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expire [expire 词源字典]: expire: see spirit
[expire etymology, expire origin, 英语词源]
explain: explain: [15] To explain a matter is literally to ‘make it plain’. The word comes from Latin explānāre, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix ex- and the adjective plānus ‘flat’ (source of English plain). This originally meant ‘flatten out, make smooth’, but the metaphorical sense ‘make clear’ soon took over, and accompanied the verb into English (although in the 16th and 17th centuries a few scholars attempted to revive the literal sense: ‘He must calm and explain his forehead’, Sir Thomas Chalenor, translation of Desiderus Erasmus’ Praise of Folly 1549).
=> esplanade, plain
expletive: expletive: [17] Originally, an expletive word was simply one used to ‘fill up’ a line of verse, to complete its metrical pattern (expletive comes from Latin explētus, the past participle of explēre ‘fill out’, a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and plēre ‘fill’, source of English complete and related to English fill).

Hence the term came to be used for a redundant word, not contributing anything to the meaning of the sentence: “The Key my loose, powerless fingers forsook”, a lame and expletive way of saying “I dropt the key”, Robert Southey 1804. The first recorded example of its euphemistic application as a noun to ‘profanities’ is by Sir Walter Scott in Guy Mannering 1815: ‘retaining only such of their expletives as are least offensive’.
=> complete, full
explicit: explicit: [17] Something that is explicit has literally been ‘unfolded’. Like the earlier borrowing explicate [16], the word comes from the past participle of Latin explicāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘un-’ and plicāre ‘fold’ (source of English ply and related to English fold). At first, in the 16th and 17th centuries, English retained the literal sense of the original, but gradually it dropped out in favour of the metaphorical ‘make clear, distinct, and open’ (already present in Latin).
=> exploit, fold, ply
explode: explode: [16] The use of explode to mean ‘burst with destructive force’ is a comparatively recent, late 19th-century development. The Latin verb explōdere, from which it comes, signified something quite different – ‘drive off the stage with hisses and boos’ (it was a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and plaudere ‘clap’, source of English applaud and plaudits).

From this developed the figurative sense ‘reject, disapprove’, which was how the word was used when it was first taken over into English: ‘Not that I wholly explode Astrology; I believe there is something in it’, Thomas Tryon, Miscellanea 1696 (the modern notion of ‘exploding a theory’ is descended from this usage). In the 17th century, however, the Latin verb’s original sense was reintroduced, and it survived into the 19th century: ‘In the playhouse when he doth wrong, no critic is so apt to hiss and explode him’, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones 1749.

Towards the end of the 17th century we find the first traces of a metaphorical use that combines the notion of ‘driving out, expelling’ with ‘loud noise’ (‘the effects of Lightning, exploded from the Clouds’, Robert Plot, Natural History of Staffordshire 1679), but it was not to be for more than a century that the meaning element ‘drive out’ was replaced by the ‘burst, shatter’ of present-day English explode (Dr Johnson makes no mention of it in his Dictionary 1755, for example) Today the notion of ‘bursting violently’ is primary, that of ‘loud noise’ probably secondary, although still present.
=> applause, plaudits
exploit: exploit: [14] Latin explicāre (source of English explicate and explicit) meant ‘unfold’. A Vulgar Latin descendant of its past participle was *explictum ‘something unfolded’, which passed into Old French as exploit or esplait. In the process, the original sense of ‘unfolding’ had developed through ‘bringing out, development’ and ‘advantage, success’ to ‘achievement’.

In the case of the English noun, it is the latter meaning which has survived, and in fact originally the verb too denoted ‘achieve, accomplish’. This seems to have died out in the 18th century, however, and when the verb reappears in the 19th century it is closer to the earlier ‘develop’ in meaning, particularly as applied to ‘getting the most out of’ natural resources. The modern derogatory sense ‘use for one’s own selfish ends’ emerged from this.
=> explicit, fold, ply
explore: explore: [16] Etymologically, to explore is to look for something by shouting. The word comes ultimately from Latin explorare ‘investigate’, which was based on the verb plorare ‘wail, cry out’ (source also of English deplore [16] and implore [16]), and it is thought that the word’s original scenario may have been hunters shouting to flush out (Latin ex- ‘out’) their quarry.
=> deplore, implore
export: export: see port
expose: expose: see position
express: express: [14] Something that is expressed is literally ‘pressed out’. The word comes via Old French from Vulgar Latin *expressāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and pressāre ‘press’. Its meaning developed metaphorically from ‘press out’ to ‘form by pressure’ (presumably applied originally to modelling in clay or some similar substance, and subsequently to sculpture and then painting), and finally to ‘make known in words’.

