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mammal [mammal 词源字典]: mammal: [19] Etymologically, mammal denotes an ‘animal that suckles its young’. The word is a derivative of mammalia [18], the term for that whole class of animals, coined by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus from Latin mammālis ‘of the breast’. This in turn was based on mamma ‘mother, breast’, which has been traced back to a prehistoric Indo-European *mammā.

There are obvious links with ‘mother’-terms in other languages, such as Greek mámmē, French maman, Italian mamma, Russian mama, Welsh mam, and English mamma and mummy, but whether a sustained chain of descent and borrowing is involved, or simply parallel formation based on the syllable ma, imitative of the sound of a suckling baby, is not clear. Mammary [17] is an English derivative of Latin mamma, in the sense ‘breast’.
=> mamma, mammary, mummy[mammal etymology, mammal origin, 英语词源]
mammoth: mammoth: [18] Mammoth is a Russian contribution to English. The word was borrowed from early modern Russian mammot, an adaptation of Tatar mamont ‘earth’ (the reason for the animal being so named is that the first remains of mammoths to be found were dug out of the frozen soil of Siberia). The adjectival use of the word for ‘huge’ dates from the early 19th century (‘The dancing very bad; the performers all had mammoth legs’, private diary of Sir Robert Wilson, 1814).
man: man: [OE] Man is a widespread Germanic word (with relatives in German mann ‘man’ and mensch ‘person’, Dutch and Swedish man ‘man’, Danish mand ‘man’, and Swedish menniska ‘person’), and connections have even been found outside Germanic (Sanskrit, for instance, had mánu- ‘man’). But no decisive evidence has been found for an ultimate Indo- European source.

Among the suggestions put forward have been links with a base *men- ‘think’ or ‘breathe’, or with Latin manus ‘hand’. The etymologically primary sense of the word is ‘human being, person’, and that is what it generally meant in Old English: the sexes were generally distinguished by wer ‘man’ (which survives probably in werewolf and is related to world) and wīf (source of modern English wife) or cwene ‘woman’.

But during the Middle English and early modern English periods ‘male person’ gradually came to the fore, and today ‘person’ is decidedly on the decline (helped on its way by those who feel that the usage discriminates against women). Woman originated in Old English as a compound of wīf ‘woman, female’ and man ‘person’. Manikin [17] was borrowed from Dutch manneken, a diminutive form of man ‘man’; and mannequin [18] is the same word acquired via French.
=> manikin, mannequin
manacle: manacle: see manual
manage: manage: [16] Etymologically, manage means ‘handle’. It comes via Italian maneggiare ‘control a horse’ from Vulgar Latin *manidiare, a derivative of Latin manus ‘hand’. To begin with it was used in the context of ‘horsetraining’ in English, but eventually the French form manège took over in this sense. The more general sense ‘handle, control’ is of virtually equal antiquity in English, though.
=> manual
manciple: manciple: see emancipate
mandarin: mandarin: [16] Although it refers to a Chinese official, mandarin is not a Chinese word. Sanskrit mantrin meant ‘counsellor’ (it was a derivative of mantra ‘counsel’, which itself was based on man ‘think’, a distant relative of English mind). Its Hindi descendant mantrī passed into English via Malay mẽteri and Portuguese mandarin. The word’s application to a variety of small loose-skinned orange, which dates in English from the 19th century, was inspired by the yellow robes worn by mandarins.
=> mind
mandate: mandate: [16] Etymologically, mandate means ‘give one’s hand’. It comes from mandātum (source also of English maundy), a noun use of the past participle of Latin mandāre ‘commit, command’. This verb was formed by blending manus ‘hand’ and dāre ‘give’. English verbs derived from mandāre are command, commend, demand, and remand.
=> command, commend, date, demand, donation, manual, maundy, remand
mandolin: mandolin: see banjo
mandrake: mandrake: [14] The mandrake is a Mediterranean plant of the potato family with medicinal uses. Its name is an alteration of mandragora, which goes back via Latin to Greek mandragóras, a word probably of non- Indo-European origin. The change arose owing to an association with man (the mandrake has a large forked root which supposedly resembles a human being) and drake ‘dragon’ (an allusion to the root’s supposedly magical properties).
mandrill: mandrill: see drill
mane: mane: [OE] Mane goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *manō, which also produced German mähne and Dutch mane. Related forms such as Swedish manke ‘neck’, Irish muin ‘nape of the neck’, archaic Welsh mwn ‘neck’, Latin monīle ‘necklace’, and Sanskrit manyā- ‘nape of the neck’ suggest that historically ‘neck’ is the primary, ‘neck-hair’ a secondary meaning of this word-family. It has been speculated that it goes back ultimately to Indo-European *men- ‘project’ (source of English eminent, prominent, etc).
manganese: manganese: see magnet
manger: manger: [14] Etymologically, a manger is an ‘eater’, or ‘feeding place’. It comes from Old French mangeoire, a descendant of Vulgar Latin *mandūcātōria. This was derived from Latin mandūcāre ‘chew’, which in modern French has become manger ‘eat’; the use of this as a noun, meaning ‘edible substance’, forms the ultimate basis of English blancmange, literally ‘white food’. From a parallel source comes the name of the skin disease mange [14], an allusion to its ‘eating’ or irritating the skin; mangy is a 16thcentury derivative.
=> blancmange, mange
mangle: mangle: see maim
mania: mania: [14] Greek maníā meant ‘madness’. It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *mn-, *men- ‘think’, the same source as produced English mind. It reached English via late Latin mania. Of its derivatives, maniac [17] comes from late Greek maniakós, but manic [20] is an English formation. Closely related to maníā was the Greek verb maínesthai ‘be mad’; from it was derived mainás, the name for a fanatical female follower of Dionysus, which English has adopted via Latin as maenad [16].
=> maenad, manic, mind
manicure: manicure: see manual
manifest: manifest: [14] That which is manifest is etymologically ‘grasped by the hand’ – that is, ‘palpable, obvious’. The word comes via Old French from Latin manifestus. This was a later form of manufestus, a compound formed from manus ‘hand’ and *festus ‘gripped’. Manifesto [17] is a borrowing from Italian; it originally meant ‘evidence, proof’, and only gradually developed to the present-day ‘political statement’.
=> manifesto, manual
manifold: manifold: see many
manikin: manikin: see man