英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

love [love 词源字典]: love: [OE] The word love goes back to an Indo- European *leubh-, which has spawned a huge lexical progeny: not just words for ‘love’ (love’s Germanic relatives, such as German liebe and Dutch liefde, as well as the archaic English lief ‘dear’ [OE] and Latin libīdō ‘strong desire’, source of English libidinous [15]) but also words for ‘praise’ (German lob and Dutch lof) and ‘belief’ (German glauben, Dutch gelooven, English believe).

The sense ‘find pleasing’ is primary; it subsequently developed to ‘praise’ and, probably via ‘be satisfied with’, to ‘trust, believe’. The derivative lovely [OE] originally meant ‘affectionate’ and ‘lovable’; the modern sense ‘beautiful’ did not develop until the late 13th century.
=> believe, leave, lief[love etymology, love origin, 英语词源]
low: low: English has two words low, of which surprisingly the ‘noise made by cattle’ [OE] is the older. It goes back ultimately to the onomatopoeic Indo-European base *klā-. This also produced Latin clārus (which originally meant ‘loud’, and gave English clear and declare), clāmāre ‘cry out’ (source of English acclaim, claim, exclaim, etc), and calāre ‘proclaim, summon’ (source of English council).

It produced a prehistoric Germanic *khlō-, whose only survivor other than English low is Dutch loeien. Low ‘not high’ [12] was borrowed from Old Norse lágr (source also of Swedish låg ‘low’). This goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *lǣgjaz, which was derived from the same base as produced the English verb lie ‘recline’.
=> acclaim, claim, clear, council, exclaim; lie
loyal: loyal: [16] Loyal, ultimately the same word as legal, has a double history in English. It was originally acquired in the 13th century as leal. This came from Anglo-Norman leal, a descendant of Latin lēgālis ‘legal’. Then in the 16th century it was reborrowed from the modern French form loyal. The semantic link is ‘faithfully carrying out (legal) obligations’.
=> legal
lubricate: lubricate: see slip
lucid: lucid: see light
lucifer: lucifer: see light
luck: luck: [15] The antecedents of luck are not at all clear. Its likeliest source is Low German luk. This is clearly a close relative of modern Dutch geluk, whose prefix ge- is found also in Middle High German gelücke (source of modern German glück ‘good fortune, happiness’). But where the element lu(c)k came from is not known.
Luddite: Luddite: [19] The original Luddites, in the 1810s, were members of organized bands of working men who were opposed to the new factory methods of production (foreseeing – quite correctly – that the traditional ways which gave them employment would be destroyed by the new ones) and went around the country, mainly in the Midlands and Northern England, breaking up manufacturing machinery. They were named after Ned Ludd, a possibly apocryphal Leicestershire farm worker who around 1779 supposedly rushed into a stocking-maker’s house in an insane rage and smashed up two stocking frames.

Thereafter, the story continues, whenever a stocking frame suffered damage the saying would be ‘Ludd must have been here!’. The ringleaders of the disturbances in the 1810s were commonly nicknamed ‘Captain Ludd’ or ‘King Ludd’. The modern application of the word to an opponent of technological or industrial change appears to date from the 1960s.
ludicrous: ludicrous: see illusion
luff: luff: see aloof
lug: lug: English has three words lug, two of them possibly connected. The verb, ‘pull’ [14], may be related to Swedish lugga ‘pull someone’s hair’, suggesting a Scandinavian origin. And it has been pointed out that the various meanings of the noun lug [15], such as ‘ear’ and ‘projecting handle’, share a common semantic element ‘capable of being held (and pulled)’, so the noun may have been derived from the verb. The lug- of lugworm [17] may be of Celtic origin.
lukewarm: lukewarm: [14] Lukewarm is a compound adjective based on the now obsolete Middle English luke ‘tepid’. It is not altogether clear where this came from, but it is generally assumed to be a derivative of the also now obsolete lew ‘(fairly) warm’, with perhaps a diminutive suffix. Lew goes back to an Old English hlēow ‘warm’, a variant of which became modern English lee ‘shelter’. It is related to Latin calor ‘heat’ (source of English calorie), calidus ‘hot’ (source of English caudle, cauldron, and chowder), and calēre ‘be hot’ (source of English nonchalant).
=> calorie, cauldron, chowder, lee, nonchalant
lull: lull: [14] There are several words similar to lull in various Germanic languages, including Swedish lulla ‘lull’ and Dutch lullen ‘prattle’, but it is not clear to what extent they are interconnected. But either individually or collectively they all no doubt go back ultimately to a repitition of the syllable lu or la, used in singing a baby to sleep. Lullaby was coined from lull in the 16th century, perhaps using the final syllable of goodbye.
lumbago: lumbago: see loin
lumbar: lumbar: see loin
lumber: lumber: [14] Swedish has a dialectal verb loma ‘move heavily’, which is the only clue we have to the antecedents of the otherwise mysterious English verb lumber. The noun, too, which first appears in the 16th century, is difficult to account for. In the absence of any other convincing candidates, it is presumed to have been derived from the verb (its earliest recorded sense is ‘useless or inconvenient articles’, plausibly close to the verb; ‘cut timber’ did not emerge until the 17th century, in North America).
luminous: luminous: see light
lump: lump: [13] The origins of lump are obscure. It presumably emerged from an imperfectly recorded medieval Germanic substratum of words for ‘coarse or shapeless things’ (also represented perhaps by Low German lump ‘coarse, heavy’ and Dutch lomp ‘rag’), but where this began is not known. The lump of like it or lump it [19] is a different word, of even more mysterious ancestry.
lunar: lunar: [17] Latin lūna ‘moon’ came from an Indo- European base which also produced English light (not to mention a range of Latin ‘light’- words, such as lūx and lūmen, which have given English illustrate, lucid, luminous, lustre, etc). It had two adjectival derivatives: lūnāris, which simply meant ‘of the moon’, and was borrowed by English as lunar; and lūnāticus.

This was originally used for ‘living on the moon’, but subsequently came to employed in the sense ‘crazy’, from the notion that certain sorts of periodic madness were caused by the phases of the moon. English acquired it via Old French lunatique as lunatic [13].
=> illustrate, light, luminous, lunatic, lustre
lunch: lunch: [16] When lunch first appeared on the scene, at the end of the 16th century, it was used for a ‘slice or hunk of food’ (‘He shall take bread and cut it into little lunches into a pan with cheese’, Richard Surfleet, Country Farm 1600). It appears to have been borrowed from Spanish lonja ‘slice’. The roughly contemporaneous luncheon, probably just an arbitrary lengthening of lunch, came to be used in the early 17th century for a ‘snack’ (the link with ‘hunk or piece of food’ is obvious), and eventually for a ‘light meal’. Lunch returned to the language in this sense at the beginning of the 19th century, as an abbreviation of luncheon.