英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

kilo [kilo 词源字典]: kilo: [19] Khílioi was Greek for a ‘thousand’. It was adopted in French in the 1790s as the prefix for ‘thousand’ in expressions of quantity under the new metric system, and various compound forms (kilogram, kilolitre, kilometre, etc) began to find their way into English from the first decade of the 19th century onwards. The first recorded instance of kilo being used in English for kilogram dates from 1870.
[kilo etymology, kilo origin, 英语词源]
kin: kin: [OE] Kin is the central English member of the Germanic branch of a vast family of words that trace their ancestry back to the prehistoric Indo- European base *gen-, *gon-, *gn-, denoting ‘produce’ (the Latin branch has given English gender, general, generate, genital, nature, etc, the Greek branch gene, genetic, gonorrhoea, etc).

Amongst the Germanic descendants of this base was *kun-, from which was derived the noun *kunjam, source of Swedish kön ‘sex’ and English kin ‘family’. Kindred [12] was formed from kin in early Middle English by adding the suffix -red ‘condition’ (as in hatred). Also closely related are kind and king.
=> gender, gene, general, generate, genital, kind, kindred, king, nature
kind: kind: [OE] Kind the noun and kind the adjective are ultimately the same word, but they split apart in pre-historic times. Their common source was Germanic *kunjam, the ancestor of English kin. From it, using the collective prefix *ga- and the abstract suffix *-diz, was derived the noun *gakundiz, which passed into Old English as gecynde ‘birth, origin, nature, race’.

The prefix ge- disappeared in the early Middle English period. Germanic *gakundiz formed the basis of an adjective, *gakundjaz, which in Old English converged with its source to produce gecynde. It meant ‘natural, innate’, but gradually progressed via ‘of noble birth’ and ‘well-disposed by nature’ to (in the 14th century) ‘benign, compassionate’ (a semantic development remarkably similar to that of the distantly related gentle).
=> kin
kindred: kindred: see kin
king: king: [OE] The prehistoric Germanic ancestor of king (as of German könig, Dutch koning, Swedish konung, and Danish konge) was *kuninggaz. This seems to have been a derivative of *kunjam ‘race, people’ (source of English kin). If it was, king means etymologically ‘descendant of the race, offspring of the people’.
=> kin
kipper: kipper: [OE] There is a single Old English instance, in a text of around the year 1000, of a fish called cypera. The context suggests that this was a ‘salmon’, which would tie in with the later use of the word kipper, from the 16th to the 20th centuries, for ‘male salmon during the spawning season’. What is not clear, however, despite the obvious semantic link ‘fish’, is whether this is the same word as kipper ‘cured herring or other fish’, first recorded in the 14th century.

Nor is it altogether clear where the term originally came from, although it is usually held to be a derivative of Old English copor ‘copper’, in allusion to the colour of the fish.
kiss: kiss: [OE] Kiss is a widespread Germanic word, represented also in German kūssen, Dutch kussen, Swedish kyssa, and Danish kysse. It probably goes back to some prehistoric syllable imitative of the sound or action of kissing, such as *ku or *kus, which would also lie behind Greek kunein ‘kiss’, Sanskrit cumb- ‘kiss’, and Hittite kuwass- ‘kiss’. There is not sufficient linguistic evidence, however, to show whether the Indo-Europeans expressed affection by kissing each other.
kitchen: kitchen: [OE] The Latin word for ‘kitchen’ was coquīna, a derivative of the verb coquere ‘cook’ (ultimate source of English cook, culinary, kiln, precocious, etc). It had a colloquial variant, *cocīna, which spread far and wide throughout the Roman empire. In French it became cuisine (borrowed by English in the 18th century), while prehistoric West Germanic took it over as *kocina. This has subsequently become German küche, Dutch keuken, and English kitchen – etymologically, a room where one ‘cooks’.
=> apricot, cook, culinary, kiln, precocious
knapsack: knapsack: [17] The -sack of knapsack is no doubt essentially the same word as English sack, but the knap- presents slightly more of a problem. The term was borrowed from Low German knappsack, and so probably knapprepresents Low German knappen ‘eat’ – the bag having originally been named because it carried a traveller’s supply of food.
knee: knee: [OE] The majority of modern European words for ‘knee’ go back to a common Indo- European ancestor which probably originally signified ‘bend’. This was *g(e)neu or *goneu, which lies behind Latin genu ‘knee’ (source of French genou and Italian ginocchio, and also of English genuine) and may well be connected with Greek gōníā ‘angle’, from which English gets diagonal.

