英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

finish [finish 词源字典]: finish: [14] The Latin verb *fīnīre, a derivative of fīnis ‘end, limit’, signified ‘limit’ as well as ‘complete’, but it is the latter which has come down to English via feniss-, the stem of Old French fenir. The Latin past participle, fīnītus, gave English finite [15].
=> final, finance, fine, finite[finish etymology, finish origin, 英语词源]
fiord: fiord: see ford
fir: fir: [14] As with many Indo-European tree-names, fir is a widespread term, but it does not mean the same thing wherever it occurs. Its prehistoric Indo-European ancestor was *perkos, which in Latin became quercus, the name for the ‘oak’. Nor was the application confined to southern Europe, for Swiss German has a related ferch ‘oak wood’. But by and large, the Germanic languages took the term over and applied it to the ‘pine’: German föhre, Swedish fura, and Danish fyr all mean ‘pine’.

So also did Old English furh (known only in the compound furhwudu ‘pinewood’), but this appears to have died out. It was replaced semantically by pine, but formally by Middle English firre, a borrowing from the Old Norse form fyri- (also known only in compounds). This was used as a name not for the ‘pine’, but for the ‘fir’ (which in Old English times had been called sæppe or gyr).
fire: fire: [OE] Appropriately enough for one of the mainsprings of human civilization, the word fire is widespread amongst Indo-European languages (although it is only one of two competing ‘fire’ strands, the other being represented in English by ignite). Among its relatives are Greek pur (whence English pyre, pyrotechnic, and, by a very circuitous route, bureau), Czech pýr ‘embers’, Armenian hūr, and Hittite pahhur, pointing back to a prehistoric Indo-European *pūr. Its Germanic descendant was *fūir, from which came German feuer, Dutch vuur, and English fire.
=> bureau, pyre, pyrotechnic
firm: firm: [14] Firm comes ultimately from Latin firmus ‘stable, strong, immovable’. In its adjectival use, the English word’s semantic line of descent from its Latin original is perfectly clear, but the noun presents a very different story. From firmus was derived the verb firmāre ‘make firm, fix’, which in post-classical times came to mean ‘confirm’.

