英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

potage [potage 词源字典]: potage: see porridge
[potage etymology, potage origin, 英语词源]
potash: potash: [17] Potassium carbonate was originally obtained by burning wood or other vegetable matter, soaking the ashes in water, and evaporating the resulting liquid in iron pots. The resulting substance was hence called in early modern Dutch potasschen, literally ‘pot ashes’, and the word was adopted into English as potash. From it, or its French relative potasse, the chemist Sir Humphry Davy coined in 1807 the term potassium for the metallic element which occurs in potash.
=> ash, pot, potassium
potato: potato: [16] Potato was originally the English name for the ‘sweet potato’ (when Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor 1598 cried ‘Let the sky rain potatoes!’ it was to the sweet potato, and its supposed aphrodisiac properties, that he was referring). It did not begin to be used for the vegetable we now know as the potato until the very end of the 16th century. The word comes via Spanish patata from batata, the name for the ‘sweet potato’ in the Taino language of Haiti and other Caribbean islands.
poteen: poteen: see pot
potent: potent: [15] Latin posse (source of English posse and possible) meant ‘be able or powerful’. It was a conflation of an earlier verbal phrase potis esse ‘be able’. The precursor of posse was Old Latin *potēre, whose present participle potēns survived to become the present participle of posse. And its stem form potent- has given English potent, potentate [14], and potential [14]. Power also comes from *potēre.
=> posse, possible, potentate, potential, power
potion: potion: [13] The Indo-European base *pō-, *pī- ‘drink’ has provided the verb for ‘drink’ in most modern European languages, apart from the Germanic ones: French boire, for instance, Russian pit’, and Welsh yfed all come from it. Amongst it Latin descendants were the nouns pōtiō ‘drink’, source of English potion (and also poison) and pōtus ‘drink’, the probable ancestor of English pot, and the verb pōtāre ‘drink’, from which English gets potable [16].
=> poison, potable
pot-pourri: pot-pourri: see pot
potshot: potshot: [19] A potshot was originally a shot taken at an animal or bird simply in order to kill it for food – in order to get it into the ‘pot’, in other words – rather than in accordance with the strict code and precise techniques of shooting as a ‘sport’. Indeed to begin with it was distinctly a contemptuous term among the hunting and shooting fraternity. But gradually it broadened out in meaning to any ‘casually aimed shot’.
pottage: pottage: see porridge
potter: potter: see put
pottery: pottery: see pot
pouch: pouch: see pocket
poultry: poultry: [14] Poultry comes ultimately from a Latin word for a ‘young animal’, which also gave English pony. It was borrowed from Old French pouleterie, a derivative of pouletier ‘poultry dealer’. This in turn was based on poulet (source of English pullet [14]), a diminutive form of poule ‘hen’, which went back via Vulgar Latin *pulla to Latin pullus ‘young animal, young horse, young chicken’ (source of English pony and related to foal). Punch, as in ‘Punch and Judy’, may come from pullus too.
=> foal, pony, pullet
pounce: pounce: [15] Pounce was originally a noun, denoting the ‘claw of a bird of prey’. It is thought it may have come from puncheon ‘stamping or perforating tool’, which was also abbreviated to punch ‘stamping or perforating tool’ and is probably related to punch ‘hit’. The verb pounce emerged in the 17th century. It at first meant ‘seize with talons’, and was not generalized to ‘attack swoopingly’ until the 18th century.
=> punch
pound: pound: English has three distinct words pound. The measure of weight and unit of currency [OE] goes back ultimately to Latin pondō ‘12- ounce weight’, a relative of pondus ‘weight’ (source of English ponder) and pendere ‘weigh’ (source of English pension and poise). It was borrowed into prehistoric Germanic as *pundo, which has evolved into German pfund.

Dutch pond, Swedish pund, and English pound. Its monetary use comes from the notion of a ‘pound’ weight of silver. Pound ‘enclosure’ [14] is of unknown origin. It existed in Old English times in the compound pundfald, which has become modern English pinfold, and pond is a variant form of it. Pound ‘crush’ [OE] is almost equally mysterious.

In Old English it was pūnian (it did not acquire its final d until the 16th century, in fact), and it has been traced back to a Germanic *pūn-, which also produced Dutch puin ‘rubbish’.
=> pendant, pension, poise, ponder; pinfold, pond
poverty: poverty: see poor
powder: powder: [13] The ultimate ancestor of powder is Latin pulvis ‘dust’ (source also of English pulverize [16]). This was related to Latin pollen ‘fine flour’ (source of English pollen), Latin puls ‘gruel’ (source of English poultice and pulse ‘legume’), and Greek póltos ‘gruel’.
=> pollen, poultice, pulse, pulverize
power: power: [13] Old Latin *potēre was the precursor of Latin posse ‘be able or powerful’ (source of English posse and possible). Its present participial stem potent- has given English potent. It seems to have remained current in colloquial speech, and by the 8th century AD was reasserting itself as the main form of the verb. It passed into Old French as poeir, later povoir (whence modern French pouvoir), and this came to be used as a noun, meaning ‘ability to do things’. Its Anglo-Norman version poer passed into English, where it became power.
=> posse, possible, potent
pox: pox: [16] Pox originated as an alternation of pocks, the plural of pock [OE]. This originally denoted a ‘pustule’, and later the ‘scar left by such a pustule, pock-mark’. Pox used to be a common term for ‘syphilis’, but today it is mainly found in compounds such as chickenpox [18] (possibly a reference to the comparative mildness of the disease) and smallpox [16] (so called to distinguish it from the great pox, syphilis).
=> pock, pocket
practice: practice: [15] The ultimate source of practice is Greek prássein ‘do, practise’. From its base *prak- were derived the noun praxis ‘doing, action’ (source of English praxis [16]) and the adjective praktós ‘to be done’. On this was based praktikós ‘concerned with action, practical’. This passed into English via late Latin practicus as practice [14], which was later superseded by practical [17].

From practicus was derived the medieval Latin verb practicāre, later practizāre. This passed into English via Old French practiser as practise [15]. The derived noun practise was altered to practice in the 16th century, on the analogy of pairs like advice/advise.
=> practical, practise, pragmatic, praxis