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grate [grate 词源字典]: grate: Grate ‘framework for holding burning fuel’ [14] and grate ‘rub’ [15] are different words. The former comes via Old French grate ‘grille’ and Vulgar Latin *grāta from Latin crātis ‘wickerwork, hurdle’. Grate ‘rub’ is ultimately Germanic (its ultimate ancestor was the Germanic verb *krattōn, source of modern German kratzen ‘scratch’), but it reached English via Old French grater ‘scrape’. Gratin [19] comes from the derived French noun gratin.
=> gratin[grate etymology, grate origin, 英语词源]
grateful: grateful: [16] Grateful is a curious sort of adjective. The grate that a grateful person is full of is a now obsolete adjective, meaning ‘pleasing’ and ‘thankful’, which was derived from Latin grātus. It is unusual for adjectives ending in -ful themselves to be formed from adjectives, rather than from nouns, and it has been suggested in this case that the related Italian gradevole ‘pleasing’ may have had some influence.

Latin grātus itself meant ‘pleasing’ as well as ‘thankful’, and has also given English congratulate [16], gratify [16], gratitude [16], and gratuity [16], and, via the derived noun grātia, grace and gratis [15].
=> congratulate, grace, gratis, gratitude
gratin: gratin: see grate
grave: grave: Modern English has essentially two words grave. Grave ‘burial place’ goes back ultimately to prehistoric Indo-European *ghrebh- ‘dig’, which also produced Latvian grebt ‘hollow out’ and Old Church Slavonic pogreti ‘bury’. Its Germanic descendant had variants *grōb- (source of groove), *grub- (whence grub), and *grab-.

This last formed the basis of *graban, from which have come the verbs for ‘dig’ in most Germanic languages, including German graben, Dutch graven, Swedish gräva, and Danish grave. The English member of the family, grave, is now virtually obsolete as a verb (although its derivative engrave [16] survives); but its nominal relative grave, also formed from *grab-, is still very much with us. Grave ‘serious’ [16] comes via Old French grave from Latin gravis ‘heavy, important’, source also of English gravity and grief.

Its application to a backward-leaning accent (as in è) comes from the original use of such an accent-mark to indicate low or deep intonation.
=> engrave, groove, grub; gravity, grief
gravel: gravel: [13] Gravel is of Celtic origin. It has been traced to a prehistoric Celtic *gravo- ‘gravel’, never actually recorded but deduced from Breton grouan and Cornish grow ‘soft granite’. French borrowed it as grave ‘gravel, pebbles’ (perhaps the source of the English verb grave ‘clean a ship’s bottom’ [15], now encountered virtually only in graving dock, from the notion of ships being hauled up on to the pebbles of the seashore for cleaning). The Old French diminutive of grave was gravelle – whence English gravel.
gravity: gravity: [16] Gravity comes from Latin gravitās, a derivative of the adjective gravis ‘heavy, important’. This in turn goes back to a prehistoric Indo-European *gru-, which also produced Greek bárus ‘heavy’ (source of English baritone [19] and barium [19]), Sanskrit gurús ‘heavy, dignified’ (whence English guru [17]), Latin brūtus ‘heavy’, hence ‘cumbersome, stupid’ (from which English gets brute), Gothic kaurus ‘heavy’, and Latvian grūts ‘heavy, pregnant’.

English descendants of gravis, apart from gravity, include grave ‘serious’, gravid ‘pregnant’ [16], gravitate [17], grief, and grudge.
=> baritone, barium, brute, grave, grief, grudge, guru
gravy: gravy: [14] To begin with, the word gravy signified a sort of spiced stock-based sauce served with white meat; it was not until the 16th century that its modern sense ‘meat juices’ or ‘sauce made from them’ emerged. Its origins are problematical. It is generally agreed that its v represents a misreading of an n in the Old French word, grané, from which it was borrowed (modern v was written u in medieval manuscripts, and was often very hard to distinguish from n); but what the source of grané was is not clear.

