英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

silk [silk 词源字典]: silk: [OE] Like the substance itself, the word silk originated in the Far East, possibly in Chinese sī ‘silk’. Its immediate ancestor is most closely represented by Manchurian sirghe and Mongolian sirkek. Silk-traders brought their term west, and the Greeks used it to coin a name for them: Seres, the ‘silk people’. That is the source of Latin sēricum and Irish sīric ‘silk’, and also of English serge.

But there must have been another oriental form, with an l rather than an r, which made its more northerly way via the Balto-Slavic languages (leaving Russian shelk and Lithuanian shilkai ‘silk’) to Germanic, where it has given Swedish and Danish silke and English silk.
=> serge[silk etymology, silk origin, 英语词源]
sill: sill: [OE] Sill originally denoted the ‘foundation of a wall’. Not until the 15th century was it used for the ‘base of a window-frame’. It is related to German schwelle ‘threshold’ and possibly also to English sole ‘underside of the foot’.
silly: silly: [OE] In one of the more celebrated semantic volte-faces in the history of the English lexicon, silly has been transformed over the past millennium from ‘blessed, happy’ to ‘stupid’. The word goes back ultimately to a prehistoric West Germanic *sǣliga, a derivative of *sǣli ‘luck, happiness’. It reached Old English as gesǣlig, still meaning ‘happy’, but as it evolved formally in Middle English through seely to silly, its meaning developed via ‘blessed’, ‘pious’, ‘innocent, harmless’, ‘pitiable’, and ‘feeble’ to ‘feeble in mind, foolish’. The related German selig retains its original meaning ‘happy, blessed’.
silt: silt: [15] The likelihood is that silt originally referred to the mud in salt flats by river estuaries, and that it is etymologically related to salt. It was probably borrowed from a Scandinavian word – Danish and Norwegian have the apparently related sylt ‘salt marsh’.
=> salt
silver: silver: [OE] The word silver probably originated in Asia Minor. Its unidentified source word was borrowed into prehistoric Germanic as *silubr-, which has evolved into German silber, Dutch zilver, Danish sølf, and English and Swedish silver. Borrowing of the same ancestral form into the Balto-Slavic languages produced Russian serebro, Polish and Serbo-Croat srebro, Lithuanian sidabras, and Latvian sidrabs.
similar: similar: [17] Similar comes via French similaire from medieval Latin *similāris, a derivative of Latin similis ‘like, similar’. This or the closely related simul ‘at the same time’ have also given English assemble [13], dissemble [15], ensemble [15], resemble, semblance [13], similitude [14], simulate [17], and simultaneous [17]. Its ultimate source was the Indo-European base *sem-, *som-, which also lies behind English same, simple, single, and the homo- of homosexual.
=> assemble, dissemble, ensemble, resemble, same, semblance, simple, simulate, simultaneous, single
simnel: simnel: [13] Simnel, a term now used for a cake made at Easter, originally denoted ‘bread made from fine flour’. It was borrowed from Old French simenel, which itself came from either Latin simila (source of English semolina) or Greek semídālis, both meaning ‘fine flour’.
simony: simony: [13] Simony, a term which denotes the ‘selling of ecclesiastical offices’, perpetuates the name of Simon Magus. He was a Samaritan who according to Acts 8:18–20 tried to buy the power of conferring the Holy Ghost on people: ‘And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money’.
simple: simple: [13] Etymologically, simple denotes ‘same-fold’ – that is, not multifarious. It goes back ultimately to a compound formed from prehistoric Indo-European *sm-, *sem-, *som- ‘same’ (source also of English same, similar, single, etc) and *pl- ‘fold’ (source of English fold, ply, etc). This passed into Latin as simplus ‘single’, which found its way into English via Old French simple.
=> fold, ply, same, similar
simulate: simulate: see similar
simultaneous: simultaneous: see similar
sin: sin: [OE] Sin comes from a prehistoric Germanic *sunjō, a close relative of which produced German sünde, Dutch zonde, and Swedish and Danish synd ‘sin’. It is not altogether clear what its ultimate origins were, but it has been linked with Latin sōns ‘guilty’, and also with English sooth ‘truth’ and Sanskrit satya- ‘real, true’, as if its ancestral meaning were ‘(truly) guilty’.
since: since: [15] Since is a contracted form of Middle English sithenes ‘since’. This in turn went back (with the addition of a final -s) to Old English siththan, a compound adverb and conjunction formed from sīth ‘after’ (a relative of German seit ‘since’) and thām ‘that’.
sine: sine: [16] As in the case of many other mathematical terms, English is indebted to Arabic for sine. But here the debt is only semantic, not formal. The word sine itself was borrowed from Latin sinus ‘curve, fold, hollow’ (source also of English sinuous [16] and indeed of sinus [16], whose anatomical use comes from the notion of a ‘hollow’ place or cavity). In postclassical times it came to denote the ‘fold of a garment’, and so it was mistakenly used to translate Arabic jayb ‘chord of an arc’, a doppelganger of Arabic jayb ‘fold of a garment’.
=> sinuous, sinus
sinecure: sinecure: [17] Sinecure means literally ‘without cure’. It comes from the Latin phrase beneficium sine cūrā ‘benefice without cure’, that is to say an ecclesiastical office that does not involve the cure of souls (looking after people’s spiritual welfare), the usual duty of a priest. Hence it came to be applied to any appointment that involves payment for no work.
sing: sing: [OE] Sing is a general Germanic word, related to German singen, Dutch zingen, Swedish sjunga, and Danish synge, and of course to the noun song. It is thought that it may have distant links with Greek omphé ‘voice’ and Welsh dehongli ‘explain, interpret’.
=> song
single: single: [14] Single comes via Old French sengle or single from Latin singulus. This was formed from sim-, the stem of simplus ‘single’ (which came from the same Indo-European base that produced English same and similar), together with the diminutive suffix *-go and a further element *-lo. Singlet ‘vest’ [18] was coined on the model of doublet, in allusion to its being an unlined garment, made from a ‘single’ layer of material.
=> same, similar, simple
singular: singular: [14] Singular comes ultimately from Latin singulāris ‘alone of its kind’, a derivative of singulus ‘single’. It reached English via Old French singuler as singuler (the modern spelling singular is a 17th-century relatinization). The word’s grammatical application, and its use for ‘remarkable, extraordinary’, both developed in Latin.
=> single
sinister: sinister: see left
sink: sink: [OE] Sink is a general Germanic verb, with relatives in German sinken, Dutch zinken, Swedish sjunka, and Danish synke. But where their common Germanic ancestor came from is not known. These days, sink means both ‘go below water’ and ‘cause to go below water’, but originally it was used only for the former. There was a separate but closely related verb, sench, for ‘cause to sink’, which died out in the 14th century. The noun sink [15] originally denoted a pit ‘sunk’ in the ground for receiving water.