut’, which was a descendant of Latin claudere (related to Latin clāvis ‘key’, from which English gets clavier, clavichord, clavicle, clef, and conclave, and to Latin clāvus ‘nail’, from which French gets clou ‘nail’ – whence English clove – and English gets cloy).

The adjective was quick to follow, via Old French clos, but in this case the intermediate source was the Latin past participial stem clausrather than the Old French clos-. It originally meant simply ‘shut, enclosed, confined’, and did not evolve the sense ‘near’ until the late 15th century; it arose from the notion of the gap between two things being brought together by being closed off.

Related forms in English include clause, cloister, closet [14] (from Old French, ‘small private room’, a diminutive form of clos) and the various verbs ending in -clude, including conclude, include, and preclude.
=> clause, clavier, clef, cloister, closet, clove, cloy, conclave, conclude, enclave, include, preclude
cloth: cloth: [OE] The history of the word cloth is not known, beyond the fact that its immediate source is Germanic (German has the related kleid ‘garment’). In Old English it meant both ‘piece of fabric’ and ‘fabric in general’, and in the plural it was applied to ‘garments’ (hence modern English clothes). The verb clothe, too, probably goes back to Old English times, although it is not recorded before the 12th century.
cloud: cloud: [OE] In Old English the word for ‘cloud’ was weolcen (whence modern English welkin, a poetical term for ‘sky’), which is related to German wolke ‘cloud’. At that time Old English clūd, the ancestor of cloud, meant ‘mass of rock, hill’ (it is probably related to clod). As applied to ‘clouds’, presumably from a supposed resemblance between cumulus clouds and lumps of earth or rock, it dates from the 13th century.
=> clod
clout: clout: [OE] In Old English, a clout was a patch of cloth put over a hole to mend it. Hence in due course it came to be used simply for a ‘piece of cloth’, and by further extension for a ‘garment’ (as in ‘Ne’er cast a clout till May be out’). However, the reason for its colloquial application to ‘hit, blow’, which dates from the 14th century, is not known, and indeed this may be an entirely different word. As for the word’s ultimate antecedents, it probably comes, along with cleat, clot, cluster, and clutter, from a prehistoric Germanic base *klut-, *kleut-, *klaut-.
=> cleat, clot, cluster, clutter
clove: clove: There are two distinct words clove in English. In clove of garlic [OE] the underlying notion is of ‘cutting’; the head of garlic is as it were ‘divided up’ into separate sections. The word goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *gleubh- ‘cut, carve’, which also produced English cleave and its now archaic past tense clove. Clove the spice [14] originated in the Old French phrase clou de girofle, which meant literally ‘nail of the clove-tree’.

The term ‘nail’ was applied to the tree’s dried unopened flower bud because of a perceived resemblance in shape. (French clou ‘nail’ comes from Latin clāvus, source of English cloy, and French girofle – whence English gillyflower [14], which originally meant ‘clove’ – goes back via medieval Latin caryophyllum to Greek karuóphullon, which literally meant ‘nut leaf’.)
=> cleave; cloy, gillyflower
clown: clown: [16] Clown’s antecedents are obscure. Its earliest recorded sense is ‘unsophisticated or boorish country fellow’, which has led to speculation that it may come ultimately from Latin colonus ‘colonist, farmer’ (residence in the country often being associated with backwardness or lack of sophistication, as in the case heathen and pagan). Others, however, see a more direct source in a Germanic language from the Low Countries or Scandinavia: North Frisian klönne and Icelandic klunni, both meaning ‘clumsy person’, have been compared.
cloy: cloy: [14] Cloy originally meant ‘fasten with a nail’. It is a reduced form of the long obsolete acloy, which came from Anglo-Norman acloyer. This was a variant of Old French encloyer, a descendant of the Vulgar Latin compound verb inclāvāre, based on Latin clāvus ‘nail’ (source of Latin claudere ‘shut’, from which English gets close).
=> close
club: club: [13] The original meaning of club is ‘thick heavy stick for hitting people’; it was borrowed from Old Norse klubba. The sense ‘association’ developed in the 17th century, apparently originally as a verb. To club together seems to have been based on the notion of ‘forming into a mass like the thickened end of a club’: ‘Two such worlds must club together and become one’, Nathaniel Fairfax, The bulk and selvedge of the world 1674. Hence the noun club, which originally signified simply a ‘get-together’, typically in a tavern, but by the end of the 17th century seems to have become more of a formalized concept, with members and rules.
clue: clue: [15] Clue is a variant spelling of the now obsolete clew ‘ball of thread’, and its current application to ‘that which helps to solve a problem’, which originated in the early 17th century, is based on the notion of using (like Theseus in the Minotaur’s labyrinth) a ball of thread to show one the way out of an intricate maze one has entered. Clew itself goes back to Old English cliwan or cleowan, which may be related to claw.
=> claw
clumsy: clumsy: [16] When clumsy first appeared on the scene around 1600, both it and the presumably related but now obsolete clumse were used not only for ‘awkward’ but also for ‘numb with cold’. This, and the fact that the word’s nearest apparent relatives are Scandinavian (such as Swedish dialect klumsig ‘numb, clumsy’), suggests that the notion originally contained in them was of being torpid from cold – so cold that one is sluggish and cannot coordinate one’s actions.
clutch: clutch: Clutch ‘seize’ [14] and clutch of eggs [18] are separate words, although they may ultimately be related. The verb arose in Middle English as a variant of the now obsolete clitch, which came from Old English clyccan ‘bend, clench’. The modern sense of the noun, ‘device for engaging a motor vehicle’s gears’, which was introduced at the end of the 19th century, developed from a more general early 19thcentury meaning ‘coupling for bringing working parts together’, based no doubt on the notion of ‘seizing’ and ‘grasping’. Clutch of eggs is a variant of the now obsolete dialectal form cletch [17].

