英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

module [module 词源字典]: module: see model
[module etymology, module origin, 英语词源]
moiety: moiety: see mitten
moist: moist: [14] Latin mūcidus meant ‘mouldy’ and ‘snivelling’ (it was a derivative of mūcus, source of English mucus). In Vulgar Latin it became altered to *muscidus, which is thought to have branched out in meaning to ‘wet’, and passed in this sense into Old French as moiste – whence English moist. From the 15th to the 17th centuries the derived adjective moisty ‘damp’ existed (it was revived in the 19th century). Musty [16] is thought to have originated as an alteration of it, perhaps under the influence of must ‘grape juice’.
=> mucus, musty
molar: molar: see mill
molasses: molasses: [16] The etymological connections of molasses are with ‘honey’ rather than ‘sugar’. It comes via Portuguese melaço from late Latin mellāceum ‘fermenting grape juice, new wine’. This was a derivative of mel ‘honey’, source of English mellifluous [15] and related to mildew.
=> mellifluous, mildew
mole: mole: English has four distinct words mole. The oldest is ‘brown spot’ [OE]. It is the descendant of Old English māl, which meant broadly ‘discoloured mark’. This developed in Middle English to ‘spot on the skin’, but the specific sense ‘brown mark’ did not emerge until fairly recently. The word goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *mailam, a derivative of a base meaning ‘spot, mark’ which also produced German malen ‘paint’ and Dutch maalen ‘paint’ (source of English maulstick ‘stick used as a rest by painters’ [17]). Mole the animal [14] was borrowed from Middle Dutch mol.

No one knows for sure where this came from, but its similarity to the now obsolete mouldwarp ‘mole’ [14] (a compound noun whose etymological meaning is ‘earththrower’) suggests that it could represent a truncated version of mouldwarp’s prehistoric Germanic ancestor. The metaphorical application of the word to a ‘traitor working secretly’ has been traced back as far as the 17th century, but its modern currency is due to its use by the British espionage writer John le Carré. Mole ‘harbour wall’ [16] comes via French môle and medieval Greek mólos from Latin mōlēs ‘mass, massive structure’.

The diminutive form of this, coined in modern times, is mōlēcula, from which, via French molécule, English gets molecule [18]. Other relatives are demolish and, possibly, molest [14], which comes ultimately from Latin molestus ‘troublesome’, connected by some scholars with mōlēs. And German mol, a convenient shortening of molekulargewicht ‘molecular weight’, has given English its fourth mole [20], used as the basic unit of measurement for the amount of a substance.
=> maulstick; molecule, molest
mollusc: mollusc: [18] Etymologically, a mollusc is a ‘soft’ creature. The word comes ultimately from Latin molluscus ‘soft’, a derivative of mollis ‘soft’. In classical times it was used as a noun for various ‘soft’ things, such as a sort of thinshelled nut and a species of fungus that grew from maple trees, but its application to a range of invertebrate animals seems to have been introduced by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.

Latin mollis (source also of English mollify [15]) goes back ultimately to Indo-European *mel-, *mol-, *ml- ‘grind’, which also produced English meal ‘flour’, mill, and molar.
=> meal, melt, mild, mill, molar, mollify
moment: moment: [14] As the closely related momentum [17] suggests, ‘movement’ is the etymological notion underlying moment. It comes via Old French moment from Latin mōmentum. This was a contraction of an assumed earlier *movimentum, a derivative of movēre ‘move’ (source of English move), and it had a wide range of meanings: from the literal ‘movement’ (preserved in English in the directly borrowed momentum) developed the metaphorical ‘instant of time’ (which arose from the notion of a particle so small as only just to ‘move’ the pointer of a scale) and ‘importance’ – both preserved in English moment.