The favourite candidate is perhaps grain (source of English grain), as if ‘sauce flavoured with grains of spice’, but graine ‘meat’ has also been suggested.
=> grain
graze: graze: [OE] There is no difficulty about the etymology of graze ‘feed on grass’: it was formed in Old English times as a derivative of the noun græs (modern English grass). But what about graze in the sense ‘scrape lightly’, first recorded in the 17th century? In the absence of any convincing alternative candidates, it is usually taken to be simply a special use of graze ‘feed on grass’, in the sense ‘remove grass close to the ground’, as some animals do in grazing – like a ‘close shave’, in fact.
=> grass
grease: grease: [13] Latin crassus meant ‘solid, thick, fat’, and hence ‘gross, stupid’ (English borrowed it in this latter metaphorical sense as crass [16], and it is also the source of French gras ‘fat’). On it was based the Vulgar Latin derived noun *crassia ‘(melted) animal fat’, which passed into English via Old French craisse, later graisse, and Anglo-Norman gresse or grece. Old French craisse was the source of craisset ‘oil lamp’, from which English got cresset [14].
=> crass, cresset
great: great: [OE] The main adjective for ‘large’ in the Anglo-Saxon period was the now virtually obsolete mickle. Great at that time was for the most part restricted in meaning to ‘stout, thick’. In the Middle English period great broadened out in meaning, gradually taking over from mickle, but in modern English has itself been superseded by big and large, and is now used only in reference to non-material things.

Its origins are a problem. It comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *grautaz, which also produced German gross and Dutch groot (source of English groat ‘small coin’ [14], etymologically a ‘big’ or ‘thick’ coin), but it is not clear where *grautaz came from. A resemblance to grit and groats has suggested a common origin in Indo-European *ghrēu- ‘rub, pound’.
=> grit, groat
green: green: [OE] Green is pre-eminently the colour of growing plants, and so appropriately it was formed from the same prehistoric Germanic base, *grō-, as produced the verb grow. Its West and North Germanic derivative *gronjaz gave German grün, Dutch groen, Swedish grön, and Danish grøn as well as English green.
=> grass, grow
gregarious: gregarious: see segregate
gremlin: gremlin: [20] Gremlin originated as Royal Air Force slang, as the name of a mischievous imp that caused malfunctions and crashes. It is first recorded in 1941, but it is said to go back to the early 1920s. It is generally assumed that its latter part comes from goblin, but speculation has been rife and diverse as to the source of its first syllable: from the scholarly (Old English gremman ‘make angry’) to the inventively popular (a blend of goblin with Fremlin, the name of a well-known firm of brewers).
grenade: grenade: [16] The original grenades were small spherical explosive-filled cases with a wick on top. In shape, they bore more than a passing resemblance to pomegranates. The Old French term for ‘pomegranate’ was pome grenate, or just grenate for short, and it was this abbreviated form, altered to grenade under the influence of the related Spanish granada, that was applied to the explosive device. Grenadier [17] came from the French derivative grenadier ‘grenadethrower’.
=> grain, grenadier, pomegranate
grey: grey: [OE] Grey is an ancient colour term, traceable back all the way to a prehistoric Indo- European *ghrēghwos. From this was descended West and North Germanic *grǣwaz, which produced German grau, Dutch grauw, Swedish grå, and Danish graa as well as English grey. The distinction in spelling between British grey and American gray is a comparatively recent one. Dr Johnson in his Dictionary 1755 gave gray as the main form, and even into the early 20th century it was still quite common in Britain (The Times used it, for instance). Nor is grey by any means unknown in America.
greyhound: greyhound: [OE] Most greyhounds are not grey – and there is no etymological reason why they should be. For the element grey- in their name has no connection with the colour-term grey. It comes from an unrecorded Old English *grīeg ‘bitch’, a relative of Old Norse grøy ‘bitch’.
grid: grid: [19] Grid is simply an abbreviated version of gridiron [13]. This in turn seems to have been an alteration (through association with iron) of griddle [13], which is traceable back via Old French gridil to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *crāticulum, a diminutive form of Latin crātis ‘wickerwork, hurdle’ (from which English gets grate). A parallel feminine Vulgar Latin derivative, crāticula, produced English grill [17] and grille [17].
=> grate, griddle, grill
grief: grief: [13] ‘Oppressiveness’ is the link between modern English grief and Latin gravis (source of English gravity). The Latin adjective meant ‘heavy, weighty’, and it formed the basis of a verb gravāre ‘weigh upon, oppress’. This passed into Old French as grever ‘cause to suffer, harrass’ (source of English grieve [13]), from which was derived the noun grief or gref ‘suffering, hardship’. Its modern sense, ‘feeling caused by such trouble or hardship, sorrow’, developed in the 14th century.
=> grave, gravity, grieve
grill: grill: see grid
grim: grim: [OE] Indo-European *ghrem-, *ghromprobably originated in imitation of the sound of rumbling (amongst its descendants was grumins ‘thunder’ in the extinct Baltic language Old Prussian). In Germanic it became *grem-, *gram-, *grum-, which not only produced the adjective *grimmaz (source of German grimm, Swedish grym, and English, Dutch, and Danish grim) and the English verb grumble [16], but was adopted into Spanish as grima ‘fright’, which eventually arrived in English as grimace [17].
=> grimace, grumble