英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

acre [acre 词源字典]: acre: [OE] Acre is a word of ancient ancestry, going back probably to the Indo-European base *ag-, source of words such as agent and act. This base had a range of meanings covering ‘do’ and ‘drive’, and it is possible that the notion of driving contributed to the concept of driving animals on to land for pasture. However that may be, it gave rise to a group of words in Indo- European languages, including Latin ager (whence English agriculture), Greek agros, Sanskrit ájras, and a hypothetical Germanic *akraz.

By this time, people’s agricultural activities had moved on from herding animals in open country to tilling the soil in enclosed areas, and all of this group of words meant specifically ‘field’. From the Germanic form developed Old English æcer, which as early as 1000 AD had come to be used for referring to a particular measured area of agricultural land (as much as a pair of oxen could plough in one day).
=> act, agent, agriculture, eyrie, onager, peregrine, pilgrim[acre etymology, acre origin, 英语词源]
aggregate: aggregate: [15] Etymologically, aggregate contains the notion of a collection of animals. It comes from greg-, the stem of the Latin noun grex ‘flock, herd’ (also the source of gregarious). This formed the basis of a verb aggregāre ‘collect together’, whose past participle aggregātus passed into English as aggregate. Latin grex is related to Greek agorā ‘open space, market place’, from which English gets agoraphobia.
=> agoraphobia, egregious, gregarious, segregate
anthrax: anthrax: [14] In Greek, anthrax means ‘coal’ (hence English anthracite [19]). The notion of a burning coal led to its being applied metaphorically to a very severe boil or carbuncle, and that is how it was first used in English. It was not until the late 19th century that the word came into general use, when it was applied to the bacterial disease of animals that had been described by Louis Pasteur (which produces large ulcers on the body).
=> anthracite
aquarium: aquarium: [19] Aquarium is a modern adaptation of the neuter form of the Latin adjective aquārius ‘watery’ (a noun aquārium existed in Roman times, but it meant ‘place where cattle drink’). Its model was vivarium, a 16th-century word for a ‘place for keeping live animals’. This was the term first pressed into service to describe such a place used for displaying fish and other aquatic life: in 1853 the magazine Athenaeum reported that ‘the new Fish house at the London Zoo has received the somewhat curious title of the “Marine Vivarium”’; and in the following year the guidebook to the Zoological Gardens called it the ‘Aquatic Vivarium’.

Within a year or two of this, however, the term aquarium had been coined and apparently established.
bail: bail: There are now three distinct words bail in English, although they may all be related. Bail ‘money deposited as a guarantee when released’ [14] comes from Old French bail, a derivative of the verb baillier ‘take charge of, carry’, whose source was Latin bājulāre ‘carry’, from bājulus ‘carrier’. Bail ‘remove water’ [13], also spelled bale, probably comes ultimately from the same source; its immediate antecedent was Old French baille ‘bucket’, which perhaps went back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *bājula, a feminine form of bājulus.

The bail on top of cricket stumps [18] has been connected with Latin bājulus too – this could have been the source of Old French bail ‘cross-beam’ (‘loadcarrying beam’), which could quite plausibly have been applied to cricket bails; on the other hand it may go back to Old French bail, baille ‘enclosed court’ (source of English bailey [13]), which originally in English meant the ‘encircling walls of a castle’ but by the 19th century at the latest had developed the sense ‘bar for separating animals in a stable’.
=> bailey
beast: beast: [13] Beast replaced deer as the general word for ‘animal’ in the 13th century (deer of course remained in use for antlered animals of the family Cervidae), and was itself replaced by animal in the 17th century. It entered English via Old French beste from Latin bēstia (source of English bestial [14]).
=> bestial
berserk: berserk: [19] Sir Walter Scott appears to be responsible for introducing this word to the English language. He mentions it in a footnote to his novel The pirate 1822, adopting it (in the form berserkar) from the Icelandic berserkr ‘frenzied Norse warrior’. Its etymology is not altogether clear. Its second syllable represents serkr ‘coat, shirt’ (a word English used to have, as sark: cutty sark meant ‘short shirt’), but the first is disputed.

Scott took it to mean ‘bare’ (which would have been Icelandic berr), and in fact the anglicized form baresark was quite commonly used in the mid 19th century; the plausible-sounding notion underlying this is that the original berserkr was so called because in his battle-crazed frenzy he tore off his armour and fought in his shirt-sleeves – ‘bare-shirted’. However, 20th-century etymologists have tended to prefer the theory that ber- is ‘bear’, representing Icelandic bern-, a by-form of bjorn ‘bear’.