This was a derivative of the Middle English verb clecken ‘give birth’, which was borrowed from Old Norse klekja (probably a distant relative of clutch ‘seize’).
coach: coach: [16] Coach is one of the few English words borrowed from Hungarian. It comes (via French coche and German kutsche) from Hungarian kocsi, an adjective meaning ‘of Kocs’ (Kocs is a village in north-east Hungary, between Budapest and Györ, where carriages, carts, etc were made). In Hungarian the original full form was kocsi szeker ‘cart from Kocs’. The modern sense ‘instructor, trainer’ originated in 19th-century university slang, the notion being that the student was conveyed through the exam by the tutor as if he were riding in a carriage.
coal: coal: [OE] In Old English, col meant ‘glowing ember’. It came from a prehistoric Germanic *kolam (source also of German kohle and Dutch kool), which may be related to Irish Gaelic gual ‘coal’. By the 12th century at the latest it was also being used for ‘charcoal’ (the word charcoal is based on it), but it was not until the mid 13th century that the modern application to the black solid fossil fuel appears.

It seems quite likely that the word’s underlying etymological meaning is ‘glow’. Derived from coal are collier [14], which originally meant ‘charcoal-burner’, colliery [17], and possibly collie [17], on the basis of its dark colour.
=> charcoal, collier
coarse: coarse: [14] For such an everyday word, the origins of coarse are surprisingly clouded. It first appears in the forms corse or course, and meaning ‘ordinary, everyday’, which has led to speculation that it is an application of the noun course, in the sense ‘the ordinary run of things, the usual practice’; however, not all etymologists accept this. The modern spelling coarse became established in the 18th century.
coast: coast: [13] Latin costa meant ‘rib’ (hence the English medical term intercostal ‘between the ribs’), but also more generally ‘flank, side’. It was in this sense that it passed into Old French as coste, and subsequently into English. The modern meaning ‘seashore’ (which had already developed in Old French) arises from the shore being thought of as the ‘side’ or ‘edge’ of the land (compare seaside).

Amongst the senses of the French word little represented in English is ‘hillside, slope’; it was however adopted in North America for a ‘slope down which one slides on a sledge’, and came to be used in the mid 19th century as a verb meaning ‘sledge down such a slope’. That was the source of the modern verbal sense ‘freewheel’. The coster of costermonger [16] was originally costard, a variety of apple named from its prominent ‘ribs’.

And another hidden relative is cutlet [18], borrowed from French côtelette, literally ‘little rib’.
=> costermonger, cutlet, intercostal
coat: coat: [13] Coat seems originally to have signified a sort of short close-fitting cloth tunic with sleeves, worn by men. Over the centuries fashion has lengthened the garment, and its male exclusivity has disappeared (originally, as a woman’s garment a coat was a skirt, a sense preserved in petticoat). The word is of Germanic origin (it has been traced back to Frankish *kotta), but it reached English via Old French cote.
coax: coax: [16] In the 16th and 17th century a cokes was a ‘simpleton, someone easily duped’ (it is not known where the word came from, although it might perhaps be related to cockney). To cokes someone was thus to ‘make a cokes of them, fool them’. This spelling survived until the 18th century, when it was supplanted by coax. The word’s meaning, meanwhile, had passed via ‘treat as a simpleton or pet’ and ‘fondle’ to ‘wheedle’.
cob: cob: [15] Cob has a bizarre range of meanings – ‘nut’, ‘horse’, ‘male swan’, ‘loaf’, ‘ear of maize’ – but a distillation of them points back to an original ‘head, or something similarly rounded’ (cobnuts and cobloaves, for example, are spherical, and the male swan is the ‘chief’ or ‘leader’). It is therefore tempting to see a connection with the now obsolete cop ‘top, head’ (probably represented in cobweb), and even with Latin caput ‘head’.
=> cobble