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troupe [troupe 词源字典]: troupe: see troop
[troupe etymology, troupe origin, 英语词源]
trousers: trousers: [17] Trousers is a Gaelic contribution to English vocabulary. Irish trius and Scots Gaelic triubhas (singular nouns) denote ‘closefitting shorts’. They were borrowed into English in the 16th century as trouse or trews. The latter form has survived intact, but trouse, through the influence of drawers, was expanded into trousers.
=> trews
trow: trow: see true
truant: truant: [13] A truant was originally a ‘beggar’ or ‘vagrant’. The word was borrowed from Old French truant ‘vagabond’, which in turn came from Gaulish trugant- (amongst its Celtic relatives are Gaelic trudanach ‘vagabond’ and Welsh truan ‘wretched’). The word was not applied to absconding schoolchildren until the 15th century.
truce: truce: [13] Historically, truce is simply the plural of the noun version of the adjective true. In Old English this was trēow, which meant ‘faith, pledge’. It was often used in the plural with the same meaning as the singular, and this tendency increased in early Middle English to the point where the singular disappeared altogether. It had meanwhile narrowed down in meaning to a ‘pledge to stop fighting’.
=> true
truck: truck: English has two distinct words truck. The earlier, ‘dealings’, as in ‘have no truck with’, was originally a verb, meaning ‘exchange, barter’ [13]. It was borrowed from Anglo- Norman *truquer, but its ultimate ancestry is unknown. Americans call a ‘market garden’ a truck farm, from the former practice of bartering its produce. Truck ‘goods vehicle’ [17] is generally assumed to be short for truckle; it was originally used for a ‘small wooden wheel’, particularly one on the carriage of a naval cannon.
=> truckle
truckle: truckle: [15] A truckle is a ‘small wooden wheel or caster’. The word was originally used for a ‘pulley’ (an application which has now largely died out), and it was borrowed from Anglo- Norman trocle. This in turn came via Latin trochlea ‘system of pulleys’ (source of English trochlea [17], an anatomical term for a ‘structure resembling a pulley’) from Greek trokhilíā ‘pulley, system of pulleys, roller, etc’. Trucklebed was a term applied to a sort of low bed on casters that could be pushed under a larger bed when not in use, and the notion of sleeping in the truckle-bed, ‘beneath’ someone in the higher main bed, led in the 17th century to the use of truckle as a verb meaning ‘be subservient’.
=> trochlea, truck
true: true: [OE] The underlying etymological meaning of true is ‘faithful, steadfast, firm’; ‘in accordance with the facts’ is a secondary development. It goes back to the prehistoric Germanic base *treww-, which also produced German treue and Dutch trouw ‘faithful’ and the English noun truce, and it has been speculated that it may ultimately have links with the Indo- European base *dru- ‘wood, tree’ (source of English tree), the semantic link being the firmness or steadfastness of oaks and suchlike trees. Truth [OE] comes from the same source, as do its derivative betroth [14], its now archaic variant troth [16], the equally dated trow [OE], and probably also trust and tryst.
=> betroth, troth, trow, truce, trust, truth, tryst
truffle: truffle: [16] English acquired truffle, probably via Dutch truffel, from early modern French truffle, a derivative of Old French truffe (which survives as the modern French term for the fungus). This in turn came via Provençal trufa from a Vulgar Latin *tūfera, an alteration of the plural of Latin tūber ‘swelling, lump, tuber, truffle’ (from which English gets tuber [17] and tuberculosis [19]). The term was first used for a chocolate sweet with the external appearance of a truffle in the 1920s.
=> tuber, tuberculosis
trump: trump: There are two distinct words trump in English. The now archaic term for a ‘trumpet’ [13] is of Germanic origin, although it and its derivatives reached English via the Romance languages. Its ultimate source was Old High German trumpa, which no doubt started life as an imitation of the sound made by the instrument it denoted. This passed into English via Old French trompe. Its diminutive trompette has given English trumpet [13], while its Italian relative trombone (literally ‘big trump’) is the source of English trombone. The cards term trump [16] is an alteration of triumph.
=> drum, trombone, trumpet; triumph
truncate: truncate: see trench
trundle: trundle: see trend
trunk: trunk: [15] Trunk came via Old French tronc from Latin truncus (source also of English trench and truncate). This denoted ‘something with its protruding parts torn off’, hence ‘something regarded separately from its protruding parts’ – the stem of a tree without its branches, or a body without its limbs. The application of the English word to an ‘elephant’s proboscis’, which dates from the 16th century, apparently arose from some confusion with trump ‘trumpet’.
=> trench, truncate
trust: trust: [13] Trust was probably borrowed from Old Norse traust ‘help, confidence, firmness’. This, together with its modern German and Dutch relatives trost and troost ‘consolation’, goes back to the same prehistoric Germanic base as produced English true and truth. Tryst [14] is probably closely related. It was borrowed from Old French triste ‘appointed place for positioning oneself during a hunt’, which itself was very likely acquired from a Scandinavian source connected with traust.
=> true
truth: truth: see true
try: try: [13] Try originally meant ‘separate, sift out’. It was borrowed from Old French trier ‘separate, sift’, and it has been speculated that this went back to a Vulgar Latin *trītāre, formed from the past participle of Latin terere ‘rub’ (source of English attrition, detritus, trite, etc). The notion of ‘separation’ led via ‘separating out the good’ to ‘examine, test’ and, in the 14th century, ‘attempt’. The derivative trial [16] was borrowed from Anglo-Norman after the sense ‘attempt’ developed for try in English, and so has never wholeheartedly taken over this meaning.
=> trial
tsar: tsar: [16] Caesar was a Roman cognomen (English gets caesarian from it) and from the days of Augustus was used as part of the title of ‘emperor’. The Germanic peoples took it over in this sense (it is the source of German kaiser) and passed it on to prehistoric Slavic as *tsēsari. This has evolved into Serbo-Croat and Bulgarian tsar and Russian tsar’ – source of English tsar.
=> caesar
tsunami: tsunami: [19] Japanese tsunami means literally ‘harbour waves’, a reference to the devastating effect Pacific tsunamis have had on Japanese coastal communities. For most of the 20th century the term was largely restricted to the specialized vocabulary of oceanographers and earth scientists, lay people preferring the more familiar tidal wave (a misnomer: strictly speaking, a tidal wave is one caused by the movement of the tide, whereas a tsunami is specifically generated by an undersea earthquake), but the disastrous inundation of southern Asian coasts at the end of 2004 lodged it firmly in the language’s everyday lexicon.
tube: tube: [17] The ultimate origins of tube are unclear. It comes, probably via French tube, from Latin tubus ‘tube’. This was closely related to tuba ‘war trumpet’, source of English tuba [19], but what their joint ancestor might be is not known.
=> tuba
tuber: tuber: see truffle