The concept of warriors dressing themselves in animals’ skins is an ancient one, found in many mythologies. The modern use of the word as an adjective, meaning ‘in a violent frenzy’, appears to date from the third quarter of the 19th century.
brute: brute: [15] The primordial meaning of brute appears to be ‘heavy’. It comes from Latin brūtus ‘heavy’, and it has been speculated that it is related to Latin grāvis ‘heavy’ (from which English gets grave, gravity, and grieve). In Latin the sense ‘heavy’ had already progressed to ‘stupid’, and it later developed to ‘of the lower animals’. It was with this meaning that the word reached English via French. Connotations of ‘cruelty’ do not begin to appear until the 17th century. Brut meaning ‘very dry’ in relation to champagne is a late 19th-century borrowing of the French adjectival form brut, literally ‘rough’.
bucket: bucket: [13] We first encounter bucket in the Anglo-Norman forms buket and buquet. It is not entirely clear where this came from, but it may be a derivative of Old English būc. The primary underlying sense of this was ‘something bulging or swelling’, and hence it meant not only ‘jug’ but also ‘belly’ (related are German bauch and Swedish buk ‘paunch’). It survived dialectally into modern English as bowk, meaning ‘milkpail’ and ‘large tub used in coal mines’. The bucket of ‘kick the bucket’ was originally a beam from from which slaughtered animals were hung; it is probably a separate word, from Old French buquet ‘balance’.
cage: cage: [13] English acquired cage via Old French cage from Latin cavea, which meant ‘enclosure for animals, such as a coop, hive, or stall’, and also ‘dungeon’. This is usually referred to Latin cavus ‘hollow’, from which English gets cave and cavern, although not all etymologists agree with this derivation. A Vulgar Latin derivative of cavea, *caveola, was the ancestor of English gaol, and cavea has also been postulated as the ultimate source of cabinet.
=> cabinet, cave, decoy, gaol, jail
carnal: carnal: [15] Carnal means literally ‘of the flesh’; it comes from late Latin carnālis, a derivative of Latin carō ‘flesh, meat’. Other English words from the same source are carnivorous ‘meateating’ [17]; carnage [16], which came via French carnage and Italian carnaggio from medieval Latin carnāticum ‘slaughter of animals’; carnation [16], which originally meant ‘pink, colour of flesh’ and came via French carnation and Italian carnagione from late Latin carnātiō ‘fleshiness, fatness’; charnel [14], as in charnel house, from Old French charnel; and also carnival and carrion.
=> carnage, carnation, carnival, carnivorous, carrion, charnel
dachshund: dachshund: [19] Dachshund means literally ‘badger-dog’ in German. It was originally bred in Germany for badger-hunting, its long thin body enabling it to burrow into the animals’ setts. The first known reference to it in English (in the anglicized form dachshound) is in a poem by Matthew Arnold of around 1881, Poor Matthias: ‘Max, a dachshound without blot’.
=> hound
demeanour: demeanour: [15] A person’s demeanour is how they ‘conduct’ themselves. The word goes back ultimately to the literal notion of driving animals along. It is a derivative of the now virtually obsolete reflexive verb demean ‘behave’, borrowed in the 13th century from Old French demener. This was a compound formed from the intensive prefix de- and mener ‘lead’, a descendant of Latin mināre ‘drive a herd of animals’ (whose original connotation of ‘urging on with threats’ is revealed by its close relationship with minārī ‘threaten’, source of English menace).

This obsolete demean should not, incidentally, be confused with demean ‘degrade’ [17], which was formed from the adjective mean.
=> menace
den: den: [OE] Related forms such as German tenne ‘threshing floor’ and possibly Greek thenar ‘palm of the hand’ suggest that the underlying meaning of den may be ‘flat area’. Old English denn denoted ‘wild animal’s lair’, perhaps with reference to animals’ flattening an area of vegetation to form a sleeping place. Dean [OE], a word for ‘valley’ now surviving only in placenames, comes from the same source.
elk: elk: [OE] The Indo-European base *ol-, *elproduced a number of names for deerlike animals – Greek élaphos ‘stag’, for example, and Welsh elain ‘hind’, not to mention English eland. In its Germanic descendants, two main lines of development are evident: its extensions *olk- and *elk- produced respectively Germanic *algiz (whence Old Norse elgr) and Germanic *elkho(n)- (whence Old English colh).

It is not actually entirely clear which of these two is represented by modern English elk, which is first unequivocally recorded in the late 15th century. It is formally possible that it could be a survival of the Old English word, with its final /kh/ sound changed to /k/, but the long gap in the written record between Old English eolh and Middle English elk suggests that it could be an Old Norse borrowing.
=> eland
ermine: ermine: [12] The term ermine was introduced to English from Old French as a name for the ‘stoat’, but as in the case of other words of French origin like mutton and pork which soon came to be used for the dead animals’ product rather than the live animals themselves, it was not long (about a hundred years in fact) before ermine was being applied to the stoat’s fur, and specifically to its white winter fur.

