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herd [herd 词源字典]: herd: [OE] Herd is part of a widespread Indo- European family of words denoting ‘group’ (others include Sanskrit çárdhas ‘troop, multitude’ and Welsh cordd ‘tribe, family’). It goes back to an Indo-European *kherdhā-, whose Germanic descendant *kherthō produced German herde, Swedish and Danish hjord, and English herd. Herd ‘herdsman’, now found only in compounds such as shepherd and goatherd, is a different word, albeit derived from the same Germanic source. Its Germanic relatives are German hirte, Swedish herde, and Danish hyrde.
[herd etymology, herd origin, 英语词源]
here: here: [OE] Like he, here can be traced back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European base *ki-, *ko-, which denoted ‘thisness’ or ‘hereness’ (as opposed to ‘thatness’ or ‘thereness’). The adverbial suffix -r (as in there and where) links it to the concept of ‘place’.
=> there, where
hereditary: hereditary: [16] Latin hērēs ‘heir’ (a relative of Greek khéra ‘widow’ and Sanskrit hā- ‘leave, lose’) has been quite a prolific source of English words. For one thing there is heir [13] itself, acquired via Old French heir. And then there are all the derivatives of the Latin stem form hērēd-, including hereditament [15], hereditary, heredity [16], and, via the late Latin verb hērēditāre, heritage [13] and inherit [14].
=> heredity, heritage, inherit
heresy: heresy: [13] Etymologically, a heresy is a ‘choice’ one makes. The word comes ultimately from Greek haíresis ‘choice’, a derivative of hairein ‘take, choose’. This was applied metaphorically to a ‘course of action or thought which one chooses to take’, hence to a particular ‘school of thought’, and ultimately to a ‘faction’ or ‘sect’. The word passed into Latin as haeresis, which early Christian writers used for ‘unorthodox sect or doctrine’, and thence via Vulgar Latin *heresia and Old French heresie into English. (Another derivative of hairein, incidentally, was diairein ‘divide’, from which English gets diaeresis [17].)
=> diaeresis
heritage: heritage: see hereditary
hermaphrodite: hermaphrodite: [15] Biologically a combination of male and female, hermaphrodite is etymologically a blend of the names of Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods, and Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. According to Ovid Hermaphródītos, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, was beloved of the nymph Salmacis with an ardour so strong that she prayed for complete union with him – with the result that their two bodies became fused into one, with dual sexual characteristics. English acquired the term via Latin hermaphrodītus.
hermetic: hermetic: [17] Hermetic means literally ‘of Hermes’. Not Hermes the messenger of the Greek gods, though, but an Egyptian priest of the time of Moses, who in the Middle Ages was regarded as identical with the versatile Hermes in his capacity of patron of science and invention, and who was thus named Hermes Trismegistus ‘Hermes the thrice greatest’. This shadowy figure was the supposed author of various works on alchemy and magic, and so the term hermetic came to be roughly synonymous with alchemical.

One of the inventions credited to Hermes Trismegistus was a magic seal to make containers airtight, and by the 1660s we find hermetic being used for ‘airtight’.
hermit: hermit: [13] Etymologically, a hermit is someone who lives alone in the desert. The word comes ultimately from Greek érēmos ‘solitary’, from which was derived erēmíā ‘desert, solitude’. Many of the early Christian hermits, notably Saint Anthony, lived not only alone but in the desert, so it was appropriate that the term erēmítēs was applied to them. It came into English via medieval Latin herēmīta and Old French hermite.
hero: hero: [14] Hero is a Greek word – hérōs – applied in ancient times to men of superhuman ability or courage, and in due course by extension to demigods. At first it was used in English simply to render this Greek notion, and it was not until the late 16th century that the extended and more general sense ‘brave or otherwise admirable man’ began to emerge. ‘Chief character in a story’ is a late 17th-century development.

