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crash [crash 词源字典]: crash: [14] Crash suddenly appeared from nowhere in Middle English (meaning ‘break in pieces noisily’), with apparently no relatives in other Germanic languages. Its form suggests that it originated in imitation of the sound of noisy breaking, but it has been further suggested that it may be a blend of craze and dash. The financial or business sense of the noun, ‘sudden collapse’, is first recorded in the early 19th century in the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
[crash etymology, crash origin, 英语词源]
crass: crass: see grease
crate: crate: [17] Crate is usually connected with Latin crātis ‘hurdle’, making it a relative of grate, griddle, and grill(e), and indeed an isolated example of crate in the early 16th century, which unequivocally means ‘hurdle’, certainly must come from that source. However, the main body of evidence for crate begins in the late 17th century, and its meaning, ‘large case or box’, is sufficiently far from ‘hurdle’ to raise doubts about its origins. Another possible source that has been suggested is Dutch krat ‘basket’.
=> grate, griddle, grill
crater: crater: [17] Greek kratér meant ‘bowl’, or more specifically ‘mixing bowl’: it was a derivative of the base *kerā, which also produced the verb kerannúnai ‘mix’. (Crater or krater is still used in English as a technical term for the bowl or jar used by the ancient Greeks for mixing wine and water in.) Borrowed into Latin as crātēr, it came to be used metaphorically for the bowl-shaped depression at the mouth of a volcano. Its acquisition by English is first recorded in Samuel Purchas’s Pilgrimage 1619.
cravat: cravat: [17] The fashion for wearing scarves round the neck started in France in the 1650s. It was inspired by Croatian mercenaries employed there at that time, who regularly sported linen neckbands of that type. The Croats were called in French Cravates (the name comes via German Krabate from the original Serbo-Croat term Hrvat), and so their neckerchiefs came to be known as cravates too. English was quick to adopt the term.
crave: crave: see craft
craven: craven: [13] Craven originally meant simply ‘defeated’, and only gradually came to have the pejorative sense ‘cowardly’. It probably came from Old French cravante ‘defeated’, the past participle of the verb cravanter, which in turn came via Vulgar Latin *crepantāre from Latin crepāre; this meant ‘creak, rattle, crack’ (hence the English technical term crepitation [17]) but also secondarily ‘burst’ or ‘break’.
=> crepitation, crevice, decrepit
crayfish: crayfish: [14] The crayfish is related etymologically as well as biologically to the crab. The Old High German word for ‘crab’ was krebiz (source of modern German krebs). This was borrowed into Old French as crevice (modern French has preserved the variant form écrevisse), and transmitted to Middle English as crevis. Association of the final syllable with fish led by the 16th century to its transformation to crayfish (a variant Middle English form cravis became crawfish).
=> crab, crawfish
crazy: crazy: [16] Crazy originally meant literally ‘cracked’ (a sense preserved in the related crazed). This soon came to be extended metaphorically to ‘frail, ill’ (as in Shakespeare’s ‘some better place, fitter for sickness and crazy age’, 1 Henry VI), and thence to ‘mentally unbalanced’. It was derived from the verb craze [14], which was probably borrowed from an unrecorded Old Norse verb *krasa ‘shatter’ (likely source, too, of French écraser ‘crush, smash’).
cream: cream: [14] Cream seems to have come from two distinct late Latin sources: crānum ‘cream’, which may be of Gaulish origin, and chrisma ‘ointment’ (from which English gets chrism [OE]). These two were probably blended together to produce Old French cresme or craime, immediate source of the English word. (Modern French crème was borrowed into English in the 19th century.)
=> chrism
crease: crease: [15] Crease and crest are ultimately the same word. The ridges produced by creasing cloth were regarded as similar to ridges or crests, and so the word crease (often creast in late Middle English) came to be applied to them. The loss of the final -t may have been due to the mistaken analysis of creast or crest as the past form of a verb.
=> crest
creature: creature: [13] Creature and creator, both 13thcentury borrowings from Old French, predate the introduction of the verb create into English by about a hundred years. This was a verbal use of an earlier adjective create, borrowed directly from Latin creātus, the past participle of creāre ‘produce’ (which in turn may have been a causative derivative of the verb crēscere ‘grow’, source of English crescent). Another descendant of Latin creāre was Portuguese criar ‘breed, nurse’, the probable ancestor of English creole [17].
=> create, creole, crescent, croissant, increase
creed: creed: [OE] Creed was the first of a wide range of English words borrowed from Latin crēdere ‘believe’. Others include credible [14] (from Latin crēdibilis), credence [14] (from Old French credence), credential [16] (from medieval Latin crēdentiālis), credit [16] (from French crédit), and credulous [16] (from Latin crēdulus). Also ultimately from the same source are grant and miscreant [14] (from Old French mescreant, the present participle of mescroire ‘disbelieve’).
=> credible, credit, grant, miscreant
creek: creek: [13] Now firmly associated with watercourse, the original connotations of creek seem to have been of ‘narrow and secluded bendiness’. It appears to have been borrowed from Old Norse kriki ‘nook’, which some have speculated may be related to Old Norse krōkr ‘hook’ (source of English crook). Creek remains strictly a word for narrow waterways, a reminder of its beginnings.
=> crook
creep: creep: [OE] Creep is an ancient verb, which has been traced back to Indo–European *greub-. This was the source also of Dutch kriupen and Swedish krypa ‘creep’, and of Lithuanian grubineti ‘stumble’, and links have been suggested with English cripple. The related Indo-European *greug- produced German kriechen ‘creep’.
=> cripple
cremate: cremate: see hearth
crenellate: crenellate: [19] The 19th century seems a surprisingly late date for English to have acquired a term so closely associated with medieval battlements, but it is a little misleading. For essentially the same word entered the language in the 13th century as kernel. Both come ultimately from late Latin crēna ‘notch’ (probable source also of English cranny [15]). In Vulgar Latin this developed the diminutive form *crenellus, metathesized in medieval Latin as kernellus.
=> cranny
creole: creole: see creature
creosote: creosote: [19] The term creosote was coined as German kreosot in the early 1830s. Of creosote’s various properties, the one perhaps most valued in the early days after its discovery was that of being antiseptic. Hence the name kreosot, which was intended to mean ‘flesh-preserver’. The first element, kreo-, is a derivative of Greek kréas ‘flesh’; this also produced English pancreas, and is a descendant of an Indo-European base which was also the source of English crude, cruel, and raw. The second comes from Greek sōtér ‘saviour, preserver’, a derivative of Greek sōs.
=> crude, cruel, pancreas, raw
crepitation: crepitation: see crevice