quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- mussel[mussel 词源字典]
- mussel: see muscle
[mussel etymology, mussel origin, 英语词源] - must
- must: English has three words must. By far the commonest is of course the verb, ‘have to’ [OE], which originated in Old English as the past tense of the now obsolete mūt ‘may, must’. It has relatives in German muss and Dutch moet, but its ultimate origins are not known for certain (there may be some distant link with Germanic ‘measure’-words, such as English mete, suggesting a semantic progression from an original ‘time measured out for doing something’, through ‘have time to do something’, ‘be able to do something’, and ‘be allowed to do something’ to ‘have to do something’). Must ‘unfermented grape juice for making into wine’ [OE] comes from Latin mustum ‘new wine’, a noun use of the adjective mustus ‘new’. Mustard is a derivative.
And the esoteric must ‘sexual frenzy in elephants, camels, etc’ [19] comes via Urdu from Persian mast ‘drunk’.
=> mustard - mustachio
- mustachio: see moustache
- mustang
- mustang: [19] Etymologically, a mustang is a ‘mixed’ animal. The word comes from Mexican Spanish mestengo, which originally in Spanish meant ‘stray’. This was derived from mesta ‘annual roundup of cattle, participated in by all the herdsmen, in which stray cattle were disposed of’, which in turn goes back to medieval Latin mixta. And mixta (literally ‘mixed’) was used for the wild or stray animals that got ‘mixed’ in with the graziers’ herds (it was a noun use of the feminine past participle of miscēre ‘mix’, source of English miscellaneous and mix).
The word passed early on from ‘stray cattle’ to ‘stray horses’.
=> miscellaneous, mix - mustard
- mustard: [13] Mustard was originally made by mixing the crushed seeds of various plants of the cabbage family with the freshly pressed juice of grapes – the ‘must’. Hence its name, which comes from Old French moustarde, a word derived from a descendant of Latin mustum ‘new wine’ (source of English must ‘grape juice’).
=> must - muster
- muster: see monster
- musty
- musty: see moist
- mutate
- mutate: [19] Semantically, mutate is probably the most direct English descendant of the Indo- European base *moi-, *mei- ‘change, exchange’, which has also given English mad, mean ‘unworthy, ignoble’, municipal, mutual [15] (from Latin mūtuus ‘exchanged, reciprocal’), the final syllable of common, and probably migrate [17]. Mutate itself comes from Latin mūtāre ‘change’ (source also of English mews and moult), and was preceded into English by some centuries by the derivatives mutable [14] and mutation [14].
=> mews, moult, mutual - mutiny
- mutiny: [16] Etymologically, a mutiny is simply a ‘movement’. The word was adapted from the now obsolete mutine, a borrowing from French mutin ‘rebellion’. This in turn was a derivative of an earlier muete, literally ‘movement’, hence ‘rebellion’ (remembered in English in the related émeute ‘uprising’), which came from Vulgar Latin *movita, a descendant of Latin movēre ‘move’ (source of English move).
=> émeute, motion, move - muzzle
- muzzle: see amuse
- my
- my: [12] My is simply a reduced form of mine, which used to be an adjective, but is now restricted almost entirely to pronoun use. At first it was used only before consonants (except h), but gradually from the 14th century it came to be used before all nouns, whatever their initial sound. The first record of its use as an exclamation (short, of course, for my goodness!, my word!, etc) comes from the early 18th century.
=> me, mine - myrmedon
- myrmedon: see ant
- mystery
- mystery: [14] Greek múein meant ‘close one’s eyes or mouth’, and hence was used figuratively for ‘keep secret’. Its association with secret initiation ceremonies inspired the formation from it of muein ‘initiate’, whose derivative mústēs meant ‘initiated person’. This in turn formed the basis of mustérion ‘secret ceremony, secret thing’, which passed into English via Latin mystērium. Also derived from mústēs was mustikós, from which ultimately English gets mystic [14] and mystical [15].
=> mystic - M
- 13th letter, from Greek mu, from Semitic mem. The Roman symbol for 1,000; sometimes used in this sense in English 15c.-16c.; but in late 20c. newspaper headlines it stands for million. As a thickness of type, from 1680s.
- M.A.S.H.
- 1950, U.S. military acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.
- M.D.
- 1755, abbreviation of Latin Medicinæ Doctor "doctor of medicine."
- M.E.
- abbreviation of Middle English, attested by 1874.
- M.F.N.
- initialism (acronym) of most favored nation, attested from 1942.
- M.P.
- 1917, abbreviation of military police, which is recorded from 1827.
- ma
- 1823, childish or colloquial shortening of mamma.