The Vulgar Latin verb was in fact moving in on territory already occupied by its classical Latin forerunner exprimere (source of French exprimer ‘express’ and perhaps of English sprain [17]). The past participle of this was expressus, used adjectivally for ‘prominent, distinct, explicit’. Old French took it over as expres and passed it on to English in the 14th century.

By now its meaning was moving towards ‘intended for a particular purpose’, and in the 19th century it was applied to ‘special’ trains (as in ‘football specials’). It did not take long, however, for this to slip via ‘train for people wanting to go to a particular place, and therefore not stopping anywhere else’ to ‘fast train’. Hence the modern sense of express, ‘fast’, was born.
=> espresso, press, sprain
expunge: expunge: see punctuation
expurgate: expurgate: see pure
exquisite: exquisite: [15] Etymologically, exquisite means ‘sought out’. It comes from the past participle of Latin exquīrere, a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and quaerere ‘search’ (source of English query, quest, and question). Already in Latin it had acquired the metaphorical sense ‘sought after, choice, excellent’, which it brought with it into English.

From the 15th to the 18th centuries, however, the adjective underwent something of an explosion (being used in such widely varied senses as ‘ingenious, far-fetched’, ‘abstruse’, ‘affected’, ‘careful’, ‘elaborate’, and even – in relation to diseases – ‘true, typical’: ‘an exquisite diabetes caused by attraction of urine’, translation of Théophile Bonet’s Mercurius Compitalitius 1684) before settling back into the now familiar ‘excellent in beauty’.
=> query, quest, question
extempore: extempore: [16] An extempore speech is one that is given literally ‘out of time’ – that is, ‘on the spur of the moment’. That was the meaning of the Latin phrase extempore (ex ‘out of’ and tempore, the ablative case of tempus ‘time’), which was the source of the Latin adjectives extemporālis and extemporāneus. Both of these were acquired by English, as extemporal [16] and extemporaneous [17], but only the latter has survived. Ex tempore itself was first lexicalized in English as an adverb, and was not used as an adjective until the 17th century.
extend: extend: [14] Etymologically, to extend something is to ‘stretch it out’. The word comes from Latin extendere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and tendere ‘stretch’ (source of English tend and tension and a wide range of derivatives, including contend, intend, and pretend). English standard derives from its Old French descendant estendre.
=> contend, intend, pretend, standard, tend, tension
exterior: exterior: see extra
extinct: extinct: [15] Latin stinguere appears originally to have meant ‘prick, stick’ (a sense revealed in the derivative from which English gets distinct), but in historical times the only record of it we have is in the later, and rather remote metaphorical meaning ‘quench’. With the addition of the prefix ex- ‘out’ it became extinguere ‘put out’, whence English extinguish [16]. Extinct comes from its past participle, extinctus, and originally meant ‘put out, no longer alight’: ‘That fire was extinct’, Ranulph Higden, Polychronicon 1432– 50.

Its modern use, ‘having died out’, dates – in relation to species, families, etc – from the late 17th century.
=> distinct, extinguish
extol: extol: see tolerate
extort: extort: see torment
extra: extra: [18] In its modern English use, ‘beyond what is normal’ or ‘additional’, extra is probably an abbreviation of extraordinary [15], in which the prefix represents Latin extrā ‘outside, beyond’. This in turn was short for exterā, the ablative feminine case of the adjective exterus ‘outer’ (from which English gets exterior [16]). And exterus itself began life as a compound form based on Latin ex ‘out’.
=> exterior, extreme