英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

group [group 词源字典]: group: [17] Group was originally a term in art criticism. It referred to the disposition of a set of figures or objects in a painting, drawing, etc. Not until the 18th century was it used in its current general sense. It comes via French groupe from Italian gruppo, which was borrowed originally from prehistoric Germanic *kruppaz ‘round mass, lump’ (formed from the same base as produced English crop).
=> crop[group etymology, group origin, 英语词源]
grouse: grouse: English has two words grouse, neither of whose ancestries are adequately documented. It has been speculated that grouse the game-bird [16] originated as the plural of a now lost *grue, which may have come from the medieval Latin bird-name grūta, or from Welsh grugiar, a compound of grug ‘heath’ and iar ‘hen’. Grouse ‘complain’ [19] is first recorded in the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. It seems originally to have been pronounced to rhyme with moose, but in the 20th century has come into line phonetically with grouse the bird. It is not known where it came from.
grovel: grovel: [16] Old and Middle English had a suffix -ling, used for making adverbs denoting direction or condition. Few survive, and of those that do, most have had their -ling changed to the more logical-sounding -long (headlong and sidelong, for instance, used to be headling and sideling; darkling still hangs on – just – unchanged).

Among them was grovelling, an adverb meaning ‘face downwards’ based on the phrase on grufe ‘on the face or stomach’, which in turn was a partial translation of Old Norse á grúfu, literally ‘on proneness’ (grúfu may be related to English creep). It was not long before grovelling came to be regarded as a present participle, and the new verb grovel was coined from it.
=> creep
grow: grow: [OE] Grow comes from a prehistoric Germanic base *grō-, which also produced Dutch groeien ‘grow’ and English grass and green. Latin grāmen ‘grass’ may indicate connections outside Germanic, but this is not certain.
=> grass, green
grub: grub: [13] Grub ‘dig’ comes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic *grub-, perhaps via Old English *grybban, although no record of such a verb has actually come down to us (the related Germanic *grab- gave English grave, while a further variant *grōb- produced groove [15]). The relationship of grub ‘dig’ to the various noun uses of the word is far from clear. Grub ‘larva’, first recorded in the 15th century, may have been inspired by the notion of larvae digging their way through wood or earth, but equally it could be connected (via the idea of ‘smallness’) with the contemporary but now obsolete grub ‘short, dwarfish fellow’ – an entirely mysterious word. Grub ‘food’, which dates from the 17th century, is usually said to have been suggested by birds’ partiality for grubs or larvae as part of their diet.

And in the 19th century a grub was also a ‘dirty child’ – perhaps originally one who got dirty by digging or grubbing around in the earth – which may have been the source of grubby ‘dirty’ [19].
=> grave, groove
gruesome: gruesome: [16] The novels of Sir Walter Scott had an enormous influence in introducing Scotticisms into the general English language, and gruesome is a case in point. It was apparently coined in the 16th century from an earlier verb grue ‘be terrified’, which was probably of Scandinavian origin. For over 200 years it remained restricted in distribution to Scotland and northern England, but Scott started using it (‘He’s as grave and grewsome an auld Dutchman as e’er I saw’, Old Mortality 1816), immediately ensuring it an entrée into homes all over Britain thanks to Scott’s huge readership. It has never looked back.
grumble: grumble: see grim
grundyism: grundyism: [19] The term grundyism ‘prudishness’ was based on Mrs Grundy, a character in Thomas Moreton’s play Speed the Plough 1798 who became proverbial for her extreme rigidity in matters of sexual morality. Dame Ashfield, another character in the play, when contemplating some ticklish moral dilemma would invariably ask herself ‘What would Mrs Grundy say?’.
guarantee: guarantee: [17] Guarantee is essentially the same word as warrant, which is of Germanic origin (Germanic initial w- became g(u)- in the Romance languages). It was probably borrowed into English from the Spanish form garante (this is suggested by early spellings garanté and garante in English), and later changed to guarantee through confusion with guaranty [16] (itself originally a variant of warranty).
=> warrant
guard: guard: [15] Prehistoric West Germanic *warthōn produced English ward. It was borrowed into Vulgar Latin as *wardāre, and following the general phonetic trend by which Germanic initial w became g(u) in the Romance languages, it produced Italian guardare, Spanish guardar, and French garder. The noun derived from the latter, garde, gave English guard. Guardian [15], borrowed from Old French gardien, has a doublet in warden.
=> ward
gubernatorial: gubernatorial: see govern
guerilla: guerilla: [19] Etymologically, a guerilla is a ‘little war’. English acquired the word during the Peninsular War (1808–14) from Spanish guerrilla, which is a diminutive form of guerra ‘war’ (a word ultimately of Germanic origin, related to English war). In Spanish it still means ‘skirmish’, and until well into the 19th century it was used in English for a ‘war characterized by irregular skirmishing’ (the famous Times war correspondent William Russell, for instance, reported on 18 March 1862 that ‘Arkansas is now the theatre of a large guerilla’).

