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riddle [riddle 词源字典]: riddle: [OE] English has two separate words riddle. The ‘puzzling’ sort of riddle is etymologically something you ‘read’. For it originated as a derivative of Old English rǣdan, the ancestor of modern English read. One of its earlier meanings was ‘interpret’ – hence riddle. Riddle ‘sieve’ goes back to a prehistoric German khrid- ‘shake’, which also produced German dialect reiter ‘sieve’. It is also related to Latin crībrum ‘sieve’ and cernere ‘separate’ (source of English decree, discern, secret, etc).
=> read; certain, decree, discern, secret[riddle etymology, riddle origin, 英语词源]
ride: ride: [OE] Ride is a widespread Germanic verb, with close relatives in German reiten, Dutch rijden, Swedish rida, and Danish ride. It apparently has connections in the Celtic languages – Irish rīadaim ‘ride’ and Gaulish rēda ‘chariot’, for instance – but its ultimate provenance is unclear.
=> raid, road
ridge: ridge: [OE] Old English hrycg denoted ‘the back’, as its modern Germanic relatives – German rücken, Dutch rug, Swedish rygg, and Danish ryg – still do. But a gradual semantic focussing on the ‘backbone’ led by the 14th century to the emergence of ‘long narrow raised area’, today’s main meaning. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khrugjaz, which may have been related to Sanskrit krunc- ‘be crooked’ – in which case the notion underlying the word would be of a ‘bent back’.
riding: riding: [11] Until 1974 Yorkshire was divided for administrative purposes into three ridings. The word has no connection with ride. It means etymologically ‘third part’. It was borrowed from Old Norse thrithjungr ‘third part’, a derivative of thrithi ‘third’. Its original English form was *thrithing, later thriding or triding, and it eventually lost its initial t through assimilation into the t of the preceding east and west.
=> three
right: right: [OE] Right goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *reg- ‘move in a straight line’, hence ‘direct’, hence ‘rule’, which also produced English rich and Latin rēx ‘king’ (source of English regal, royal, etc). Combination with the past participial suffix *-to- resulted in Latin rēctus ‘straight, right’, which lies behind English rectify, rectum, etc, and prehistoric Germanic *rekhtaz, which has evolved into German and Dutch recht, Swedish rätt, Danish ret, and English right.

The use of the word as the opposite of left, paralleled in German and Dutch but not in the Scandinavian languages, derives from the notion that the right hand is the ‘correct’ hand to use. (French droit ‘right’ goes back to Latin dīrēctus, a derivative of rēctus.) The derived righteous [OE] etymologically means ‘in the right way’; it was compounded in the Old English period from riht ‘right’ and wīs ‘way’ (ancestor of the modern English suffix -wise).
=> address, direct, raj, rector, regal, regiment, royal
rigmarole: rigmarole: [18] Rigmarole is a corruption of an earlier ragman roll, a term first encountered in the late 13th century. It denoted a roll of parchment used in a gambling game. The roll had things written on it, such as names, with pieces of string attached to them, and participants had to select a string at random. The word ragman may have been a contraction of ragged man, perhaps in allusion to the appearance of the roll, with all its bits of string hanging from it. Ragman roll eventually came to be used for any ‘list’ or ‘catalogue’, and ragman itself denoted a ‘long rambling discourse’ in 16th-century Scottish English – the meaning which had somehow transferred itself to rigmarole when it emerged in the early 18th century.
rile: rile: see regular
ring: ring: [OE] English has two distinct words ring. The one meaning ‘circle’ goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khrenggaz, which also produced German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish ring (not to mention the Finnish borrowing rengas). It may be related to Old Church Slavonic kragu ‘circle’. The Germanic form was taken over by Old French as ranc, from which English gets rank, and also as renc, which may be the source of English rink [18]. Ring ‘chime’ presumably goes back to a prehistoric Germanic ancestor that imitated the sound of clanging, and also produced German and Dutch ringen, Swedish ringa, and Danish ringe (the suggestion that it contains some reference to the circular motion of tolling bells is attractive, but has no basis in fact).
