英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

enemy [enemy 词源字典]: enemy: [13] An enemy is literally someone who is ‘not a friend’. The word comes, via Old French enemi, from Latin inimīcus, a compound formed from the prefix in- ‘not’ and amīcus ‘friend’ (source of English amicable and related to English amiable). The late Latin derivative inimīcālis produced English inimical [17].
=> amicable, inimical[enemy etymology, enemy origin, 英语词源]
energy: energy: [16] Energy comes ultimately from Greek érgon ‘deed, work’. This was a descendant of Indo-European *wergon, which also produced English work, liturgy, organ, and orgy. Addition of the prefix en- ‘at’ produced the adjective energés or energōs ‘at work’, hence ‘active’, which Aristotle used in his Rhetoric as the basis of a noun enérgeia, signifying a metaphor which conjured up an image of something moving or being active. This later came to mean ‘forceful expression’, or more broadly still ‘activity, operation’. English acquired the word via late Latin energīa.
=> liturgy, organ, orgy, work
engage: engage: [15] Vulgar Latin had a noun *wadium ‘pledge’ (it came from Germanic *wathjam, source also of English wed and wage). From it was derived a verb *wadiāre ‘pledge’, which formed the basis of a compound *inwadiāre. Germanic w became g in French (hence French Guillaume for William), so the Old French descendant of *inwadiāre was engager, acquired by English as engage. (The superficially similar gauge [15] is probably not related, although it is not known for certain what its ultimate source is.)
=> wage, wed
engine: engine: [13] The underlying etymological meaning of engine is ‘natural talent’. It comes ultimately from Latin ingenium (source also of English ingenious) which was formed from the base *gen- (as in genetic) denoting ‘reproduction’ and meant literally ‘skill or aptitude one was born with’. Abstract meanings related to this (such as ‘ingenuity’ and ‘genius’) have now died out in English (which acquired the word via Old French engin), but what remains is a more specific strand of meaning in the Latin word – ‘clever device, contrivance’.

Originally this was an abstract concept (often used in a bad sense ‘trick, cunning ruse’), but as early as about 1300 there is evidence of a more concrete application in English to a ‘mechanical device’. The word’s modern use for ‘machine producing motion’ originates in its early 19thcentury application to the steam engine. Engineer [14] comes via Old French engigneor from medieval Latin ingeniātōr, a derivative of the verb ingeniāre ‘contrive’, which in turn came from ingenium.
=> gin, ingenious
English: English: [OE] The people and language of England take their name from the Angles, a West Germanic people who settled in Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. They came originally from the Angul district of Schleswig, an area of the Jutland peninsula to the south of modern Denmark. This had a shape vaguely reminiscent of a fishhook, and so its inhabitants used their word for ‘fishhook’ (a relative of modern English angler and angling) to name it.

From earliest times the adjective English seems to have been used for all the Germanic peoples who came to Britain, including the Saxons and Jutes, as well as the Angles (at the beginning of the 8th century Bede referred to them collectively as gens anglorum ‘race of Angles’). The earliest record of its use with reference to the English language is by Alfred the Great.
=> angler, angling
engrave: engrave: see grave
engross: engross: see gross
enhance: enhance: [14] To enhance something is literally to ‘make it higher’. The word comes via Anglo- Norman enhauncer from Old French enhaucer, a descendant of Vulgar Latin *inaltiāre ‘raise’. This was a verb formed from the Latin intensive prefix in- and the adjective altus ‘high’ (source of English altitude). This original literal sense persisted into English (‘It was a stone, the which was enhanced upright’, William Caxton, Charles the Great 1485), but had largely died out by the end of the 16th century, leaving the field clear for the metaphorical ‘augment’.
=> altitude
enigma: enigma: [16] Enigma comes, via Latin, from Greek aínigma ‘riddle, obscure statement’. This was a derivative of the verb ainíssesthai ‘talk in riddles’, which in turn came from the noun ainos ‘tale, story’. Its modern English use for ‘something puzzling’ dates from the early 17th century.
enjoy: enjoy: [14] Originally, enjoy was used intransitively in English, rather as in the modern American Yiddish-influenced injunction ‘Enjoy!’: ‘Yet he never enjoyed after, but in conclusion pitifully wasted his painful life’, Robert Laneham 1549. However, by the end of the 16th century the transitive sense ‘take pleasure in’ had virtually taken over the field. The word probably comes from Old French enjoïr, a compound formed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and joir ‘rejoice’, which in turn came from Latin gaudēre (ultimate source of English joy).

Old French did have another, similar verb, however, enjoier (formed from the noun joie), which probably also played a part in the English acquisition.
=> joy
ennui: ennui: see annoy
enormous: enormous: [16] Etymologically, enormous is a parallel formation to abnormal and extraordinary. It comes from Latin ēnormis, a compound adjective formed from the prefix ex- ‘out of’ and norma ‘pattern, rule’ – hence literally ‘out of the usual pattern’. It originally had a range of meanings in English, including ‘abnormal, unusual’ (‘entered the choir in a military habit, and other enormous disguises’, Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry 1774) and ‘outrageous’.

By the beginning of the 19th century these had mostly died out, leaving the field clear for modern English ‘huge’, although the notion of ‘outrageousness’ remains in the noun derivative enormity [15].
=> abnormal, normal
enough: enough: [OE] Enough is a widespread word in the Germanic languages. German has genug, Dutch genoeg, and Swedish and Danish the reduced forms nog and nok. All go back to a prehistoric Germanic *ganōgaz, a compound formed from the collective prefix *ga- and an Indo-European element *nak- whose underlying meaning is probably ‘reach, attain’ (it occurs in Sanskrit na and Latin naniscī, both of which have that sense).
enquire: enquire: [13] The -quire element in enquire (or inquire, as it is alternatively spelled) is etymologically related to English query and question. The word comes via Old French enquerre from *inquāerere, the Vulgar Latin descendant of Latin inquīrere. This was a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix in- and quaerere ‘seek, ask’. The modern English spelling with i in the second syllable comes from a 15th-century reintroduction of the vowel of Latin inquīrere. Inquest [13] comes from the Latin verb’s past participle.
=> inquest, query, question
ensconce: ensconce: see sconce
ensemble: ensemble: see similar
ensign: ensign: see sign
ensue: ensue: see sue
ensure: ensure: see insure
entablature: entablature: see table