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rob [rob 词源字典]: rob: [13] Rob goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic *raub- ‘break’ (a close relative of the Latin base rup- ‘break’, which has given English rout, route, and rupture). This produced Old English rēafian ‘rob’, which although it has now died out has left us its derivative bereave [OE], and also Middle Dutch rōven ‘rob’, which gave English rover ‘pirate’ [14]. It was also borrowed into Old French as robber, which is the source of modern English rob. Other English descendants of the Germanic base are robe, rubbish, and rubble.
=> bereave, corrupt, disrupt, robe, rout, route, rover, rubbish, rubble, rupture[rob etymology, rob origin, 英语词源]
robe: robe: [13] A robe is etymologically ‘something stolen’, hence a ‘looted garment’, and finally simply a ‘(long) garment’. The word comes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *rauba, which was borrowed from the same Germanic base as produced English bereave and rob. It passed into English via Old French robe. This still retained the ancestral meaning ‘stolen things, spoils’ as well as the new ‘garment’, and in that sense it has given English rubbish and rubble.
=> rob
robin: robin: [15] Robin was borrowed from the French male first name Robin, a familiar form of Robert, which is first recorded as a bird-name in the 15th century. It originally appeared in English, in the mid-15th century, in the expression robin redbreast, and robin was not used on its own until about a hundred years later. Since then its has gradually ousted the native ruddock (a relative of red) as the standard term for the bird. (The name Robert, incidentally, is of Germanic origin, and means etymologically ‘famebright’.)
robot: robot: [20] Robot is a Czech contribution to English. It comes from robota ‘forced labour, drudgery’, a word related to German arbeit ‘work’. It was used by the Czech dramatist Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) 1920 for ‘mechanical people constructed to do menial tasks’. English acquired it via German robot, and the first record of it in an English text comes from 1923.
robust: robust: [16] By a series of semantic twists, robust is related to red. It comes ultimately from Indo- European *reudh- ‘red’ (source of English red). This produced Latin rōbus, which was applied to a particular sort of oak tree with reddish wood. The oak being synonymous with strength, rōbus in due course came to mean ‘strength’. This was carried over into the derived rōbustus ‘firm, strong, solid’, from which English gets robust, and also into the verb rōborāre ‘strengthen’, source of English corroborate [16].
=> corroborate, red
rock: rock: English has two words rock, both of uncertain origin. The older, ‘sway’ [11], goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base *rukk- ‘move’, which also produced German rücken ‘move’ and Dutch rukken ‘pull, jerk’, but beyond that its trail goes cold. Rock ‘stone’ [14] was borrowed from Old French rocque. This has relatives in Italian rocca and Spanish roca, but where it ultimately came from is not known. The French word is also the ultimate source of English rococo.
=> rococo
rocket: rocket: English has two words rocket. The older, and now less familiar, is the name of a plant of the cabbage family whose leaves are used in salads. It was inspired by the plant’s downy stems, for it goes back ultimately to Latin ērūca, which originally meant ‘hairy caterpillar’. This may have been related to ērīcius ‘hedgehog’, from which English gets caprice and urchin.

It passed into Italian as ruca, whose diminutive form ruchetta developed a variant rochetta – whence French roquette and finally English rocket [16]. Rocket ‘projectile’ [17] is ultimately an allusion to the shape of such objects. It comes via Old French roquette from Italian rocchetto, a diminutive form of rocca ‘spool’ – hence the application to the ‘cylindrical’ rocket. Rocca itself represents a borrowing from a prehistoric Germanic *rukkon, which also lies behind English ratchet.
=> caprice, urchin; ratchet
rococo: rococo: [19] Old French roque was the source of English rock ‘stone’. From its modern French descendant roc was derived rocaille ‘decoration in the form of pebbles, shells, etc’, which was altered to rococo as a term for a style characterized by convoluted ornamentation.
=> rock
rod: rod: [12] It seems likely that rod is related to English rood [OE]. In post-Anglo-Saxon times this has mainly been used for ‘cross of Christ’, and it now survives mainly in rood screen ‘altar screen’, but in the Old English period it was also used for ‘rod’. Where their Germanic ancestor, which also produced German rute ‘rod’ and Norwegian dialect rodda ‘stake’, came from is not clear. The use of rod for a unit of measurement dates from the mid 15th century.
=> rood
rodent: rodent: see rostrum
rodeo: rodeo: see rota
roe: roe: Roe the deer [OE] and roe ‘fish eggs’ [15] are distinct words. The former goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *raikh-, which also produced German reh, Dutch ree, Swedish råa, and Danish raa. Its underlying meaning may be ‘spotted’, an allusion to the roe deer’s dappled coat. Roe ‘fish eggs’ was borrowed from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German roge, a word of uncertain origin.
rogue: rogue: [16] Rogue originated as a thieves’ slang term for a ‘vagrant’ in the mid-16th century. It is not clear where it came from, but one suggestion is that it was derived from the contemporary slang term roger ‘beggar who pretended to be a poor university student in order play on people’s feelings’. This was based on Latin rogāre ‘ask’, source of English interrogate, prerogative, etc.
roister: roister: see rural
roll: roll: English has two words roll, both of which go back ultimately to Latin rotulus ‘small wheel’, a diminutive form of rota ‘wheel’ (source of English rotate, rotund, round, etc). This passed via Old French rolle into English as roll ‘rolledup parchment’ [13]. The modern French version of the word has given English role [17], whose underlying notion is of a ‘rolled-up’ piece of paper with the actor’s lines written on it. From rotulus was derived the Vulgar Latin verb *rotulāre, which has given English its verb roll [14]. Control comes from the same source.
=> control, rota, rotate, round
romance: romance: [13] A romance is etymologically a story written in the language ‘of Rome’. The word comes from Old French romanz, which denoted ‘something written in French (as opposed to classical Latin)’. This went back to the Vulgar Latin adverb *rōmānicē ‘in the local vernacular descended from Latin’ (contrasted with latinē ‘in Latin’). This in turn came from Latin rōmānicus ‘Roman’, a derivative ultimately of Rōma ‘Rome’.

In practice, these medieval vernacular tales were usually about chivalric adventure, and that was the starting point from which the modern meaning of romance, and its derivative romantic [17], developed. The original sense survives in the linguistic term Romance, denoting languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc that have evolved from Latin.
rondo: rondo: see round
rood: rood: see rod
roof: roof: [OE] The antecedents of roof are far from clear. Its only surviving relative seems to be Dutch roef ‘cabin, coffin lid’, and although it also had links with Old Norse hróf ‘boat-shed’, its ultimate origins remain a mystery.
room: room: [OE] The Old English word for ‘room’ was cofa (ancestor of modern English cove ‘sheltered bay’). At that time, room meant simply ‘space’ (as its German relative raum still does). Its modern sense ‘chamber’ did not emerge until the 15th century. It comes ultimately from the prehistoric Germanic adjective *rūmaz ‘spacious’, which may be related to Latin rūs ‘country’, source of English rural and rustic. Rummage is a distant relative.
=> rummage, rural