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cardinal [cardinal 词源字典]: cardinal: [12] The ultimate source of cardinal is Latin cardō ‘hinge’, and its underlying idea is that something of particular, or ‘cardinal’, importance is like the hinge on which all else depends. English first acquired it as a noun, direct from ecclesiastical Latin cardinālis (originally an adjective derived from cardō), which in the early church denoted simply a clergyman attached to a church, as a door is attached by hinges; it only gradually rose in dignity to refer to princes of the Roman Catholic church. The adjective reached English in the 13th century, via Old French cardinal or Latin cardinālis.
[cardinal etymology, cardinal origin, 英语词源]
care: care: [OE] Care goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European *gar-, source of a wide range of words in other Indo-European languages, two of which, garrulous and slogan, have also reached English. In the case of care, the route was via Germanic *karō, which reached Old English as caru. The related adjective from the same source is chary [OE], which originally meant ‘sad’.
=> chary, garrulous, slogan
careen: careen: [16] Careen comes ultimately from carīna, the Latin word for a ‘nutshell’, which is related to Greek káruon ‘nut’ and Sanskrit kárakas ‘coconut’. The idea of a ‘nut’ as a metaphor for a ‘boat’ is a fairly obvious one (shell is similarly used for a ‘rowing boat’), and the Latin word came to be used for a ‘ship’s keel’, the raised seam of a walnut perhaps suggesting the line of the timber along the ship’s bottom.

It passed via the Genoese dialect carena into French, where a vessel en carène was turned over on its side so that its keel was exposed; hence the verb. The equation of careen with career ‘go wildly’ is 20th-century and of American origin.
career: career: [16] Originally, a career was a ‘road or racetrack for vehicles’. Its ultimate source was Latin carrus ‘wheeled vehicle’ (from which we get car), which produced the Vulgar Latin derivative *carāria ‘track for wheeled vehicles’. This passed into English via Provençal carreira, Italian carriera, and French carrière. Its earliest meaning was ‘racecourse’, and hence, by extension, ‘swift course’; the main present-day sense ‘course of someone’s working life’ did not develop until the 19th century, probably owing to renewed influence of French carrière.
=> car
carfax: carfax: see quarter
cargo: cargo: see charge
caribou: caribou: [17] Caribou is the name of a close North American relative of the reindeer, and it refers literally to the way in which the animal scratches at the snow with its hooves to find the grass, moss, etc that it eats. It comes from Mi’kmaq galipu (Mi’kmaq is an Algonquian language of eastern Canada), meaning ‘snowshoveller’, which in Canadian French became caribou.
carillon: carillon: see quarter
carmine: carmine: see crimson
carnal: carnal: [15] Carnal means literally ‘of the flesh’; it comes from late Latin carnālis, a derivative of Latin carō ‘flesh, meat’. Other English words from the same source are carnivorous ‘meateating’ [17]; carnage [16], which came via French carnage and Italian carnaggio from medieval Latin carnāticum ‘slaughter of animals’; carnation [16], which originally meant ‘pink, colour of flesh’ and came via French carnation and Italian carnagione from late Latin carnātiō ‘fleshiness, fatness’; charnel [14], as in charnel house, from Old French charnel; and also carnival and carrion.
=> carnage, carnation, carnival, carnivorous, carrion, charnel
carnival: carnival: [16] Etymologically, carnival means ‘raising flesh’ – that is, the ‘removal of meat’ from the diet during Lent (carnival was originally a period of merrymaking preceding Lent). It comes from medieval Latin carnelevāmen, a compound noun made up of carō ‘flesh’ (source of English carnal) and levāmen, a derivative of the verb levāre ‘lighten, raise’ (source of English lever, levity, and levy).
=> carnal, carrion, lever, levy
carol: carol: [13] English acquired carol from Old French carole, and the similarity of form and meaning naturally suggests that this in turn came from late Latin choraula ‘choral song’. In classical Latin times this had meant ‘person who accompanies a choir on a flute or reed instrument’, and it came from Greek khoraúlēs, a compound formed from khorós ‘choir’ (source of English chorus and choir) and aulos ‘reed instrument’.