English acquired the word via Latin hērōs as heros, but it was not long before this became interpreted as a plural, and a new singular hero was formed. Heroin [19] comes from German heroin, said to have been coined from the delusions of heroism which afflict those who take the drug.
=> heroin
heron: heron: [OE] Heron may well have originated in imitation of the bird’s cry, for its source was probably Indo-European *qriq- (whence also Russian krichat’ ‘call out, shout’). From this was descended prehistoric Germanic *khaigaron (source of Swedish häger ‘heron’), which was borrowed into Old French as hairon. English took it over as heron or hern (the latter now a memory surviving in personal names and placenames, such as Earnshaw).
herpes: herpes: see serpent
herpetology: herpetology: see serpent
herring: herring: [OE] Just as the hare is probably the ‘grey animal’, so the herring could well be the ‘grey fish’. Old English hǣring goes back to a prehistoric West Germanic *khēringgaz, in which the first syllable could represent the ancestor of English hoar ‘silvery-grey’ – the colour of the herring. French hareng comes from a variant of the West Germanic word.
=> hare, hoar
hesitate: hesitate: [17] Etymologically, to hesitate is to become ‘stuck’. The word comes from Latin haesitāre, a derivative of haerēre ‘hold fast, stick’ (which gave English adhere). The underlying idea is of being ‘held back’, or in speech of ‘stammering’, and hence of being unable to act or speak promptly or decisively.
=> adhere
hessian: hessian: [19] In common with many other sorts of textile, such as denim, jersey, and worsted, hessian’s name reveals its place of origin. In this case it was Hesse, formerly a grand duchy, nowadays a state of West Germany, in the western central part of the country.
heuristic: heuristic: see eureka
heyday: heyday: [16] Etymologically, the -day of heyday has no connection with the English noun day, although it has come to resemble it over the centuries. Nor is hey- related to hay. Originally the word was heyda, an exclamation roughly equivalent to modern English hurrah. Probably it was just an extension of hey, modelled partly on Low German heida ‘hurrah’. Its earliest noun use (first recorded in the 1590s) was in the sense ‘state of exultation’; the influence of the day-like second syllable did not make itself felt until the mid-18th century, when the modern sense ‘period of greatest success’ began to emerge.
hiatus: hiatus: see yawn
hibernate: hibernate: [19] The Latin word for ‘winter’ was hiems (it is the source of French hiver, Italian inverno, and Spanish invierno, and is related to a number of other ‘winter’ or ‘snow’ words, such as Greek kheima, modern Irish geimhreadh, Russian zima, and Sanskrit hima- – the Himalayas are etymologically the ‘snowy’ mountains – which point back to a common Indo-European ancestor *gheim-, *ghyem-).

From it was derived the adjective hībernus, whose neuter plural form hīberna was used as a noun meaning ‘winter quarters’. This in turn formed the basis of a verb hībernāre ‘pass the winter’, whose English descendant hibernate was apparently first used by the British naturalist Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) around 1800. (Hibernia, incidentally, the Romans’ name for ‘Ireland’, comes ultimately from Old Celtic *Iveriu, source also of Erin and the Ire- of Ireland, but its Latin form was influenced by hībernus, as if it meant ‘wintry land’.)
=> himalayas
hide: hide: English has two words hide in current usage, probably from an identical Indo-European source. The verb, ‘conceal’ [OE], which has no living relatives among the Germanic languages, comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *khūdjan. This was derived from a base which probably also produced English hoard, huddle, and hut, and goes back to Indo-European *keudh-, source also of Greek keúthein ‘cover, hide’, Welsh cuddio ‘hide’, and Breton kuzat ‘hide’. Hide ‘skin’ [OE] and its Germanic relatives, German haut, Dutch huid, and Swedish and Danish hud, come ultimately from Indo-European *keut-, which also produced Latin cutis ‘skin’ (source of English cuticle [17] and cutaneous [16]) and Welsh cwd ‘scrotum’.

The semantic link between the two hides is ‘covering’.
=> hoard, huddle, hut; cutaneous, cuticle