英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

cauterize [cauterize 词源字典]: cauterize: see holocaust
[cauterize etymology, cauterize origin, 英语词源]
caution: caution: see show
cavalcade: cavalcade: [16] Originally, a cavalcade was simply a ride on horseback, often for the purpose of attack: in James I’s Counterblast to tobacco 1604, for example, we find ‘to make some sudden cavalcade upon your enemies’. By the 17th century this had developed to ‘procession on horseback’, and it was not long after that that the present-day, more general ‘procession’ emerged.

The word comes via French cavalcade from Italian cavalcata, a derivative of the verb cavalcare ‘ride on horseback’. This in turn came from Vulgar Latin *caballicāre, which was based on Latin caballus ‘horse’ (source also of English cavalier and French cheval ‘horse’). In the 20th century, -cade has come to be regarded as a suffix in its own right, meaning ‘procession, show’, and producing such forms as motorcade, aquacade, and even camelcade.
=> cavalier
cavalier: cavalier: [16] Etymologically, a cavalier is a ‘horseman’. The word comes via French cavalier from Italian cavaliere, which was derived from Latin caballus ‘horse’, either directly or via late Latin caballārius ‘horseman, rider’. From the beginning in English its connotations were not those of any old horserider, but of a mounted soldier or even a knight, and before the end of the 16th century the more general meaning ‘courtly gentleman’ was establishing itself.

This led in the mid-17th century to its being applied on the one hand to the supporters of Charles I, and on the other as an adjective meaning ‘disdainful’. Italian cavaliere was also the source of cavalleria ‘body of horsesoldiers’, which was borrowed into English in the 16th century, via French cavallerie, as cavalry. (The parallel form routed directly through French rather than via Italian was chivalry.)
=> cavalry, chivalry
cave: cave: There are two English words cave which, despite their apparent similarity, are probably unrelated. The earlier, ‘underground chamber’ [13], comes via Old French cave from Latin cavea, a nominal use of the adjective cavus ‘hollow’ (source also of cavern [14], via Old French caverne or Latin caverna, and of cavity [16], from the late Latin derivative cavitās).

The verb cave [18], however, as in ‘cave in’, seems to come from an earlier dialectal calve ‘collapse, fall in’, once widespread in the eastern counties of England; it has been speculated that this was borrowed from a Low German source, such as Flemish inkalven. It has subsequently, of course, been much influenced by the noun cave.
=> cavern, cavity, decoy
caveat: caveat: see show
caviare: caviare: [16] Caviare is of Turkish origin; it comes from Turkish khāvyār. It spread from there to a number of European languages, including Italian caviale and French caviar, many of which contributed to the rather confusing diversity of forms in 16th-, 17th-, and early 18th-century English: cavialy, cavery, caveer, gaveare, etc. By the mid-18th century caviare or caviar had become the established spellings. Ironically, although caviare is quintessentially a Russian delicacy, Russian does not have the word caviare; it uses ikrá.
cavil: cavil: see challenge
cavity: cavity: see cave
cay: cay: see quay
cease: cease: [14] Cease comes via Old French cesser from Latin cessāre ‘delay, stop’. This was derived from cessus, the past participle of cēdere ‘go away, withdraw, yield’, which was also the basis of cessation [14], from Latin cessātiō.
=> cessation
cede: cede: [17] Cede comes, either directly or via French céder, from Latin cēdere ‘go away, withdraw, yield’. The Latin verb provided the basis for a surprisingly wide range of English words: the infinitive form produced, for instance, accede, concede, precede, proceed, and succeed, while the past participle cessus has given ancestor, cease, excess, recession, etc.
=> accede, ancestor, cease, concession, excess, necessary, proceed, recession, succeed
ceiling: ceiling: [14] Ceiling is something of a mystery word. It originally signified the internal lining of any part of a building, including walls as well as roof (the modern sense ‘overhead inside surface of a room’ began to crystallize out in the 16th century), and the material of which it was made took in wooden planks and even tapestry hangings, as well as plaster. But where it comes from is not at all clear.

It has no apparent relations in other modern European languages, and the likeliest candidate as a source may be Latin caelāre ‘carve, engrave’. This is perhaps endorsed by an item in the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, 1497, revealing how a ‘carver’ was paid £2 14s for ‘the ceiling of the chapel’ – an indication that the underlying notion of ceiling may be ‘carved internal surface of a room’.
celandine: celandine: [12] Etymologically the celandine, a buttercup-like spring flower, is the ‘swallow’s’ flower. Its name comes, via Old French, from Greek khelidonion, which was based on khelidon ‘swallow’. The original reference was no doubt to the appearance of the flowers around the time when the swallows began to arrive in Europe from Africa. Its juice was used in former times as a remedy for poor eyesight, and, no doubt in an over-interpretation of the name, it was said that swallows used the juice to boost the sight of their young.
celerity: celerity: see accelerate
celery: celery: [17] Celery comes ultimately from Greek sélīnon, which signified ‘parsley’ – like the celery, a plant of the group Umbelliferae (the English word parsley comes from Greek petrōselínon, literally ‘rock parsley’). It came into English via Latin selīnon, Italian dialect selleri, and French céleri. The term celeriac was formed from celery in the early 18th century; it first appears in an advertisement in the London and country brewer 1743.
=> parsley
cell: cell: [12] Cell has branched out a lot over the centuries, but its original meaning seems to be ‘small secluded room’, for it comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *kel-, which is also the source of English conceal, clandestine, and occult. It came into English either via Old French celle or directly from Latin cella ‘small room, storeroom, inner room of a temple’, and at first was used mainly in the sense ‘small subsidiary monastery’.

It is not until the 14th century that we find it being used for small individual apartments within a monastic building, and the development from this to ‘room in a prison’ came as late as the 18th century. In medieval biology the term was applied metaphorically to bodily cavities, and from the 17th century onwards it began to be used in the more modern sense ‘smallest structural unit of an organism’ (the botanist Nehemiah Grew was apparently the first so to use it, in the 1670s).

A late Latin derivative of cella was cellārium ‘group of cells, storeroom’; this was the source of English cellar [13], via Anglo-Norman celer.
=> apocalypse, cellar, clandestine, conceal, hall, hell, hull, occult
Celsius: Celsius: [19] The notion of a temperature scale based on 100 was developed by the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–44) (he originally had water boiling at zero and freezing at 100º, but this was later reversed). His name began to be used to designate the scale in English around the middle of the 19th century. In popular parlance it has usually taken a back seat to centigrade (a French invention, first recorded in English in 1812), but it remains the preferred term in scientific usage.
cement: cement: [13] Latin caementa meant ‘stone chips used for making mortar’; etymologically, the notion behind it was of ‘hewing for a quarry’, for it was originally *caedmenta, a derivative of caedere ‘cut’ (from which English gets concise and decide). In due course the signification of the Latin word passed from ‘small broken stones’ to ‘powdered stone (used for mortar)’, and it was in this sense that it passed via Old French ciment into English.
=> concise, decide
cemetery: cemetery: [14] Not surprisingly for a word having associations with death, cemetery’s origins are euphemistic. It comes via late Latin coemētērium from Greek koimētérion, which originally meant ‘dormitory’ (it was a derivative of the verb koiman ‘put to sleep’); it was apparently early Greek Christian writers who first applied the word to burial grounds.