英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

mortgage [mortgage 词源字典]: mortgage: [14] Mortgage means literally ‘dead pledge’. It comes from Old French mortgage, a compound formed from mort ‘dead’ and gage ‘pledge’ (source of English gage and closely related to English wage). The notion behind the word is supposedly that if the mortgagor fails to repay the loan, the property pledged as security is lost, or becomes ‘dead’, to him or her.
=> mortal, wage[mortgage etymology, mortgage origin, 英语词源]
mortuary: mortuary: see mortal
mosaic: mosaic: [16] Mosaic work is etymologically work ‘of the muses’. The word comes ultimately from Greek mouseion, which originally meant literally ‘place of the muses’, and has also given English museum. Somehow in medieval Latin it became altered to mūsaicus or mōsaicus, and passed via early modern Italian mosaico and French mosaïque into English as mosaic. It has no etymological connection, incidentally, with Mosaic ‘of Moses’ [17].
=> muse, museum
mosque: mosque: [17] Mosque means etymologically a place where you ‘bow down’ in prayer and is, not surprisingly, of Arabic origin. It comes from Arabic masjid ‘place of worship’, a derivative of the verb sajada ‘bow down’. English acquired the word via Italian moschea and French mosquée as mosquee, but soon dropped the final -e. (The Arabic form masjid or musjid has been intermittently used in English in the 19th and 20th centuries.)
mosquito: mosquito: [16] Mosquito comes ultimately from the Latin word for ‘fly’, musca (this went back to an Indo-European base *mu-, probably imitative of the sound of humming, which also produced English midge [OE], and hence its derivative midget [19] – originally a ‘tiny sand-fly’). Musca became Spanish mosca, whose diminutive form reached English as mosquito – etymologically a ‘small fly’. (The Italian descendant of musca, incidentally, is also mosca, and its diminutive, moschetto, was applied with black humour to the ‘bolt of a crossbow’. From it English gets musket [16].)
=> midge, midget, musket
moss: moss: [OE] The prehistoric Germanic ancestor of moss was *musam. This had two distinct meanings: ‘swamp’ and ‘moss’. It is not altogether clear which was primary, but it seems more probable than not that ‘moss’ (a plant which frequents damp places) was derived from ‘swamp’. The only meaning recorded for its Old English descendant mos was ‘swamp’ (which survives in place-names), but no doubt ‘moss’ (not evidenced before the 14th century) was current too.

Words from the same ultimate source to have found their way into English include mire [14] (borrowed from Old Norse mýrr ‘swamp’), mousse [19] (borrowed from French, which got it from Middle Low German mos ‘moss’), and litmus [16] (whose Old Norse source litmosi meant literally ‘dye-moss’ – litmus is a dye extracted from lichens).
=> litmus, mire, mousse
most: most: [OE] Like more, most comes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic *maiz. Addition of the superlative suffix produced *maistaz, which passed into Old English as mǣst. This subsequently evolved to most in Middle English under the influence of more.
=> magnitude, master, more
mother: mother: [OE] The ancestral Indo-European word for ‘mother’ was *māter-, which has descendants in virtually all the modern European languages. It was probably based on the syllable ma, suggested by the burbling of a suckling baby, which also lies behind English mama, mamma (and indeed mammal). Amongst its immediate descendants were Latin māter (source of English madrigal, material, maternal, matrimony, matrix, matron, and matter) and Greek métēr (from which English gets metropolis).

In prehistoric Germanic it evolved to *mōthar-, which has differentiated to German mutter, Dutch moeder, Swedish and Danish moder, and English mother.
=> madrigal, mamma, mammal, material, maternal, matrimony, matrix, matron, matter, metropolis
motor: motor: [16] The most direct English descendant of Latin movēre ‘move’ is of course move, but several more have found their way into the language via derivatives. From mōtiō ‘movement’ comes motion [15] (and its collateral forms commotion [15], emotion, and promotion [15]); from mōtīvus ‘causing to move’ come motivate [19], motive [14], and (via modern French) motif [19]; and mōtor ‘mover’ has given motor.

Originally this was used for the rather generalized notion of a ‘moving force’; the modern application to an ‘engine’ did not emerge until the mid-19th century. Also from movēre come English moment and mutiny.
=> commotion, emotion, moment, motif, motion, motive, move, mutiny, promotion
mould: mould: English has three words mould. By some way the oldest is ‘earth, soil’ [OE], which comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *mel-, *mol-, *ml- ‘grind’ (source also of English meal ‘flour’, mill, etc). Moulder [16] may be derived from it. Mould ‘form’ [13] is assumed to come from Old French modle ‘form, shape, pattern’.

