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pope [pope 词源字典]: pope: [OE] Etymologically, the pope is the ‘daddy’ of the Roman Catholic church. Greek páppas was a nursery word for ‘father’, based no doubt on the first syllable of patér ‘father’ (a relative of English father). In the form pápas it came to be used by early Christians for ‘bishop’, and its Latin descendant pāpa was applied from the 5th century onwards to the bishop of Rome, the pope.

English acquired the word in the Anglo-Saxon period, and so it has undergone the normal medieval phonetic changes to become pope, but the derivatives papacy [14] and papal [14] arrived later, and retain their a. Latin pāpa also gave English papa [17], via French papa.
=> papa, papacy, poplin[pope etymology, pope origin, 英语词源]
popinjay: popinjay: see parrot
poplar: poplar: [14] The ancestor of poplar was Latin pōpulus ‘poplar’ (not to be confused with populus ‘people’). This passed into Old French as pople, which with the addition of the treename suffix -ier became poplier. Its Anglo- Norman version was popler, from which English got poplar.
poplin: poplin: [18] Poplin is etymologically the ‘pope’s cloth’. The word comes via obsolete French papeline from Italian papalina, a noun use of the feminine form of the adjective papalino ‘papal’, and was applied to the cloth on the grounds that it was originally made in Avignon, in southern France, seat of the popes from 1309 to 1377.
=> pope
poppet: poppet: see puppet
poppy: poppy: [OE] The Latin word for ‘poppy’ was papāver. A post-classical descendant, *papāvum, was borrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as *papau. This was later altered to *papāg, which became Old English popæg, ancestor of modern English poppy. Italian papavero ‘poppy’ is a reminder of the Latin word.
popular: popular: [15] Popular is one of a range of English words that go back to Latin populus ‘people’. Besides people (which came via Old French) and popular itself, these include populace [16], population [16], and public. It is not clear where populus itself came from, although some have linked it with the Indo- European base *plē- ‘fill’, source of English full and Greek pléthos ‘multitude, common people’ (a relative of English plethora).
=> people, population, public
porcelain: porcelain: [16] The bizarre history of the word porcelain leads us back to a pig’s vagina. It was originally applied to fine china in Italian, as porcellana. This meant literally ‘cowrie shell’, and was used for the china in allusion to its shelllike sheen. Porcellana was a derivative of porcella ‘little sow’, a diminutive form of porca ‘sow’ (to which English pork is related), and was applied to cowrie shells because they supposedly resembled the external genitalia of female pigs. English acquired the word via French porcelaine.
=> pork
porch: porch: [13] Porch and portico [17] are ultimately the same word. Both go back to Italian portico, a descendant of Latin porticus ‘covered gallery or entry’, but whereas portico was borrowed directly, porch came via Old French porche. Porticus was derived from Latin porta ‘gate’, source of the port of English porthole.
=> port, portico
porcupine: porcupine: [14] The porcupine is etymologically a ‘spiny pig’. Its name was coined in Vulgar Latin as *porcospīnus from Latin porcus ‘pig’ (source of English pork) and spīnus ‘spine’. It came to English via Old French porc espin. It underwent all sorts of traumas (portpen, porpoynt, porpentine – the form used by Shakespeare: the ghost of Hamlet’s father speaks of the ‘quills upon the fretful porpentine’ – porkenpick, porpin, etc) before finally settling down in the 17th century to porcupine, and around 1700 the fanciful variant porcupig was coined.
=> pork, spine
pore: pore: English has two words pore. The older, ‘look attentively’ [13], may go back to a hypothetical Old English *pūrian, which might make it a relative of the nearly synonymous peer [16]. The pore in the skin [14] comes via Old French pore and Latin porus from Greek póros ‘passage’, a descendant of the Indo-European base *por- ‘going, passage’, which also produced English fare, ferry, opportunity, and port. The development of the word’s anatomical sense began in Greek. Porous [14] is derived from it.
=> peer; fare, ferry, opportunity, porous, port
pork: pork: [13] Latin porcus ‘pig’ went back to a prehistoric Indo-European *porko-, which also produced Russian porosenok ‘pig’, Irish orc ‘pig’, and English farrow. It passed into Old French as porc, which English adopted as a term for the ‘flesh of pigs used as food’. Derivatives that have made it to English include porcelain, porcupine, and porpoise.
=> farrow, porcelain, porcupine, porpoise
pornography: pornography: [19] Pornography denotes etymologically the ‘depiction of prostitutes’; and indeed Webster’s dictionary 1864 defined the word as ‘licentious painting employed to decorate the walls of rooms sacred to bacchanalian orgies, examples of which occur in Pompeii’. Originally in English it was mainly reserved to classical Greek and Roman examples of the genre, and the application to contemporary books, magazines, etc did not emerge strongly until the 1880s. The term originated in Greek, based on pórnē ‘prostitute’, and reached English via French.
porpoise: porpoise: [14] The porpoise is etymologically the ‘pig-fish’. The word comes via Old French porpois from Vulgar Latin *porcopiscis, a compound formed from porcus ‘pig’ (source of English pork) and piscis ‘fish’ (a relative of English fish) and based on the model of Latin porcus marīnus ‘sea-pig’. The name may have been suggested by the porpoise’s snout.
=> fish, pork
porridge: porridge: [16] Porridge is a 16th-century alteration of pottage [13]. This originally denoted a stew of vegetables and sometimes meat, boiled to submission, but it gradually came to be applied to a gruel, of varying consistency, made of cereals, pulses, etc, and it was the sort made from oatmeal that eventually took over the word porridge. Its transformation from pottage took place via an intermediate poddage (the t pronounced /d/ as in American English), and the change to r is mirrored in such forms as geraway and geroff for getaway and get off.

