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dire [dire 词源字典]: dire: see dinosaur
[dire etymology, dire origin, 英语词源]
direct: direct: [14] English acquired direct from dīrectus, the past participle of Latin dīrigere ‘arrange in distinct lines’, hence ‘straighten, guide’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and regere ‘guide, rule’ (source of English regent, region, etc). The first recorded use of the verb in English was ‘write something and send it to a particular person’, a sense now preserved more specifically in the related address. (Also ultimately from Latin dīrigere is dirigible ‘steerable airship’ [19], a borrowing from French dirigeable; this was a derivative of diriger, the French descendant of dīrigere.)
=> address, dirigible, dress, regent, region
dirge: dirge: [16] Dirge is an anglicization of Latin dīrige, the imperative singular of dīrigere ‘guide’ (source of English direct). It is the first word in the Latin version of Psalm 5, verse 8: Dirige, Domīne, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam ‘Direct, O Lord, my God, my way in thy sight’ (the Authorized Version expands this to ‘Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of my enemies; make thy way straight before thy face’). This formed an antiphon in the Office of the Dead (the funeral service) and hence came to be associated with songs of mourning, and with gloomy singing in general.
=> direct
dirham: dirham: see dram
dirt: dirt: [13] Dirt was originally drit, and meant ‘excrement’ (it was borrowed from Old Norse drit, which goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base *drit- that also produced Dutch dreet ‘excrement’). The toned-down sense ‘soiling substance’ is of equal antiquity with ‘excrement’ in English, and the modern English form dirt first appeared in the 15th century, by a process known as metathesis in which two sounds are reversed.
disappoint: disappoint: [15] Disappoint (a borrowing from French désappointer) originally meant ‘remove from a post or office, sack’ – that is, literally, ‘deprive of an appointment’; ‘A monarch … hath power … to appoint or to disappoint the greatest officers’, Thomas Bowes, De La Primaudraye’s French academie 1586. This semantic line has now died out, but parallel with it was a sense ‘fail to keep an appointment’, which appears to be the ancestor of modern English ‘fail to satisfy, frustrate, thwart’.
disaster: disaster: [16] The word disaster has astrological connotations. It comes, perhaps via French désastre, from Italian disastro; this was a backformation from disastrato, literally ‘ill-starred’, a compound adjective formed from the pejorative prefix dis- and astro ‘star’, a descendant of Latin astrum ‘star’. This in turn came from Greek astron ‘star’, source of English astronomy and related to English star. So the underlying meaning of the word is ‘malevolent astral influence’. Provençal has the parallel malastre ‘misfortune’.
disc: disc: [17] Disc comes ultimately from Greek dískos ‘quoit’, a derivative of the verb dikein ‘throw’. This passed into Latin as discus, adopted by English in the 17th century in its original athletic sense. The most salient semantic feature of the discus was perhaps its shape, and it was this that English took over in the form disc (either adapted from Latin or borrowed from French disque). The spelling disk is preferred in American English, and it is the standard form used for ‘disc-shaped computer storage device’. Other English words ultimately derived from Latin discus are dais, desk, and dish.
=> dais, desk, dish
discern: discern: [14] Discern, discreet, discrete, and discriminate all come ultimately from the same source, Latin discernere, literally ‘separate by sifting’, hence ‘distinguish’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and cernere ‘sift, separate’ (source of English crime and secret and related to crisis).

The derived noun discrīmen formed the basis of a new Latin verb discrīmināre, from which English gets discriminate [17]. (Closely related is decree [14], whose ultimate source is Latin dēcernere ‘decide’, also a derivative of cernere but with the prefix dē-, denoting removal.)
=> certain, crime, crisis, decree, discreet, discrete, discriminate, excrement, secret
discipline: discipline: [13] The Latin word for ‘learner’ was discipulus, a derivative of the verb discere ‘learn’ (which was related to docēre ‘teach’, source of English doctor, doctrine, and document). English acquired the word in Anglo- Saxon times, as discipul, and it was subsequently reformulated as disciple on the model of Old French deciple. Derived from discipulus was the noun disciplīna ‘instruction, knowledge’. Its meaning developed gradually into ‘maintenance of order (necessary for giving instruction)’, the sense in which the word first entered English (via Old French discipline).
=> disciple, doctor, doctrine, document
discomfit: discomfit: [14] The underlying etymological sense of discomfit is ‘destroy’. It comes from desconfit, the past participle of Old French desconfire ‘defeat’; this in turn was a descendant of Vulgar Latin *disconficere ‘destroy, undo’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘un-’ and conficere ‘put together, complete, accomplish’ (source of English comfit, confection, and confetti). Its original English meaning ‘defeat’ has weakened over the centuries to ‘disconcert’, probably due to the influence of discomfort, with which it is often confused.
=> comfit, confection, confetti
discord: discord: see concord
discourse: discourse: see course
discreet: discreet: [14] Discreet and discrete [14] are ultimately the same word. Both come from Latin discrētus, the past participle of discernere ‘distinguish’ (source of English discern). Discrete was borrowed direct from Latin, and retains its original meaning more closely: ‘distinct, separate’. The Latin abstract noun formed from the past participle, discrētiō (source of English discretion [14]), developed the sense ‘power to make distinctions’.

This fed back into the adjective, giving it the meaning ‘showing good judgment’, the semantic guise in which English acquired it from Old French discret. This was usually spelled discrete too until the 16th century, when discreet (based on the -ee- spelling commonly used in words like sweet and feet which rhymed with discrete) became the established form for the more widely used sense ‘judicious’.
=> certain, discern, discrete, secret
discriminate: discriminate: see discern
discursive: discursive: see course
discuss: discuss: [14] The ultimate source of discuss meant ‘smash to pieces’. It comes from discuss-, the past participle stem of Latin discutere, a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and quatere ‘shake’ (from which English also gets concussion and quash). Its literal meaning was ‘smash apart, break up’, and this gradually developed via ‘scatter, disperse’ to, in post-classical times, ‘investigate, examine’ and eventually ‘debate’.

The apparently wide semantic discrepancy between ‘scatter, disperse’ and ‘examine’ was probably bridged by some such intermediate notion as ‘disperse or separate in the mind so as to distinguish and identify each component’.
=> concussion, quash
disdain: disdain: [14] Disdain comes via Old French desdeigner from *disdignāre, a Vulgar Latin alteration of Latin dēdignāri ‘scorn’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘un-, not’ and dignāre ‘consider worthy’ (source of English deign [13]).
=> dainty, deign, dignity
disease: disease: [14] Disease and malaise are parallel formations: both denote etymologically an ‘impairment of ease or comfort’. Disease comes from Old French desaise, a compound formed from the prefix dis- ‘not, lacking’ and aise ‘ease’, and in fact at first meant literally ‘discomfort’ or ‘uneasiness’. It was only towards the end of the 14th century that this sense began to narrow down in English to ‘sickness’. (Malaise was borrowed from French malaise, an Old French formation from mal ‘bad’ and aise.)
=> ease, malaise
disguise: disguise: see geezer