The source of the French word is not entirely clear. One school of thought derives it from medieval Latin mūs Armenius ‘Armenian mouse’, on the assumption that this denoted a ‘stoat’ or ‘weasel’, but an alternative possibility is Germanic origin.
exercise: exercise: [14] The notion underlying exercise is of ‘removal of restraint’. It comes ultimately from Latin exercēre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out of, from’ and arcēre ‘restrain, enclose’ (source of English arcane and related to English ark). It has been speculated that this originally denoted the driving of draught animals out into the fields to plough, but however that may be, it soon developed the general senses ‘set to work, keep at work’ and ‘drill, practise’ which form the semantic basis of English exercise.
=> arcane, ark
fauna: fauna: [18] Fauna was a Roman goddess of the countryside, sister of Faunus (the Roman equivalent of Greek Pan) who was a nature and fertility god worshipped by shepherds, farmers, etc. The Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus applied her name in 1746 to his catalogue of the animals of Sweden, Fauna suecica ‘Swedish Fauna’, and it has been used since then as a collective term for the animal life of a region (one of the earliest records of its use in English is by the naturalist Gilbert White in 1771). (Faunus, source of English faun [14], may be related ultimately to Latin favēre ‘regard favourably’, source of English favour.)
=> faun
fold: fold: [OE] The verb fold comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *pel-, which also produced Latin plicāre ‘fold’ (source of or related to English accomplice, complicated, explicit, perplex, plait, pleat, pliant, pliers, plight, ply, reply, and supple) and the final element -ple or -ble in such words as simple, double, or triple (which are hence related to the parallel Germanic formations twofold, threefold, etc).

Its Germanic descendant was *falthan, from which are descended German falten, Dutch vouwen, Danish folde, and English fold. The noun fold ‘enclosure for animals’ is of Germanic origin (Dutch has the related vaalt), but its distant antecedents are unknown.
=> accomplice, complicated, explicit, perplex, plait, pleat, pliers, plight, ply, reply, supple
fret: fret: English has three separate words fret. Fret ‘irritate, distress’ [OE] goes back to a prehistoric Germanic compound verb formed from the intensive prefix *fra- and the verb *etan (ancestor of English eat), which meant ‘eat up, devour’. Its modern Germanic descendants include German fressen ‘eat’ (used of animals). In Old English, it gave fretan, which also meant ‘devour’, but this literal meaning had died out by the early 15th century, leaving the figurative ‘gnaw at, worry, distress’. Fret ‘decorate with interlaced or pierced design’ [14] (now usually encountered only in fretted, fretwork, and fretsaw) comes from Old French freter, a derivative of frete ‘trellis, embossed or interlaced work’, whose origins are obscure.

Also lost in the mists of time are the antecedents of fret ‘ridge across the fingerboard of a guitar’ [16].
=> eat
frog: frog: [OE] Frog comes from Old English frogga, which probably started life as a playful alternative to the more serious frosc or forsc. This derived from the pre-historic Germanic *fruskaz, which also produced German frosch and Dutch vorsch. Its use as a derogatory synonym for ‘French person’ goes back to the late 18th century, and was presumably inspired by the proverbial French appetite for the animals’ legs (although in fact frog as a general term of abuse can be traced back to the 14th century, and in the 17th century it was used for ‘Dutch person’).

It is not clear whether frog ‘horny wedge-shaped pad in a horse’s hoof’ [17] and frog ‘ornamental braiding’ [18] are the same word; the former may have been influenced by French fourchette and Italian forchetta, both literally ‘little fork’.
fruit: fruit: [12] English acquired fruit via Old French fruit from Latin frūctus, a source more clearly on display in fructify [14], fructose [19], etc. The underlying meaning of the Latin noun seems to have been ‘enjoyment of that which is produced’, for it came, like frūx (source of English frugal), from a base which also produced the verb fruī ‘enjoy’.

By classical times, however, it had passed from ‘enjoyment’ to the ‘product’ itself – the ‘rewards’ of an enterprise, the ‘return’ on an investment, or the ‘produce’ obtained from the soil or from farm animals. When it reached English this latter meaning had narrowed down somewhat, but it was still capable of being used far more broadly, for any ‘edible vegetable’, than we would do today, except in certain archaic expressions such as ‘fruits of the earth’.

