英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

colliery [colliery 词源字典]: colliery: see coal
[colliery etymology, colliery origin, 英语词源]
colloquial: colloquial: see ventriloquist
colon: colon: There are two distinct words colon in English. Colon ‘part of the large intestine’ [16] comes via Latin from Greek kólon, which meant ‘food, meat’ as well as ‘large intestine’. Colon the punctuation mark [16] comes via Latin from Greek kōlon, which originally meant literally ‘limb’. It was applied metaphorically (rather like foot) to a ‘unit of verse’, and hence to a ‘clause’ in general, meanings which survive in English as technical terms. From there it was a short step to the main present-day meaning, ‘punctuation mark’.
colonel: colonel: [17] Historically, a colonel was so called because he commanded the company at the head of a regiment, known in Italian as the compagna colonnella, literally the ‘little-column company’; hence the commander himself took the title colonnella. The word colonnella is a diminutive form of colonna, which is descended from Latin columna ‘pillar’ (source of English column).

It appears first to have entered English via French in the form coronel, in which the first l had mutated to r. Spellings with this r occur in English from the 17th and 18th centuries, and it is the source of the word’s modern pronunciation. Colonel represents a return to the original Italian spelling.
=> column
colony: colony: [16] Etymologically, a colony is a ‘settled land’. The word goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *qwel-, *qwol-, which signified ‘move around’ (it is the source of English cycle and wheel) and hence ‘move habitually in, settle in, inhabit’. One of the descendants of this base was Latin colere ‘inhabit, cultivate’. Thus someone who settled on a new piece of land and cultivated it was a colōnus, and the land he settled was his colōnia. (The German city of Cologne gets its name from Latin colōnia; in Roman times it was called Colōnia Agrippīna, the ‘settlement or colony of Agrippa’.)
=> cycle, wheel
colossal: colossal: [18] Colossal comes ultimately from Greek kolossós, a word of unknown origin which was first used by the historian Herodotus as a name for certain gigantic statues in Egypt. It became much better known, of course, when applied to the Colossus of Rhodes, a 36-metrehigh statue of Apollo that stood at the entrance to Rhodes harbour, built around 280 BC. Various adjectives meaning ‘huge’ have since been derived from it: Latin had colossēus and colossicus, and in the 17th century English tried colossean and colossic, but in the 18th century the choice fell on colossal, borrowed from French.

The amphitheatre built in Rome by Vespasian and Titus around 80–75 BC was named Colossēum after its great size.
colour: colour: [13] The Old English words for ‘colour’ were hīw ‘hue’ and blēo, but from the 13th century onwards they were gradually replaced by Old French colour. This came from Latin color, which appears to have come ultimately from an Indo-European base *kel- ‘hide’ (source also of apocalypse, cell, clandestine, conceal, and occult).

This suggests that its original underlying meaning was ‘outward appearance, hiding what is inside’, a supposition supported by the long history of such senses of English colour as ‘outward (deceptive) appearance’ and ‘(specious) plausibility’ (as in ‘lend colour to a notion’).
=> apocalypse, cell, conceal, hell, occult
column: column: [15] The notion underlying column is of ‘height, command, extremity’. It comes, via Old French colomne, from Latin columna ‘pillar’, which was probably a derivative of columen, culmen ‘top, summit’ (from which English also gets culminate). It goes back ultimately to a base *kol-, *kel-, distant ancestor of English excel and hill. The word’s application to vertical sections of printed matter dates from the 15th century, but its transference to that which is written (as in ‘write a weekly newspaper column’) is a 20thcentury development.
=> culminate, excel, hill
comb: comb: [OE] Comb is an ancient word, which has been traced back to an Indo-European *gombhos. This appears to have signified ‘tooth’, for among its other descendants were Sanskrit jámbhas ‘tooth’ and Greek góphos ‘pin, tooth’. In prehistoric West and North Germanic it became *kambaz, which produced English comb, German kamm, and Dutch kam (probably borrowed into English in the 18th century as cam, originally ‘projecting cog-like part on a wheel for transferring motion’).

