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obstetric [obstetric 词源字典]: obstetric: [18] An obstetric nurse is etymologically one who ‘stands before’ a woman giving birth to render assistance. The word is an adaptation of Latin obstetrīcius, a derivative of obstetrīx ‘midwife’. This in turn was formed from obstāre ‘stand in the way’ (source also of English obstacle [14] and oust [16]), a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- ‘before’ and stāre ‘stand’.
=> obstacle, oust, stand, station, statue[obstetric etymology, obstetric origin, 英语词源]
obstruct: obstruct: see structure
obtain: obtain: [15] Obtain is one of the large family of English words (attain, contain, continue, tenor, etc) that come ultimately from Latin tenēre ‘hold’. In this case its source, by way of Old French obtenir, was Latin obtinēre, a compound formed with the intensive prefix ob-, which denoted both ‘get possession of’ and ‘prevail, be established’.
=> attain, contain, continue, tenor
obtuse: obtuse: [16] The etymological meaning of obtuse is ‘beaten down, blunted’. It comes from Latin obtūsus, the past participle of obtundere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- ‘against’ and tundere ‘beat’ (source of English contusion and related to toil). The notion of being ‘dulled’ or ‘blunted’ led to its being used for ‘having dulled wits, stupid’, and the idea of bluntness also lies behind its geometrical use for an angle of more than 90 degrees (as contrasted with the ‘sharp’ acute angle).
=> contusion, toil
ocarina: ocarina: [19] The ocarina, a primitive sort of musical instrument played by blowing, gets its name from a supposed resemblance to a goose (it is shaped like an elongated egg, with a neck-like mouthpiece). Italian ocarina means literally ‘little goose’. It is a diminutive form of oca ‘goose’, which in turn goes back to Latin auca, a derivative of avis ‘bird’.
=> aviary
occasion: occasion: [14] Like English befall, occasion depends on a metaphorical connection between ‘falling’ and ‘happening’. Its ultimate source is the Latin verb occidere ‘go down’, a compound formed from the prefix ob- ‘down’ and cadere ‘fall’ (source of English cadence, case ‘circumstance’, decadent, etc). The figurative notion of a ‘falling together of favourable circumstances’ led to the coining of a derived noun occasiō, meaning ‘appropriate time, opportunity’, and hence ‘reason’ and ‘cause’.

English acquired it via Old French occasion. Also from Latin occidere comes English occident [14], a reference to the ‘west’ as the quarter in which the sun ‘goes down’ or sets.
=> cadaver, cadence, case, decadent, occident
occult: occult: [16] Something that is occult is etymologically ‘hidden’. The word comes from the past participle of Latin occulere ‘hide’, a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- and an unrecorded *celere, a relative of cēlāre ‘hide’ (which forms the second syllable of English conceal). When English acquired it, it still meant broadly ‘secret, hidden’ (‘Metals are nothing else but the earth’s hid and occult plants’, John Maplet, Green Forest 1567), a sense preserved in the derived astronomical term occultation ‘obscuring of one celestial body by another’ [16].

The modern associations with supernatural mysteries did not begin to emerge until the 17th century.
=> cell, conceal, hall, hell
occupy: occupy: [14] Occupy comes via Anglo-Norman *occupier from Latin occupāre ‘seize’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix ob- and capere ‘take’ (source of English capture, chase, etc). In the 16th and 17th centuries it was used in English for ‘have sex (with)’ (‘as king Edwin occupied Alfgifa his concubine’, John Bale, English Votaries 1546), and fell temporarily out of ‘polite’ usage: as Doll Tearsheet complained in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV 1597, ‘A captain! God’s light, these villains will make the word ‘captain’ as odious as the word ‘occupy’, which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted’.
=> captive, capture, chase
occur: occur: [16] Etymologically, occur means ‘run towards’. It was borrowed from Latin occurrere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- ‘towards’ and currere ‘run’ (source of English course, current, etc). This had the sense ‘run to meet’, hence simply ‘meet’, which survived into English: ‘The whole multitude might freely move … with very little occurring or interfering’, Richard Bentley, Boyle Lectures 1692. But ‘meeting’ also passed into ‘presenting itself’, ‘appearing’, and hence ‘happening’ – from which the main present-day meaning of English occur comes.
=> course, current
ocean: ocean: [13] In Greek mythology, ōkeanós was a great river or sea that completely encircled the world. This was personified as Ōkeanós, a Titan who was god of this outer sea. The name passed into English via Latin ōceanus and Old French occean, and to begin with was used only for this mythical sea, or for the whole body of water surrounding the Eurasian landmass, with which it was identified. Not until the end of the 14th century did it begin to be applied to large individual sections of the Earth’s seas.
oche: oche: see notch
October: October: [OE] The Romans calculated the beginning of their year from March, and so the eighth month was called octōber or octōbris mēnsis, literally ‘eighth month’ (terms derived from Latin octō ‘eight’). Other English words derived from Latin octō or its close Greek relative októ include octagon [17], octane [19], octave [14], octet [19], and octopus [18] (from Greek októpous, literally ‘eightfoot’).
=> octane, octave, octopus
ocular: ocular: see inoculate
odd: odd: [14] The etymological idea underlying odd is of ‘pointing upwards’. Its ultimate ancestor is a prehistoric Indo-European *uzdho-, a compound formed from *uz- ‘up’ and *dho- ‘put, place’ (source of English do). From the notion of a ‘pointed vertical object’ developed ‘triangle’, which in turn introduced the idea of ‘three’ and ‘one left over from two’, hence ‘indivisible by two’. This is the meaning odd had when English borrowed it from Old Norse oddi, and the modern sense ‘peculiar’ (as if the ‘odd one out’) did not emerge until the late 16th century.
=> do
ode: ode: see prosody
odontology: odontology: see tooth
odour: odour: [13] The Latin noun for ‘smell’ was odor. It was descended from the Indo-European base *od-, source also of the Greek verb ózein ‘smell’ (from which English gets ozone [19]), the Latin verb olēre ‘smell’ (ancestor of English redolent), and the Latin verb olfacere ‘smell’ (source of English olfactory). It passed into English via Anglo-Norman odour. (It has, incidentally, no etymological connection with odious [14], which comes from Latin odium ‘hatred’.)
=> olfactory, redolent
oenology: oenology: see wine
oestrus: oestrus: [17] Greek oistros had an extraordinarily wide range of meanings, from ‘madness, frenzy’ through ‘sting’ to ‘gadfly’, and including also ‘breeze’. If, as has been suggested, it is related to Latin īra ‘anger’ (source of English ire [13]), Lithuanian aistra ‘passion’, etc, ‘frenzy’ is presumably the primary sense, but in fact English originally adopted it (via Latin oestrus) as the genus name for a variety of horsefly or botfly. ‘Sting’ was taken up, in the sense ‘impetus, goad’, as a learned borrowing in the mid-19th century (‘They too were pricked by the oestrus of intellectual responsibility’, John Morley, On Compromise 1874), but oestrus was not used for ‘period of sexual receptiveness in female animals’ (based of course on the notion of sexual ‘frenzy’) until the end of the 19th century.

The derived oestrogen dates from the 1920s.
=> ire
of: of: [OE] Of has an ancient ancestry, going back to the prehistoric Indo-European preposition of ‘removal’ or ‘origin’, *ap. Its Germanic descendant was *ab, source of modern German ab (now only an adverb, meaning ‘away’), Dutch af, Swedish av, and English of. Latin ab ‘from’ (as in English abduct, abject, etc) also came from Indo-European *ap.
=> off