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during [during 词源字典]: during: [14] During, like durable [14], durance [15], duration [14], duress, and endure [14], comes ultimately from the Latin adjective dūrus ‘hard’. This goes back to an earlier *drūros, which is related to Irish dron ‘solid’, Lithuanian drūtas ‘strong, solid’, and Sanskrit dāruna- ‘strong, hard’, and links with Irish daur ‘oak’ (a possible relative of druid) and Greek drus ‘oak’ suggest that its original underlying meaning was ‘oak wood’, from which ‘hard’ developed as a metaphorical extension.

The Latin verb dūrāre meant originally literally ‘harden’, but this widened (perhaps with memories of an underlying sense ‘strong, resilient’) to ‘continue in existence, last’. It is these notions of ‘continuance’, ‘strength’, and ‘perseverance’ that emerge in different proportions in durable, duration, and endure, and indeed in during, which is a translation of Old French durant, the present participle of durer ‘last’: phrases such as ‘during the day’ mean etymologically ‘as long as the day lasts’. Durance, an archaic term for ‘imprisonment’, originally denoted ‘length of sentence’, and so is virtually equivalent to the modern ‘for the duration’.
=> durable, duration, duress, endure[during etymology, during origin, 英语词源]
dusk: dusk: [OE] In Anglo-Saxon times, dusk was an adjective meaning ‘dark in colour’ (a sense preserved today in the derived adjective dusky [16]). Its modern noun use ‘twilight’ is not recorded until as recently as the early 17th century. The Old English form of the word was dox, which was descended from the same ultimate Indo-European ancestor as Latin fuscus ‘dark’ (source of English obfuscate [16]).
=> dun, obfuscale
dust: dust: [OE] The notion ultimately underlying dust seems to be that of ‘smoke’ or ‘vapour’. It goes back to a prehistoric Indo-European base *dheu-, which also produced Latin fūmus and Sanskrit dhūma- ‘smoke’. A Germanic descendant of this, *dunstu-, picks up the idea of a cloud of fine particles being blown about like smoke, and is the basis of Norwegian dust ‘dust’ and duft ‘finely ground grain’, German duft ‘fragrance’ (from an earlier Middle High German tuft ‘vapour, dew’), and English dust.
duty: duty: [13] Duty comes from Anglo-Norman dueté. This was a derivative of Old French deu ‘owed’ (source of English due [13]), which in turn came from Latin dēbitus, past participle of dēbēre ‘owe’ and source of English debit and debt. (Latin dēbēre was originally a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘away’ and habēre ‘have’, literally ‘have away’, that is ‘keep in one’s possession what belongs to someone else’.) So etymologically one’s duty is what one ‘owes’ to others.
=> debit, debt, due
dwarf: dwarf: [OE] Dwarf is descended via Germanic *dwergaz from Indo-European *dhwergwhos, which denoted ‘something tiny’. In English, it originally meant simply ‘person of abnormally small stature’; the modern connotation of ‘small manlike creature that lives underground and works metal’, a product of Germanic mythology, is not recorded until the late 18th century. The word’s German relative, zwerg, is the source of English quartz.
=> quartz
dwell: dwell: [OE] Dwell has changed its meaning remarkably over the centuries. In Old English it meant ‘confuse, lead astray’. It goes back to a Germanic base *dwel-, *dwal-, *dwul-, which also produced Old English dwola ‘error’, Gothic dwals ‘foolish’, and Old High German gitwelan ‘be stunned’, and beyond that to Indo-European *dhwel-, source of Greek tholós ‘dirt’ and Irish dall ‘blind’.

Already by the end of the Old English period, ‘lead astray’ had progressed to ‘hinder, delay’, probably under the influence of the related Old Norse dvelja ‘delay’, and this subsequently developed through ‘linger’ to (in the 13th century) ‘make one’s home in a place’.
dye: dye: [OE] Dye is something of a mystery word. Its original meaning seems to have been simply ‘colour’, its modern connotations of ‘artificially changing colour’ a secondary development, but its source remains unknown. A connection has been suggested with Old English dēagol ‘secret, hidden’, but what the implications of that would be for its semantic history are not clear. The convention of spelling the word dye did not become established until as recently as the 19th century; until then die was equally common, and orthographic confusion with die ‘cease to live’ was rife.
dyke: dyke: see ditch
dynamic: dynamic: [19] Greek dūnamis (a word of unknown origin) meant ‘strength’. It was used by the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel in 1867 to form the name of the new explosive he had invented, dynamite. From it was derived the adjective dunamikós ‘powerful’, which French adopted in the 17th century as dynamique, and English acquired it in the early 19th century. Related to dúnamis was the verb dúnasthai ‘be strong’ or ‘be able’; from this was derived the noun dunasteíā ‘power, domination’, source, via French or late Latin, of English dynasty [15].

Part of the same word family is dynamo [19], short for dynamo-electric machine, a term coined in 1867 by the electrical engineer Werner Siemens.
=> dynamite, dynasty
D: fourth letter of the Roman alphabet, from Greek delta, from Phoenician and Hebrew daleth, pausal form of deleth "door," so called from its shape. The sign for "500" in Roman numerals. 3-D for "three-dimensional" is attested from 1952.
D-day (n.): 1918, "date set for the beginning of a military operation," with D as an abbreviation of day; compare H-hour, also from the same military order of Sept. 7, 1918:
The First Army will attack at H-Hour on D-Day with the object of forcing the evacuation of the St. Mihiel salient. [Field Order No. 8, First Army, A.E.F.]
"They designate the day and hour of the operation when the day and hour have not yet been determined, or where secrecy is essential" [U.S. Army Center of Military History Web site]. Now almost exclusively of June 6, 1944.
D.A.: American English initialism (acronym) for district attorney from 1934; for duck's ass haircut (or, as OED would have it, duck's arse), from 1951. The haircut so called for the shape at the back of the head.
d.c.: abbreviation of direct current, attested from 1898.
D.C.: abbreviation of District of Columbia, apparently not widely used before 1820, but eventually it became necessary to distinguish the place from the many other "Washingtons" in America. The city and the district were named in 1791 (at first known as Territory of Columbia; the territory was organized as a "district" in 1801), but the towns within it (Washington, Georgetown, Alexandria) remained separate municipalities and at one time all took D.C. The district was effectively organized as a unitary municipality in 1871.
D.D.: abbreviation of Latin Divinitatis Doctor "Doctor of Divinity."
D.D.T.: also DDT, 1943, from dichlorodiphenyltrichlorethane; first made in U.S. by Geigey & Co.
D.T.: 1858, abbreviation of delirium tremens.
dab (v.): c. 1300, dabben "to strike," of unknown origin, perhaps imitative. Modern sense of "strike with a slight, quick pressure" developed by mid-16c., influenced by French dauber (see daub). Related: Dabbed; dabbing. As a noun from c. 1300, "heavy blow with a weapon." Dab hand is British slang, 1828, from dab "expert" (1690s), said to be school slang, of unknown origin, perhaps from dab in the "strike lightly" sense.
dabble (v.): 1550s, probably a frequentative of dab. Original meaning was "wet by splashing;" modern figurative sense of "do superficially" first recorded 1620s. Related: Dabbled; dabbling. An Ellen Dablewife is in the Lancashire Inquests from 1336.
dace (n.): small, freshwater fish, early 15c., from Old French darz, nominative or plural of dart "dart" (see dart (n.)). So called for its movements. But another theory traces it to a Medieval Latin darsus, said to be of Gaulish origin.