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fetch [fetch 词源字典]: fetch: [OE] Fetch comes from the Old English verb fetian ‘go and get’, which survived dialectally as fet well into the 19th century. In the late Old English period a variant feccan developed, from which we get the modern English verb’s /ch/ ending. Its ultimate origin has been disputed. Perhaps the likeliest explanation is that it comes from a prehistoric Germanic *fat- ‘hold’ (source also of Old English fetel ‘girdle, strap’, from which modern English gets fettle).
[fetch etymology, fetch origin, 英语词源]
fête: fête: see feast
fetish: fetish: [17] Fetish is a doublet of factitious: that is to say, the two words have a common origin, but have subsequently diverged widely. Both come ultimately from Latin factītius ‘made by art’, an adjective derived from the past participle of facere ‘do, make’ (whence English effect, fact, fashion, among a host of other related words).

Its Portuguese descendant, feitiço, was used as a noun meaning ‘charm, sorcery’. French took this over as fétiche and passed it on to English, where it was used in the concrete sense ‘charm, amulet’, particularly as worshipped by various West African peoples. ‘Object irrationally or obsessively venerated’ is a 19th-century semantic development.
=> effect, fact, factory, fashion
fetter: fetter: [OE] Etymologically, fetters are shackles for restraining the ‘feet’. The word comes from prehistoric Germanic *feterō, which derived ultimately from the same Indo-European base, *ped-, as produced English foot. The parallel Latin formation, incidentally, was pedica ‘fetter’, from which English gets impeach.
=> foot, impeach, pedal
fettle: fettle: see fetch
feud: feud: [13] Feud signifies etymologically the ‘condition of being a foe’. It was borrowed from Old French fede or feide, and originally meant simply ‘hostility’; the modern sense ‘vendetta’ did not develop until the 15th century. The Old French word in turn was a borrowing from Old High German fēhida. This was a descendant of a prehistoric Germanic *faikhithō, a compound based on *faikh- ‘hostility’ (whence English foe).

Old English had a parallel descendant, fāhthu ‘enmity’, which appears to have died out before the Middle English period. It is not clear how the original Middle English form fede turned into modern English feud (the first signs of which began to appear in the late 16th century).
=> foe
feudal: feudal: see fee
fever: fever: [OE] The underlying meaning of fever, ‘high temperature’, suggests that it goes back ultimately to Indo-European *dhegh-, *dhogh- ‘burn’ (which also produced English day, favour, and forment). Descended from it was Latin febris ‘fever’, which English acquired during Anglo-Saxon times as fēfor. The modern form of the word is partly due to the influence of the related Old French fievre.
=> day, favour, foment
few: few: [OE] Few traces its history back to the Indo- European base *pau-, denoting smallness of quantity or number, amongst whose other descendants are Latin paucus ‘little’ (source of English paucity [15], French peu ‘few’, and Italian and Spanish poco ‘a little’), Latin (and hence English) pauper ‘poor’, and English poor and poverty. In Germanic it produced *faw-, whose modern representatives are Swedish få, Danish faa, and English few.
=> pauper, poor, poverty
fiasco: fiasco: [19] In Italian, a fiasco is literally a ‘bottle’ (the word comes from medieval Latin fiasco, source of English flagon and flask). Its figurative use apparently stems from the phrase far fiasco, literally ‘make a bottle’, used traditionally in Italian theatrical slang for ‘suffer a complete breakdown in performance’. The usual range of fanciful theories has been advanced for the origin of the usage, but none is particularly convincing.
=> flagon, flask
fib: fib: see fable
fichu: fichu: see fix
fiction: fiction: [14] Fiction is literally ‘something made or invented’ – and indeed that was the original meaning of the word in English. It seems always to have been used in the sense ‘story or set of “facts” invented’ rather than of some concrete invention, however, and by the end of the 16th century it was being applied specifically to a literary genre of ‘invented narrative’. The word comes via Old French from Latin fictiō, a derivative of the verb fingere ‘make, shape’, from which English also gets effigy, faint, feign, figure, and figment.
=> effigy, faint, feign, figure, figment
fiddle: fiddle: [OE] Like its distant cousin violin, fiddle comes ultimately from the name of a Roman goddess of joy and victory. This was Vītula, who probably originated among the pre-Roman Sabine people of the Italian peninsula. A Latin verb was coined from her name, vītulārī, meaning ‘hold joyful celebrations’, which in post-classical times produced the noun vītula ‘stringed instrument, originally as played at such festivals’.

In the Romance languages this went on to give viola, violin, etc, but prehistoric West and North Germanic borrowed it as *fithulōn, whence German fiedel, Dutch vedel, and English fiddle. In English, the word has remained in use for the instrument which has developed into the modern violin, but since the 16th century it has gradually been replaced as the main term by violin, and it is now only a colloquial or dialectal alternative.

The sense ‘swindle’ originated in the USA in the mid-to-late 19th century.
=> violin
fidelity: fidelity: see faith
fiduciary: fiduciary: see faith
fief: fief: see fee
field: field: [OE] Like plain, field seems originally to have meant ‘area of flat, open land’. It comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *plth-, which also produced Greek platús ‘broad’, English place and plaice, and possibly also English flan and flat. A noun derived from it, *peltus, entered prehistoric West Germanic as *felthuz, which subsequently disseminated as German feld, Dutch veld (English acquired veld or veldt [19] via its Afrikaans offshoot), and English field.
=> flan, flat, place, plaice, veld
fiend: fiend: [OE] Fiend seems originally to have meant ‘hated person’. It was formed in prehistoric times from the past participle of a Germanic verb meaning ‘hate’ (represented in historic times by, for example, Old English fēon, Old High German fiēn, and Gothic fijan). In Old English its meaning had progressed to ‘enemy’ (which is what its German relative feind still means). Then towards the end of the first millennium AD we see evidence of its being applied to the ‘enemy’ of mankind, the Devil. From there it was a short step to an ‘evil spirit’ in general, and hence to any ‘diabolically wicked person’.
fierce: fierce: [13] Fierce has not always had exclusively negative connotations of ‘aggression’, although admittedly they do go back a long way. Its source, Latin ferus (which also gave English feral) meant originally ‘wild, untamed’, but it subsequently developed the metaphorical sense ‘uncultivated, savage, cruel’. However, when English acquired the word, via Anglo-Norman fers and Old French fiers, it was used for ‘brave’ and ‘proud’ as well as ‘wildly hostile or menacing’. ‘Brave’ died out in the 16th century, although across the Channel ‘proud’ has survived to become the only sense of modern French fiers.
=> feral