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polish [polish 词源字典]: polish: [13] Latin polīre ‘make smooth and shiny’ is the ultimate source of English polish. It passed into Old French as polir, whose stem form was poliss- – whence polish. The element -pol- of English interpolate is related to polīre.
=> interpolate, polite[polish etymology, polish origin, 英语词源]
polite: polite: [15] Someone who is polite is etymologically ‘polished’ – indeed that is what the word originally meant in English (‘The arch within and without was hiled [covered] with gold polite’, Mirror of man’s salvation 1450). This had passed metaphorically into ‘refined’ by the 16th century, but not until the 17th century did the modern sense ‘having refined manners’ emerge. It was borrowed from polītus, the past participle of Latin polīre ‘polish’ (source of English polish).
=> polish
politics: politics: [16] Politics is etymologically the art of ‘civil administration’. It is an English rendering of Greek tà polītiká ‘affairs of state’. Greek polītikós ‘of the city or state, civil, political’ was a derivative of polítēs ‘citizen’, which in turn came from pólis ‘city, state’ (source also of English police and policy and related to Sanskrit pūr ‘stronghold, fortified place’). It passed into English via Latin polīticus and Old French politique as politic [15], which originally meant ‘political’ as well as ‘judicious’ (political was coined in the 16th century).
=> cosmopolitan, metropolis, police, policy
polity: polity: see policy
poll: poll: [13] ‘Head’ is the original and central meaning of poll, from which all its modern uses have derived. The ‘voting’ sort of poll, for instance, which emerged in the 17th century, is etymologically a counting of ‘heads’, and the poll tax is a ‘per capita’ tax. The verb poll originally meant ‘cut someone’s hair’, a clear extension of the notion of ‘top’ or ‘head’ (the derived pollard [16] denotes an ‘animal with its horns removed’ or a ‘tree with its top branches cut off’); this later developed to ‘cut evenly across’, which is what the poll of deed poll means (originally it was a legal agreement cut evenly across, signifying that only one person was party to it – agreements made between two or more people were cut with a wavy line).
=> pollard
pollen: pollen: [16] Pollen originally meant ‘flour’ in English. Not until the 18th century was it taken up as a botanical term. It was borrowed from Latin pollen ‘powder, dust, flour’, a relative of pulvis ‘dust’ (source of English powder and pulverize) and polenta ‘pearl barley’ (source of English polenta [16]).
=> polenta, powder, pulverize
polo: polo: [19] In Balti, a Tibetan language of northern Kashmir, polo means ‘ball’. English travellers in Kashmir in the 1840s observed a game being played on horseback which involved trying to knock a wooden polo into a goal using a longhandled mallet. The English sahibs lost no time in taking the game up themselves, and by 1871 it was being played back home in England, under the name ‘polo’.
poltergeist: poltergeist: [19] A poltergeist is literally a ‘noisy ghost’. The word was borrowed from German in the 19th century, where it is a compound made up of poltern ‘make a noise, rattle or rumble’ and geist ‘spirit, ghost’ (a relative of English ghost).
polymath: polymath: see mathematics
polyp: polyp: [16] A polyp is etymologically a ‘manyfooted’ creature. The word originally signified ‘octopus’, but in the 18th century was broadened out into a general term for marine invertebrates with tentacles, such as hydras and sea anemones. It comes via French polype and Latin polypus from Greek polúpous ‘cuttlefish’, a compound formed from pólus ‘much, many’ and poús ‘foot’ (source of English pew and podium and related to English foot).

The metaphorical application of the word to a tumour growing from mucous membrane (an allusion to its tentacle-like outgrowths) originated in Greek. Greek pólus (a distant relative of English full and plural) is of course the starting point of many English poly- words, all with the underlying notion of ‘several’ – among them polyglot [17] (etymologically ‘many tongues’), polygon [16], polysyllable [16], and polytechnic [19].

And its plural, polloí ‘many’, is the origin of English hoi polloi [19], literally ‘the many’.
=> foot, full, hoi polloi, pedal, plural, plus, polygon
pomegranate: pomegranate: [14] The pomegranate is etymologically the ‘many-seeded apple’. The word’s ultimate ancestor was Latin mālum grānātum (mālum gave English malic ‘of apples’ [18], and grānātus was derived from grānum ‘seed’, source of English grain). In Vulgar Latin this became reduced to simply *grānāta, which passed into Old French as grenate (source of English grenade, so named because early grenades looked like pomegranates).

