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little [little 词源字典]: little: [OE] Little goes back to the prehistoric West Germanic base *lut-, which also produced Dutch luttel and may have been the source of the Old English verb lūtan ‘bow down’. Some have detected a link with Old English lot ‘deceit’, Old Norse lýta ‘dishonour, blame’, Russian ludit’ ‘deceive’, and Serbo-Croat lud ‘foolish’.
[little etymology, little origin, 英语词源]
liturgy: liturgy: [16] Etymologically, liturgy means ‘public performance’. It comes via late Latin līturgia from Greek leitourgíā ‘public service or worship’. This was a derivative of leitourgós ‘public servant’, hence ‘priest’, a compound formed from leit-, the stem of lēós ‘people, multitude’ (from which English gets layman), and érgon ‘work, action’ (source of English energy).
=> energy, laity, lay
live: live: [OE] Modern English live represents a conflation of two Old English verbs, libban and lifian, both of which go back ultimately to the same prehistoric Germanic source, *lib- ‘remain, continue’. Variants of this produced leave ‘depart’ and life. The adjective live [16] is a reduced form of alive, which derived from life.
=> life
livid: livid: see sloe
lizard: lizard: [14] Lizard goes back to Latin lacertus or lacerta, words of unknown origin. It reached English via Old French lesard. The Latin word was used for ‘muscle’ as well as ‘lizard’, perhaps because the ripple of a muscle beneath the skin reminded people of a lizard’s movement (an exactly parallel development links mouse and muscle). And in heavily disguised form, owing to a detour via Arabic, alligator is the same word.
=> alligator
load: load: [OE] Load originally meant ‘way, course’ and ‘conveyance, carriage’. It goes back to prehistoric Germanic *laithō, which also lies behind English lead ‘conduct’. Not until the 13th century did it begin to move over to its current sense ‘burden’, under the direct influence of lade [OE] (a verb of Germanic origin which now survives mainly in its past participial adjective laden and the derived noun ladle [OE]). The word’s original sense ‘way’ is preserved in lodestar [14], etymologically a ‘guiding star’, and lodestone [16], likewise a ‘guiding stone’, named from its use as a compass.
=> laden, lead
loaf: loaf: English has two words loaf. By far the older is ‘portion of bread’ [OE], which goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khlaibaz. This also produced German laib and Danish lev ‘loaf’, and was borrowed, originally into Gothic, from an Old Slavic chleb (source of modern Russian and Polish chleb ‘bread, loaf’). Heavily disguised, loaf forms part of both lady and lord (which etymologically mean respectively ‘loafkneader’ and ‘loaf-guardian’), and it also contributed the first syllable to Lammas [OE], literally ‘loaf-mass’.

The verb loaf ‘dawdle, mooch’ [19] seems to have been a back-formation from loafer, which was probably adapted in 19th-century American English from German landläufer ‘vagabond’, a compound of land ‘land’ and läufer ‘runner’ (to which English leap is related).
=> lady, lord; leap
loam: loam: see lime
loan: loan: [13] Old English had a noun lǣn, a close relative of the verb lǣnan (precursor of modern English lend). It meant ‘gift’, but it died out before the Middle English period, and was replaced by the related Old Norse lán, which has become modern English loan. Both go back ultimately to prehistoric Indo-European *loiq-, *leiq-, *liq-, which also produced Greek leípein ‘leave’ (source of English ellipse) and Latin linquere ‘leave’ (source of English delinquent, relic, and relinquish).
=> delinquent, lend, relic, relinquish
loathe: loathe: [OE] Loathe originated as a derivative of the adjective loath or loth [OE]. This originally meant ‘hostile’ or ‘loathsome’, and goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *laithaz, which also produced Swedish led ‘fed up’ and German leid ‘sorrow’, and was borrowed into the Romance languages, giving French laid and Italian laido ‘ugly’.
lobby: lobby: see lodge
lobe: lobe: [16] Greek lobós denoted ‘something round’, such as the circular part of the ear or the liver, or a round seed pod. It came from a prehistoric *logwós, a close relative of which produced Latin legūmen ‘seed pod’ (source of English legume [17]). Lobós was borrowed into late Latin as lobus, and from there made its way into English.
=> legume
lobster: lobster: [OE] The Latin word locusta denoted both the voracious grasshopper, the ‘locust’, and the ‘lobster’ or similar crustaceans, such as the crayfish (if, as has been suggested, the word is related to Greek lēkan ‘jump’, then presumably the ‘grasshopper’ sense was primary, and the ‘lobster’ application arose from some supposed resemblance between the two creatures).

English has borrowed the Latin word twice. Most recently it came in the easily recognizable guise locust [13], but lobster too goes back to the same source. The radical change of form may be due to the influence of the Old English word loppe ‘spider’ – the Old English precursor of lobster was loppestre or lopystre.
=> locust
local: local: [15] Latin locus meant ‘place’ (it became in due course French lieu, acquired by English in the 13th century, and was itself adopted into English as a mathematical term in the 18th century). From it was derived the verb locāre ‘place’, source of English locate [18] and location [16], and the post-classical adjective locālis, from which English gets local. The noun locale is a mock frenchification of an earlier local [18], an adoption of the French use of the adjective local as a noun.
=> lieu, locomotive, locus
lock: lock: [OE] English has two words lock. The one meaning ‘fastening mechanism’ goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic *luk-or *lūk-, denoting ‘close’, which also produced German loch ‘hole’ and Swedish lock ‘lid’. Closely related are locker [15], etymologically a ‘box with a lock’, and locket [14], which was acquired from Old French locquet, a diminutive form of loc (which itself was a borrowing from Germanic *luk-). Lock ‘piece of hair’ goes back to a prehistoric Indo-European *lug-, which denoted ‘bending’. Its Germanic relatives include German locke, Dutch and Danish lok, and Swedish lock.
locomotive: locomotive: [17] Locomotive denotes etymologically ‘moving by change of place’. It is an anglicization of modern Latin locōmōtīvus, a compound formed from locus ‘place’ and mōtīvus ‘causing to move’ (source of English motive). Originally it was used strictly as an adjective, and it was not until the early 19th century that the present-day noun use (which began life as an abbreviation of locomotive engine) emerged.
locust: locust: see lobster
lodestone: lodestone: see load
lodge: lodge: [13] The distant ancestor of lodge was Germanic *laubja ‘shelter’, which may well have been a derivative of *laubam ‘leaf’ (source of English leaf) – the underlying idea being of a sheltered place formed by or constructed from leafy branches. German laube ‘summer-house, covered way’ comes from the same source. Medieval Latin took over the Germanic form as laubia or lobia (from which English gets lobby [16]), and passed it on via Old French loge to English in the form lodge.
=> leaf, lobby
loft: loft: [OE] The notion underlying loft is of being ‘high up in the air’ – and indeed originally loft, like its close German relative luft, meant ‘air’. Not until the 13th century do we find it being used in English for ‘upper room’ (although in fact its source, Old Norse lopt, had both meanings). All these words go back to a common ancestor, prehistoric Germanic *luftuz ‘air, sky’. From this was derived a verb *luftjan, which, again via Old Norse, has given English lift [13] (the use of the derived noun for an ‘elevator’, incidentally, dates from the mid 19th century).
=> lift