=> range, rank, rink
riparian: riparian: see river
ripe: ripe: [OE] Ripe is restricted to the West Germanic languages – it has relatives in German reif and Dutch rijp. Its antecedents are uncertain, but some have linked it with reap [OE], as if its underlying meaning is ‘ready for harvesting’. And reap itself may go back to an Indo- European base *rei- ‘tear, scratch’, and hence denote etymologically ‘strip’ the fruits, seeds, etc from plants.
riposte: riposte: see respond
rise: rise: [OE] Not surprisingly, rise and raise are closely related. Both go back to a common prehistoric Germanic ancestor meaning ‘go up’. This reached English directly as rise, while its causative derivative, meaning ‘cause to go up’, has given English raise, and also rear. The derived arise is of long standing. It is not clear what the word’s ultimate ancestry may be; some have linked it with Latin rīvus ‘stream’ (source of English rivulet), from the notion of a stream ‘rising’ in a particular place.
=> raise, rear
risk: risk: [17] The ultimate origins of risk have never been satisfactorily explained. English acquired it via French risque from Italian risco, a derivative of the verb riscare ‘run into danger’, but there speculation takes over. One persistent theory is that its ancestral meaning is ‘sail dangerously close to rocks’, and attempts have been made to link it with Greek rhīza ‘cliff’ and Latin resegāre ‘cut off short’ (from the notion of coastal rocks being ‘cut off sharply’ or ‘sheer’). English acquired the French past participial form risqué in the 19th century.
rissole: rissole: [18] Rissoles originally got their name from their colour. The word comes via French rissole and Old French ruissole from Vulgar Latin *russeola, a shortening of *russeola pasta ‘reddish pastry’. Late Latin russeolus ‘reddish’ was a derivative of Latin russus ‘red’ (source of English russet), and is distantly related to English red.
=> red, russet, rust
ritual: ritual: [16] Ritual was borrowed from Latin rītuālis, a derivative of rītus ‘religious or other ceremony or practice’ (from which, via Old French rite, English gets rite [14]). It may have been related to Sanskrit rīti- ‘going, way, custom’.
=> rite
rival: rival: [16] A rival is etymologically ‘someone who uses the same stream as another’. The word comes from Latin rīvālis, a noun use of an adjective meaning ‘of a stream’, derived from rīvus ‘stream’ (source of English derive). People who use or live by the same stream are neighbours and hence, human nature being as it is, are usually in competition with each other – hence rival.
=> derive
river: river: [13] Etymologically, the term river denotes the ‘banks’ of a river, rather than the water that flows between them. Its distant ancestor is Latin rīpa ‘bank’. From this was derived the adjective rīpārius (source of English riparian ‘of a riverbank’ [19]), whose feminine form came to be used in Vulgar Latin as a noun, *rīpāria, denoting ‘land by the water’s edge’.

From it evolved Italian riviera ‘bank’ (whence English Riviera [18]) and Old French riviere. This originally meant ‘river bank’, but this subsequently developed to ‘river’, the sense in which English adopted the word. A heavily disguised English relative is arrive, which etymologically denotes ‘come to the shore’.
=> arrive, riparian, riviera
roach: roach: see cockroach
road: road: [OE] Road comes from the same ultimate source as ride – and indeed in the Old English period it meant either simply ‘riding’ or ‘hostile incursion on horseback’ (a sense preserved in inroads [16] and also in raid, which is historically the same word as road). By the 14th century the sense ‘sheltered anchorage’ (now represented by the plural roads) had emerged, but the central modern meaning ‘track for traffic’ did not put in an appearance until the late 16th century (hitherto the main words for expressing this concept had been way and street).
=> inroads, raid, ride
roast: roast: [13] Roast can be traced back ultimately to a prehistoric West Germanic term for a ‘metal grid for cooking things on’. From this was derived the verb *raustjan, which evolved into German rösten and Dutch roosten. There is no trace of it in Old English, however: English got it via Old French rostir, which had been borrowed from Germanic. A derivative of Dutch roosten was rooster ‘gridiron’. The resemblance between a gridiron pattern and lines ruled on paper led to the metaphorical use of rooster for ‘list, table’ – whence English roster [18].
=> roster