The first recorded use of the word in its present-day sense is by the Duke of Wellington, the British military commander in Spain, in a despatch of 1809: ‘I have recommended to the Junta to set the Guerillas to work towards Madrid’.
=> war
guess: guess: [13] In the earliest records we have of the verb guess, it is used for ‘take aim’. The modern sense ‘estimate’ did not emerge until the mid- 14th century. It seems to be of Scandinavian origin, and probably comes ultimately from the same base as produced get (Old Norse geta meant ‘guess’ as well as ‘get’, and the semantic progression hinted at by the intermediate ‘take aim’ is probably via ‘lock on to something in one’s sights’ to ‘fix on a particular figure’ – by implication, without exact calculation). Guesstimate, a blend of guess and estimate, is a US coinage of the 1930s.
=> get
guest: guest: [13] Guest comes ultimately from the same source as produced host. Their family tree diverged in prehistoric times, but their close relationship is pointed up by the fact that the related French hôte means both ‘guest’ and ‘host’. The common ancestor was Indo- European *ghostis ‘stranger’, whose Germanic descendant *gastiz produced German and Dutch gast, Swedish gäst, Danish gæst, and English guest.

The Old English version of the word was giest, which would have produced modern English *yest, but it was elbowed out in Middle English times by Old Norse gestr. The spelling gu-, indicating a hard /g/ sound, developed in the 16th century.
=> host, xenophobia
guide: guide: [14] The ancestor of guide was Germanic *wit- ‘know’, source of English wise, wit, and witness. From it was derived a verb *wītan, and the Franks, a West Germanic people who conquered Gaul in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, brought it with them. It eventually became Old French guider, and was borrowed by English. The semantic progression from ‘knowing’ to ‘showing’ is also displayed in the related German weisen ‘show, direct, indicate’.
=> wise, wit, witness
guild: guild: [14] Guilds probably got their name from the subscriptions paid by their members. It goes back to a Germanic *gelth- ‘pay’, which also produced German and Dutch geld ‘money’. An association to which people contributed in order to further a common effort was a *gelthjōn, which probably passed into English via Middle Low German or Middle Dutch gilde. English yield is a relative; it originally meant ‘pay’.
=> yield
guilder: guilder: see gold
guillotine: guillotine: [18] Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738– 1814), a French doctor, did not invent the device named after him – such contraptions had been around for some time – but it was he who saw the advantages, in terms of speed and efficiency, of an easily resettable blade for beheading in a time of peak demand, and he recommended it to the Revolutionary authorities. The term used for it, first recorded in English in 1793, is a fitting memorial to him. Its application to the limitation of discussion in a legislature dates from the 1890s.
guilt: guilt: [OE] Guilt is a strictly English word; no other Germanic, or indeed Indo-European language has it, and it is not clear where it came from. One theory is that, like guild and yield, it comes ultimately from Germanic *gelth- ‘pay’, and originally meant ‘debt’. This is not generally accepted, but it is notable that the German word schuld means ‘debt’ as well as ‘guilt’, with ‘debt’ being the original sense.
guinea: guinea: [17] Guinea first emerged as the name of a section of the West Africa continent in the late 16th century (its origins are not known, but presumably it was based on an African word). In 1663 the Royal Mint began to produce a gold coin valued at 20 shillings ‘for the use of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England trading with Africa’. It had the figure of an elephant on it.

Straightaway it became known as a guinea, both because its use was connected with the Guinea coast and because it was made from gold obtained there. And what is more, the coins soon came to be much in demand for domestic use: on 29 October 1666 Samuel Pepys recorded ‘And so to my goldsmith to bid him look out for some gold for me; and he tells me that Ginnys, which I bought 2000 of not long ago, and cost me but 18½d. change, will now cost me 22d., and but very few to be had at any price.

However, some more I will have, for they are very convenient – and of easy disposal’. Its value fluctuated, and was not fixed at 21 shillings until 1717. The last one was minted in 1813, but guinea as a term for the amount 21 shillings stayed in use until the early 1970s, when the decimalization of British currency dealt it the deathblow. The guinea pig [17], incidentally, comes from South America, and its name probably arose from a confusion between Guinea and Guiana, on the northern coast of South America.