However, the fact that the earliest recorded use of the word is for a dance in a ring, accompanied by singing, has led some etymologists to speculate that the underlying notion contained in it may be not ‘song’ but ‘circle’ (perhaps from Latin corolla ‘little crown, garland’).
=> choir, chorus
carouse: carouse: [16] Etymologically, carouse means to drink something up ‘completely’. Originally it was an adverb, used in phrases such as drink carouse (‘the tiplinge sottes at midnight which to quaffe carouse do use’, Thomas Drant, Horace’s Epigrams 1567). These were a partial translation of German trinken garaus, in which garaus is a compound adverb made up of gar ‘completely, all’ and aus ‘out’.
carp: carp: [14] and carp ‘criticize’ [13] are distinct words in English. The former comes from medieval Latin carpa, probably via Old French carpe, but the word is probably ultimately of Germanic origin. The verb, which originally simply meant ‘talk’, was a borrowing from Old Norse karpa. The present-day sense ‘criticize’ did not develop until the 16th century, probably under the influence of Latin carpere ‘pluck’ (related to English harvest), which had the metaphorical meaning ‘slander’.
=> harvest
carpenter: carpenter: [14] Etymologically, a carpenter is a ‘maker of carriages’. The word comes, via Anglo-Norman carpenter, from late Latin carpentārius, originally an adjective derived from carpentum ‘two-wheeled vehicle’. This, like the similar and perhaps related Latin carrus, source of English car, was of Celtic origin. The generalization in meaning to ‘worker in wood’ took place before the word was borrowed into English.
carpet: carpet: [14] Originally, carpet was simply a sort of rough cloth, and medieval Latin carpīta, for example, was sometimes used for a garment made from it. In earliest English use it was a ‘table-cloth’ or ‘bed-spread’, and it was not until the 15th century that the specialized ‘floorcovering’ began to establish itself. The word itself entered English via either Old French carpite or medieval Latin carpīta, which was derived from carpīre, an alteration of Latin carpere ‘pluck’ (related to English harvest).

The underlying notion seems to be that such cloth was originally made from ‘plucked’ fabric, that is, fabric which had been unravelled or shredded.
carriage: carriage: [14] Carriage is literally ‘carrying’. It is an Old Northern French derivative of the verb carier, in the sense ‘transport in a vehicle’. At first it meant simply ‘conveyance’ in the abstract sense, but in the 15th century more concrete meaning began to emerge: ‘load, luggage’ (now obsolete) and ‘means of conveyance, vehicle’. By the 18th century the latter had become further specialized to ‘horse-drawn wheeled vehicle for carrying people’ (as opposed to goods).
=> carry
carrion: carrion: [13] Ultimately, carrion is a derivative of Latin carō ‘flesh’ (source also of English carnal). This appears to have had a Vulgar Latin offshoot *carōnia, which entered English via Anglo-Norman caroine. At first it was used in English for ‘dead body’, but before the end of the 13th century the current sense ‘flesh unfit for human consumption’ had begun to establish itself.
=> carnal, crone
carry: carry: [14] For such a basic and common word, carry has a surprisingly brief history. It does not go back to some prehistoric Indo-European root, but was formed less than 1000 years ago in Anglo-Norman or Old Northern French, on the basis of carre or car (immediate source of English car). The verb carier thus meant literally ‘transport in a wheeled vehicle’. This sense was carried over into English, and though it has since largely given way to the more general ‘convey’, it is preserved in the derivative carriage, in such expressions as ‘carriage paid’.
=> car, carriage
cart: cart: [13] Old English had a word cræt ‘carriage’, which may, by the process known as metathesis (reversal of speech sounds), have produced the word which first appeared at the beginning of the 13th century as karte or carte. But a part must certainly also have been played by Old Norse kartr ‘cart’, and some have also detected the influence of Anglo-Norman carete, a diminutive form of car (source of English car).
=> car