The same thing happened in the case of porringer ‘dish’ [16], which came from an earlier pottinger. Pottage itself was acquired from Old French potage, which etymologically meant simply ‘something from a pot’ (it was a derivative of pot ‘pot’). English reborrowed it in the 16th century as potage ‘soup’.
=> pot, potage, pottage
port: port: English has no fewer than five distinct words port, all of them going back to the Latin stem port-, a descendant of the Indo-European base *por- ‘going, passage’ (from which English also gets fare, ford, etc). Based on this stem was portus ‘harbour’ (etymologically a ‘place by which one enters’), which was borrowed into English as port ‘harbour’ [OE].

It is thought that the nautical port ‘left’ [17] originally denoted the side of the vessel facing harbour. And port the drink [17] gets its name from Oporto (literally ‘the port’), the town at the mouth of the river Douro in Portugal through which port is shipped. From Latin portus was derived the verb portāre, which presumably originally meant ‘bring into port’, but by classical times had broadened out to simply ‘carry’.

This gave English the military verb port ‘carry’ [16], and also underlies deport [15], export [15], import, important, portable [14], portfolio [18] (etymologically a ‘carrier of leaves’ or papers), portly [16], portmanteau, report, and transport. Also from portus comes English opportunity. From the same stem came Latin porta ‘gate, door’, which reached English via Old French porte as port ‘gate’ [13].

It came to be applied in the 14th century to an ‘opening in the side of a ship’, and it is now most commonly encountered in the compound porthole [16]. Portal [14] and portcullis are among its descendants.
=> fare, ferry, fiord, ford; deport, export, import, important, opportunity, portable, portly, report, transport; porch, portal, portcullis, porthole, portico
portcullis: portcullis: [14] A portcullis is etymologically a ‘sliding door’. The word comes from Old French porte coleïce, a term made up of porte ‘door’ (source of English port, as in porthole) and coleïce ‘sliding’. This was a derivative of the verb couler ‘slide’, which came ultimately from Latin cōlum ‘sieve’ (source of English colander [14]).
=> colander, porch, port, portico
portend: portend: see tend
porter: porter: English has two distinct words porter, one for a ‘person who carries things’ [14] and the other for a ‘door attendant’ [13]. The former comes via Old French portour from medieval Latin portātor, a derivative of Latin portāre ‘carry’ (source of English import, portable, etc). It is generally assumed that porter the beer, first heard of in the 18th century, was so called from its being a favourite drink of porters. Porter ‘door attendant’ comes via Anglo-Norman porter from late Latin portārius, a derivative of Latin porta ‘gate’ (source of English port, as in porthole).
portfolio: portfolio: see port