Before long pome ‘apple’ was added to the term, giving pome grenate – whence English pomegranate. Pome came from Latin pōmum ‘apple, fruit’, which also gave English pomade [16] (an ointment so called because the original version was apple-scented), pomander [15] (etymologically an ‘apple of amber’), pommel [14] (etymologically a ‘little fruit’), and pomology [19].
=> garnet, grain, grenade, pomade, pomander, pommel
pomp: pomp: [14] Greek pompé meant literally ‘sending’ (it was derived from the verb pémpein ‘send’). But it came to be used metaphorically for a ‘solemn procession or parade’ (as being something that was ‘sent out’ on its way), and hence for the concomitant ‘display’ or ‘ostentation’, and passed with these senses into Latin as pompa. They survived into English, but ‘procession’ has gradually died out.
pond: pond: [13] Pond is historically the same word as pound ‘enclosure’. The differentiation between the two was established early on, although pound continued to be used for ‘pond’ in Scotland and in some English dialects until quite recently. The common denominator is that ponds were originally specifically used for keeping fish in. The reason for the phonetic change from pound to pond is not known.
=> pound
ponder: ponder: [14] To ponder something is etymologically to ‘weigh’ it up. The word comes via Old French ponderer from Latin ponderāre ‘weigh’, hence ‘consider’ (source also of English preponderate [17]). This was derived from pondus ‘weight’ (source of English ponderous [14]), a relative of pendere ‘weigh’ (source of English compendium [16], compensate [17], dispense, expense, pansy, pension [14], pensive [14], peseta [19], poise [15], and spend) and pendēre ‘hang’ (from which English gets pendant, pendulum, etc).

Also closely related is English pound, the unit of weight.
=> compendium, compensate, dispense, expense, pansy, pendant, pendulum, pension, pensive, peseta, poise, pound, preponderate, spend
pontiff: pontiff: [17] In ancient Rome, members of the highest college of priests were known by the epithet pontifex. This looks as though it should mean ‘bridgemaker’ (as if it were formed from Latin pōns ‘bridge’ – source of English pontoon – with the suffix -fex, from facere ‘make’), but no one has ever been able to make any sense of this, and it is generally assumed that it originated as a loan-word, perhaps from Etruscan, and was subsequently adapted by folk etymology to pontifex.

It was adopted into Christian usage in the sense ‘bishop’. The pope was the ‘sovereign pontifex’, and in due course pontifex came to designate the ‘pope’ himself. The word passed into French as pontife, from which English gets pontiff.
=> punt
pontoon: pontoon: English has two words pontoon. The earlier, ‘floating structure’ [17], comes via French ponton from Latin pontō ‘bridge made of boats’, a derivative of pōns ‘bridge’. (Pontō, presumably the same word, was also used for a sort of Gaulish boat, and in that sense is the source of English punt.) Pontoon the card game [20] is an alteration of French vingt-et-un ‘twenty-one’ (the perfect score in pontoon being twenty-one) based on the other pontoon.
pony: pony: [18] Latin pullus denoted a ‘young animal’, particularly a ‘young horse’ or ‘young chicken’ (it is related to English foal, and has given English pool ‘collective amount’, poultry, and pullet). From it was derived in post-classical times pullāmen, which passed into Old French as poulain ‘foal’. This had a diminutive form poulenet, and it is thought that this was the source of the early 18th-century Scottish term powny, which in due course spread southwards as pony.
=> foal, pool, poultry, pullet
poodle: poodle: [19] The ancestor of the modern poodle was a water-dog, used probably in the hunting of water-fowl – very different from the effete toy variety of today. Its name reflects its aquatic origins: in German it is pudelhund, the first element (a relative of English puddle) being from Low German pudeln ‘splash about in water’. This was shortened to simply pudel, the form in which it was acquired by English (and indeed other languages: in Swedish it is pudel, in Dutch poedel).
=> puddle
pool: pool: Pool of water [OE] and pool ‘collective amount’ [17] are distinct words in English. The former comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *pōl-, source also of German pfuhl and Dutch poel. The latter was borrowed from French poule ‘hen’, a descendant of Latin pullus ‘young chicken’ (source also of English pony, poultry, and pullet).

There was a French game called jeu de la poule, the ‘hen game’, involving throwing things at a hen – which you won as a prize if you hit it. Hence poule came to be used figuratively for ‘target’, and also for ‘that which is at stake in a game’ – source of the original meaning of English pool, ‘stake’. This evolved via ‘stake made up of players’ contributions’ to ‘collective amount’ and ‘collective resource’. Pool the snooker-like game is the same word; the game was originally played for a collective stake.
=> foal, pony, poultry, pullet
poor: poor: [13] Poor came via Old French povre from Latin pauper ‘poor’. This is thought originally to have been a compound meaning literally ‘getting little’, formed from paucus ‘little’ (a distant relative of English few) and parāre ‘get, prepare’ (source of English prepare). Its derivative paupertās has given English poverty [12], and pauper itself was acquired by English in the 16th century as a noun meaning ‘poor person’.
=> few, pauper, poverty