This was descended from Latin modulus ‘small measure’ (source of English module), a diminutive form of modus ‘measure’ (source of English mode, model, etc). Mould ‘fungus’ [15] appears to have originated as an adjective, meaning ‘mouldy’. This in turn was an adjectival use of the past participle of a now obsolete verb moul ‘go mouldy’, which was borrowed from an assumed Old Norse *mugla.
=> meal, mill, molar, moulder; mode, model, mood
moult: moult: [14] The etymological meaning of moult is simply ‘change’. It comes (via an assumed but never recorded Old English *mūtian) from a prehistoric Germanic verb borrowed from Latin mūtāre ‘change’ (source of English mutate). The extreme semantic narrowing down from ‘change’ to ‘change a coat of feathers’ is shown too in the related mews, which originally denoted ‘cages for moulting hawks’. The spelling with l, which started to appear in the 16th century, is due to association with words such as fault, whose l at that time was generally not pronounced. When it began to be, moult followed suit.
=> mews, mutate
mountain: mountain: [13] Latin mōns ‘mountain’ could well go back ultimately to a variant of the base *min- ‘jut’ which produced English eminent, imminent, menace, and prominent. English acquired it originally direct from Latin as a noun, mount [OE], which is now used only in the names of mountains. The verb mount followed in the 14th century, via Old French munter.

Latin mōns had a derived adjective montānus ‘mountainous’, which was adapted in Vulgar Latin to the noun *montānea ‘mountainous area’. This made its way into Old French as montaigne, by which time it meant simply ‘mountain’ – whence English mountain. Amount [13] comes ultimately from the Latin phrase ad montem ‘to the mountain’, hence ‘upwards’; and paramount [16] in turn derives from an Old French phrase par amont ‘by above’, hence ‘superior’.
=> amount, eminent, imminent, menace, mount, paramount, prominent, tantamount
mouse: mouse: [OE] Mouse is an ancient word, with relatives today in all the Germanic and Slavic languages. Its Indo-European ancestor was *mūs-, which produced Greek mūs, Latin mūs (something of a dead end: the modern Romance languages have abandoned it), Sanskrit mūs (source, via a very circuitous route, of English musk), and prehistoric Germanic *mūs-.

This has evolved into German maus, Dutch muis, Swedish and Danish mus, and English mouse. And the Slavic branch of the ‘mouse’-family includes Russian mysh’, Polish mysz, and Serbo- Croat mish. English relatives of mouse include muscle and mussel (ultimately the same word) and marmot [17], which goes back to a Vulgar Latin accusative form *mūrem montis ‘mouse of the mountain’.
=> marmot, muscle, musk, mussel
mousse: mousse: see moss
moustache: moustache: [16] Moustache comes via French from Italian mostaccio, which goes back ultimately to Greek mústax ‘upper lip, moustache’. The synonymous mustachio [16] appears to have originated as a blend of mostaccio with the related Spanish mostacho.
mouth: mouth: [OE] Mouth is part of a general Germanic family of ‘mouth’-words that go back to a prehistoric *munthaz: its modern relatives include German and Danish mund, Dutch mond, and Swedish mun. The loss of the nasal consonant is part of a general phenomenon that happened in primitive Old English (and also in Old Frisian and Old Saxon) whose effects can be seen also in goose (beside German gans) and tooth (beside German zahn). It is thought that *munthaz itself comes from the same Indo- European source as produced Latin mentum ‘chin’.
move: move: [13] Move comes via Anglo-Norman mover from Latin movēre ‘move’, which was related to Sanskrit mīv- ‘push, press’. Derivatives of the Latin verb have been a rich source of English vocabulary, including emotion, moment, motion, motor, and mutiny.
=> emotion, moment, motion, motor, mutiny
much: much: [13] The Old English word for ‘much’ was mycel (a relative of Old Norse mikill, from which English got the now archaic mickle [13]). It goes back ultimately to the same Indo-European base as produced Latin magis ‘more’ (source of English master) and magnus ‘large’ (source of English magnitude) and Greek mégas ‘large’ (source of the English prefix mega-). Mycel became early Middle English muchel, which began to lose its second syllable in the 13th century.
=> magnitude, master, more
mucilage: mucilage: see mucus
muck: muck: [13] The original meaning of muck is ‘excrement’; the more general ‘dirt’ is a 14thcentury development. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *muk-, *meuk- ‘soft’. This was also the source of Danish møg ‘dung’ (which provides the first syllable of midden [14], a borrowing from the ancestor of Danish mødding, literally ‘dung-heap’). The same Germanic base lies behind English meek [12], whose immediate Old Norse antecedent mjúkr meant ‘soft, pliant’ – leading on in due course to English ‘submissive’.
=> meek, midden