It passed into Germanic as *knewam, which over the centuries has diversified into German and Dutch knie, Swedish knä, Danish knoe, and English knee. The derivative kneel [OE] was formed before the Anglo-Saxons reached Britain, and is shared by Dutch (knielen).
=> genuine, kneel
knickers: knickers: [19] The use of the word knickers for ‘women’s underpants’ dates back to the 1880s: a writer in the magazine Queen in 1882 recommended ‘flannel knickers in preference to flannel petticoat’, and Home Chat in 1895 was advertising ‘serge knickers for girls from twelve to sixteen’. Over the decades, of course, the precise application of the term has changed with the nature of the garment, and today’s legless briefs are a far cry from the knee-length ‘knickers’ of the 1880s.

They got their name because of their similarity to the original knickers, which were knee-length trousers for men (The Times in 1900 reported the ‘Imperial Yeomanry … in their well-made, loosely-fitting khaki tunics and riding knickers’). And knickers itself was short for knickerbockers, a term used for such trousers since the 1850s. This came from Diedrich Knickerbocker, a fictitious Dutch-sounding name invented by the American writer Washington Irving for the ‘author’ of his History of New York 1809.

The reason for the application seems to have been that the original knickerbockers resembled the sort of kneebreeches supposedly worn by Dutchmen.
knife: knife: [11] Knife is not a native English word, but a borrowing. It came from Old Norse knífr, which survives also in modern Swedish knif and Danish knif. It can be traced back to a prehistoric Germanic *knībaz, which also produced German kneif ‘cobbler’s knife’, and was borrowed by French as canif ‘knife’, but its previous ancestry is not known.
knight: knight: [OE] The word knight has come up in the world over the centuries. In the Old English period it simply meant ‘boy’ or ‘young man’. By the 10th century it had broadened out to ‘male servant’, and within a hundred years of that we find it being used for ‘military servant, soldier’. This is the general level or ‘rank’ at which the word’s continental relatives, German and Dutch knecht, have remained.

But in England, in the course of the early Middle Ages, knight came to denote, in the feudal system, ‘one who bore arms in return for land’, and later ‘one raised to noble rank in return for military service’. The modern notion of knighthood as a rung in the nobility, without any necessary connotations of military prowess, dates from the 16th century.
knit: knit: see knot
knob: knob: see knot
knock: knock: [OE] knock is a classic onomatopoeic word: that is to say, it originated in a direct imitation of the sound it denotes. The similar Swedish knacka ‘knock’ may be related. The figurative use of the word for ‘criticize’ originated in late 19th-century America.
knot: knot: [OE] The word knot goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic *knūdn-, whose underlying meaning was ‘round lump’. This only emerged in the English word (in such senses as ‘point from which a branch has grown’) in the Middle English period, but it can be seen in knoll [OE], which is a derivative of the same base (the related German knolle means ‘lump’). Knob [14] may be related too, although this has never been conclusively demonstrated.

The Germanic form diversified into English and Dutch knot, German knoten, Swedish knut, and Danish knode (whose Old Norse ancestor knútr was borrowed into Russian as knut ‘whip’, acquired by English as knout [18]). Knit [OE], which originally meant ‘tie in knots’, was derived in prehistoric West Germanic from knot.
=> knit
know: know: [11] The words for ‘know’ in the various Indo-European languages mostly belong to one large many-branched family which goes back ultimately to the base *gn-, which also produced English can and ken. Its Latin offspring was nōscere, from which English gets cognition, incognito, note, quaint, etc. From its Greek branch come English agnostic and diagnosis.

And in other Indo-European languages it is represented by, among others, Sanskrit jānáti ‘know’, Old Irish gnáth ‘known’, and Russian znat’. In the other Germanic languages it is the immediate relatives of English can (German and Dutch kennen, Swedish känna, Danish kende) that are used for ‘know’; know itself, which was originally a reduplicated form, survives only in English.

The -ledge of knowledge [13] was probably originally the suffix -lock ‘action, process’, which otherwise survives only in wedlock. Acknowledge [15] is derived from knowledge.
=> agnostic, can, cognition, diagnosis, incognito, ken, knowledge, note, quaint, recognize
knuckle: knuckle: [14] Knuckle originally denoted the rounded end of a bone at a joint, which sticks out when you bend the joint. This could be at any joint, including the elbow, the knee and even the joints of the vertebrae; only gradually did it become specialized to the finger joints. The word probably came from Middle Low German knökel (or a relative of it), which appears to have meant etymologically ‘little bone’. Knuckle down, in the sense ‘begin to work hard and conscientiously’, comes from the game of marbles, where players have to put their knuckles on the ground when shooting a marble with the thumb.
knurled: knurled: see gnarled