The Old English verb formed from comb lasted dialectally as kemb until the 19th century, but today it survives only in unkempt. The origin of the word’s application to honeycomb, first recorded in the 13th century, is not known.
=> oakum, unkempt
combat: combat: [16] Combat means literally ‘fight with’. It comes via French combattre from late Latin combattere, a compound verb formed from Latin com- ‘with’ and *battere, an assumed variant of Latin battuere ‘fight, beat’ (ultimate source of English abate, battle, and debate).
=> abate, battle, debate
combine: combine: [15] The notion underlying combine is simply ‘two together’. It comes, perhaps via French combiner, from late Latin combīnāre, a compound verb formed from Latin com- ‘together’ and bīnī ‘two at a time’; this Latin adverb was formed from the prefix bi- ‘twice’, and is the basis of English binary.
=> binary
come: come: [OE] Come is of course one of the basic words of English, and its history goes back to the language’s Indo-European roots. Here its distant ancestor was the base *gwem-, which also produced Greek baínein ‘go, walk’ (related to English base and basis) and Latin venīre ‘come’ (source of a whole range of English words from adventure to venue). The prehistoric Germanic descendant of *gwem- was *kweman or *kuman, which has produced German kommen, Dutch komen, Swedish komma, and English come. The compound become (source of comely) was formed in Germanic in prehistoric times.
=> adventure, base, basis, become, venue
comedy: comedy: [14] Comedy is of Greek origin. It comes ultimately from Greek kōmos ‘revelry’. This appears to have been combined with ōidós ‘singer, poet’ (a derivative of aeídein ‘sing’, source of English ode and odeon) to produce kōmōidós, literally ‘singer in the revels’, hence ‘actor in a light amusing play’. From this was derived kōmōidíā, which came to English via Latin cōmoedia and Old French comedie.
=> encomium, ode
comely: comely: [13] Old English had an adjective cymlic ‘beautiful’ (no relation at all to come), but this seems to have died out around the year 1000, and it is likely that comely, which first appears in the early 13th century, represents a reduced version of becomely, an adjective long since defunct of which there are a few records towards the end of the 12th century. This meant ‘suitable, becoming’ (it was formed, of course, from the verb become), an early meaning of comely; its other semantic strand, ‘beautiful’, is probably a memory of Old English cymlic.
=> become
comestible: comestible: see eat
comet: comet: [13] Comet means literally ‘the longhaired one’. Greek kómē meant ‘hair’, but it was also applied metaphorically to the tail of a comet, which was thought of as streaming out behind like a luxuriant head of hair being blown by the wind. Hence an astēr kométēs ‘longhaired star’ was the name given to a comet. Eventually the adjective kométēs came to stand for the whole phrase, and it passed via Latin comēta and Old French comete into English.
comfit: comfit: see confetti
comfort: comfort: [13] Comfort did not always have its present ‘soft’ connotations of physical ease, contentment, and well-being. Etymologically it means ‘make someone stronger’, and its original English sense was ‘encourage, support’ (this survives in such contexts as ‘give aid and comfort to the enemy’). It comes via Old French conforter from late Latin confortāre ‘strengthen greatly’, a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ used as an intensive and the adjective fortis ‘strong’ (source of English force, fort, and effort).

The antonym discomfort is not etymologically related to discomfit, a word with which it is often confused.
=> effort, force, fort
comfrey: comfrey: see fervent
comma: comma: [16] Greek kómma meant literally ‘piece cut off, segment’. It derived from the verb kóptein ‘cut’, relatives of which include Russian kopje ‘lance’, source of the coin-name kopeck, and probably English capon. Kómma came to be applied metaphorically, as a technical term in prosody, to a small piece of a sentence, a ‘short clause’, a sense which it retained when it reached English via Latin comma. It was not long before, like colon, it was applied to the punctuation mark signifying the end of such a clause.
=> capon, kopeck