It passed into Italian as firmare, which was used in the sense ‘confirm by one’s signature’, hence simply ‘sign’. It formed the basis of a noun firma ‘signature’, and by extension the ‘name under which a business is carried on’, and finally the ‘business’ itself. English took the noun over with the latter two meanings in the 18th century. Other English words that trace their ancestry back to Latin firmus are firmament [13], from Latin firmāmentum (this originally meant simply ‘strengthening, support’, and acquired the sense ‘sky’ in post-classical times as a literal Biblical translation of Greek steréōma ‘heavenly vault’, a derivative of stereós ‘firm’, which in turn was a literal translation of Hebrew rāqī a ‘heavenly vault’, also derived from a word meaning ‘firm’); furl [16], originally a blend formed in Old French from ferm ‘firm’ and lier ‘tie’ (a relative of English liable); and farm, whose semantic history is quite similar to that of the noun firm.
=> farm, firmament, furl
first: first: [OE] As its -st ending suggests, first was originally a superlative form. Its distant ancestor was Indo-European *pro, denoting ‘before, in front’ (amongst whose other descendants to have reached English are prime and the prefix proto-). Its Germanic offspring was *fur, *for (source also of English for and fore), from which the superlative *furistaz, literally ‘most in front’, was formed. Besides English first and the related Swedish först and Danish først (which etymologically are the equivalent of foremost), this has produced German fürst and Dutch vorst ‘prince’.
=> for, fore, prime
firth: firth: see ford
fiscal: fiscal: [16] Latin fiscus originally denoted a ‘small rush basket’, used for example for keeping olives in. Evidently, though, the main purpose to which it was put was as a purse, for it soon acquired the figurative sense ‘public purse, public revenue’. Hence the adjective fiscālis ‘of the imperial treasury’, which passed into English via French fiscal.
fish: fish: [OE] Fish goes back to an ancient Indo- European word *piskos, which produced on the one hand Latin piscis (source of French poisson, Italian pesce, Spanish pez, Breton pesk, and Welsh pysgodyn) and on the other Germanic *fiskaz (source of Gothic fisks, German fisch, Dutch visch, Swedish and Danish fisk, and English fish). (English, incidentally, gets piscatorial [19], piscina [16], and the zodiacal sign Pisces [14] from Latin piscis.) But not all Indo-European languages share the word, by any means: Greek had ikhthús for ‘fish’ (whence English ichthyology ‘study of fish’ [17]), and Russian, Polish, and Czech have ryba.
=> piscatorial, pisces
fissure: fissure: see vent
fist: fist: [OE] Like finger, fist seems etymologically to be a reference to the number of fingers on the hand. It comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *fūstiz (source also of German faust and Dutch vuist). This may represent an earlier *fungkhstiz, which has been referred to an Indo- European ancestor *pngkstis, a derivative of *pengke ‘five’. (Dutch vuist ‘fist’, incidentally, is probably the source of English foist [16], which originally denoted the dishonest concealing of a dice in one’s hand.)
=> finger, five, foist
fit: fit: English has three distinct words fit, but the history of them all is very problematical. The verb fit ‘make suitable, be the right size, etc’ [16], and the presumably related adjective ‘proper, appropriate’ [14] may come from a Middle English verb fitten ‘marshal troops’, but that only pushes the difficulty one stage further back, for no one knows where fitten came from. (The derivative outfit dates from the 18th century.) Fit ‘seizure, sudden outburst’ [14] may be the same word as Old English fitt ‘conflict’, whose antecedents again are obscure (fitful was formed from it in around 1600, but was not widely used before the 19th century). Fit ‘section of a poem’ [OE] also comes from an Old English fitt, which might conceivably be identical with Old English fitt ‘conflict’; but an alternative possibility is some connection with Old High German fizza ‘skein’ and Old Norse fit ‘hem’.
five: five: [OE] Five is one of a general Indo-European family of words signifying ‘five’. It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *pengke, which also produced Greek pénte (source of English pentagon [16], pentecost [OE] – literally ‘fiftieth day’ – pentagram [19], etc), Sanskrit panca (source of English punch ‘spiced drink’), and Latin quīnque. In due course this under-went a phonetic transformation to *pempe, which was the direct ancestor of prehistoric Germanic *fimfi. This led on in its turn to German fünf, Dutch vijf. Swedish and Danish fem, and English five.
=> finger, fist, pentagon, punch
fix: fix: [15] Fix comes ultimately from Latin fīgere ‘fasten’. Its past participle fīxus made its way into English along two distinct routes, partly via the Old French adjective fix ‘fixed’, and partly via the medieval Latin verb fīxāre. Derived forms in English include affix [15], prefix [17], suffix [18], and transfix [16], and also fichu ‘scarf’ [19]: this came from the past participle of French ficher ‘attach’, which is descended from Vulgar Latin *figicāre, another derivative of figere.
=> affix, prefix, suffix, transfix
fizzle: fizzle: [16] Originally, fizzle meant ‘fart silently or unobtrusively’: ‘And then in court they poisoned one another with their fizzles’, Benjamin Walsh’s translation of Aristophanes’ Knights 1837. Then in the mid-19th century it started to be used for a ‘weak spluttering hissing sound’, and hence figuratively ‘end feebly’. In the earlier sense, fizzle was probably a derivative of the now obsolete English verb fist ‘fart’ (source of feisty), which came ultimately from Indo-European *pezd- (no doubt imitative of the sound of breaking wind).

The later sense is close enough semantically to suggest that it is probably a metaphorical extension of the earlier, but it could also be a new formation, based on fizz [17] (which was also of onomatopoeic origin).
=> feisty
fjord: fjord: see ford
flag: flag: English has at least three separate words flag, none of whose origins are known for certain. Both the noun ‘cloth used as an emblem’ [16] and the verb ‘droop, decline’ [16] may have developed from an obsolete 16th-century adjective flag ‘drooping, hanging down’, but no one knows where that came from. Flag the plant [14] is probably related to Danish flæg ‘yellow iris’, but beyond that the trail goes cold. Flag as in flag-stone [15] originally meant ‘piece of turf’.

It probably came from Old Norse flaga ‘stone slab’. This also gave English flaw (which originally meant ‘flake’), which is related to English floe, and goes back to a Germanic base, a variant of which produced English flake.
=> flake, flaw, floe
flagellation: flagellation: see flail
flageolet: flageolet: see flute
flagon: flagon: see flask