The former has been allotted the derived adjective momentary [16], the latter momentous [17].
=> momentous, momentum, move
monastery: monastery: see monk
Monday: Monday: [OE] Etymologically, Monday is the ‘moon’s day’. It comes from a prehistoric German translation of Latin lūnae diēs ‘day of the moon’, which also produced German montag, Dutch maandag, Swedish måandag, and Danish mandag. In the Romance languages, the Latin term has become French lundi, Italian lunedì, Spanish lunes, and Romanian luni. (The various words for ‘Monday’ in the Slavic languages, incidentally, such as Russian ponedel’nik, mean basically ‘after Sunday’.)
=> moon
money: money: [13] An epithet used in ancient Rome for the goddess Juno was Monēta (derived by some etymologists in the past from the Latin verb monēre ‘advise, warn’, although this is now regarded as rather dubious). The name was also applied to her temple in Rome, which contained a mint. And so in due course monēta came to mean ‘mint’ (a sense retained in English mint, which goes back via a circuitous route to monēta), then ‘stamp for coining’, and finally ‘coin’ – the meaning transmitted via Old French moneie to English money.
=> mint
mongrel: mongrel: [15] The etymological notion underlying mongrel is of a ‘mixture’. For the word goes back ultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base *mong- ‘mix’, which also produced English among and mingle [14].
=> among, mingle
monitor: monitor: see monster
monk: monk: [OE] Etymologically, a monk is someone who lives ‘alone’. The word comes ultimately from late Greek mónachos ‘solitary person, hermit’, which was derived from Greek mónos ‘alone’ (source of the English prefix mono-). It passed into late Latin as monachus (by which time it had come to denote ‘monk’), and eventually found its way to Old English as munuc – whence modern English monk.

Another derivative of Greek mónos was monázein ‘live alone’. On this was based late Greek monastérion, whose late Latin form monastērium has been acquired by English in two distinct phases: first in the Anglo-Saxon period as mynster, which has given modern English minster [OE], and then in the 15th century as monastery.
=> minster, monastery
monkey: monkey: [16] No one is too sure where monkey came from. Spanish has mono ‘monkey’, and Old Italian had monno ‘monkey’, both probably borrowed from Arabic maimūn ‘monkey’, and it could be that an ancestor of these was borrowed into Low German and given the diminutive suffix -ke. This would account for monkey. No related Germanic form has been found to substantiate this, although the name Moneke does occur in Middle Low German.
monolith: monolith: see lithograph
monsieur: monsieur: see sir
monster: monster: [13] Monster originated as a word for a ‘divine omen or warning’. It goes back via Old French monstre to Latin mōnstrum, a derivative of the verb monēre ‘warn’. From its original sense ‘warning of misfortune, evil omen’, mōnstrum was transferred to the sort of thing that could function as such an omen – a ‘prodigy’, or a ‘misshapen or horrifying creature’ – whence the meaning of English monster.

The word’s connotations of ‘largeness’ seem to be rather more recent, first emerging in English in the 16th century. Other English derivatives of mōnstrum, some of them reflecting a later sense of monēre, ‘show, inform’, rather than the original ‘warn’, include demonstrate [16], monstrance [16], muster [13] (which originally meant ‘display’), and remonstrate [16].

And from monēre itself come admonish, monitor [16], monument [13], premonition [16], and summon [13].
=> admonish, demonstrate, monitor, monument, muster, premonition, remonstrate, summon
month: month: [OE] In ancient times the passing of time was recorded by noting the revolutions of the moon. Consequently prehistoric Indo-European had a single word, *mēnes-, which denoted both ‘moon’ and ‘month’. The Romance languages retain it only for ‘month’: Latin mēnsis (source of English menstrual) has given French mois, Italian mese, and Spanish mes. The Germanic languages, however, have kept both, distinguishing them by different forms. In the case of ‘month’, the Germanic word was *mǣnōth, which has differentiated into German monat, Dutch maand, Swedish månad, Danish maaned, and English month.
=> menstrual, moon
monument: monument: see monster