The modern restriction to the edible reproductive body of a tree, bush, etc dates from the 13th century. English retains, of course, the more general sense ‘product, result’, although this is now usually expressed by the plural fruits.
=> fructify, frugal
giblets: giblets: [14] French gibier means ‘game’ – in the sense ‘hunted animals’ (it comes from Frankish *gabaiti ‘hunting with falcons’). In the Old French period this seems to have produced a diminutive form *giberet, literally ‘small game’, which, though never recorded, is assumed to have been the basis of Old French gibelet (l and r are very close phonetically, and each is easily substituted for the other). Gibelet is only known in the sense ‘game stew’, but it seems quite plausible that it could have originally meant ‘entrails of hunted animals’ (Walloon, the French dialect of southern Belgium, has giblè d’awe ‘goose giblets’).
graze: graze: [OE] There is no difficulty about the etymology of graze ‘feed on grass’: it was formed in Old English times as a derivative of the noun græs (modern English grass). But what about graze in the sense ‘scrape lightly’, first recorded in the 17th century? In the absence of any convincing alternative candidates, it is usually taken to be simply a special use of graze ‘feed on grass’, in the sense ‘remove grass close to the ground’, as some animals do in grazing – like a ‘close shave’, in fact.
=> grass
jelly: jelly: [14] The central idea of ‘coagulation’ takes us back to the ultimate source of jelly, the Latin verb gelāre ‘freeze’ (which also gave English congeal [14]). Its feminine past participle gelāta was used in Vulgar Latin for a substance solidified out of a liquid, and this passed into Old French as gelee, meaning both ‘frost’ and ‘jelly’ – whence the English word. (Culinarily, jelly at first denoted a savoury substance, made from gelatinous parts of animals; it was not really until the early 19th century that the ancestors of modern fruit jellies began to catch on in a big way.) The Italian descendant of gelāta was gelata.

From it was formed a diminutive, gelatina, which English acquired via French as gelatine [19]. Gel [19] is an abbreviation of it.
=> cold, congeal, gel, gelatine
lung: lung: [OE] Lungs, insubstantial air-filled sacs, got their name because they weigh so little. It comes ultimately from Indo-European *lnggh-, a variant of which produced English light ‘not heavy’. In prehistoric Germanic this became *lungg-, which over the centuries has differentiated to German lunge, Dutch long, Swedish lunga, and English lung. The similarly motivated use of the word lights for ‘lungs’ dates from the 12th century; it is now restricted to ‘animals’ lungs used as food’, but it was formerly a general term.
=> light
mammal: mammal: [19] Etymologically, mammal denotes an ‘animal that suckles its young’. The word is a derivative of mammalia [18], the term for that whole class of animals, coined by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus from Latin mammālis ‘of the breast’. This in turn was based on mamma ‘mother, breast’, which has been traced back to a prehistoric Indo-European *mammā.

There are obvious links with ‘mother’-terms in other languages, such as Greek mámmē, French maman, Italian mamma, Russian mama, Welsh mam, and English mamma and mummy, but whether a sustained chain of descent and borrowing is involved, or simply parallel formation based on the syllable ma, imitative of the sound of a suckling baby, is not clear. Mammary [17] is an English derivative of Latin mamma, in the sense ‘breast’.
=> mamma, mammary, mummy
manor: manor: [13] Etymologically, a manor is a place where one ‘stays’ or ‘dwells’. It goes back ultimately to the Latin verb manēre ‘remain, stay’, which in post-classical times was used for ‘dwell, live’. Its Old French descendant maneir came to be used as a noun, meaning ‘dwelling place’. This passed into English via Anglo- Norman maner, and was originally used for ‘country house’.

In the 14th century it came to be incorporated into the terminology of the feudal system, from which its present-day meanings come. The past participle stem of manēre was māns-, from which was derived the Latin noun mānsiō ‘place to stay’. Old French took this over in two forms: maison (whence the modern French word for ‘house’, source of English maisonette [19]) and mansion.

English borrowed this as mansion [14], and originally used it for ‘place of abode, house’. The present-day connotations of a ‘large stately house’ did not emerge until as recently as the 19th century. Manse [15] comes from the same ultimate source, as do menagerie [18] (whose immediate French source originally denoted the ‘management of domestic animals’), permanent, and remain.
=> maisonette, manse, mansion, menagerie, permanent, remain
menace: menace: [13] Latin mināx meant ‘threatening’ (it was formed from a base *min- ‘jut’ which also produced English eminent and prominent, and hence etymologically denoted ‘overhanging’). From it was derived the noun minācia ‘threatening things’, which passed into English via Old French manace. The closely related demeanour comes ultimately from a word denoting ‘drive animals with threats’.
=> eminent, prominent
milk: milk: [OE] Far back into prehistory, milk traces its ancestry to an Indo-European base *melg-, which denoted ‘wiping’ or ‘stroking’. The way of obtaining milk from animals is to pull one’s hand down their teats, and so *melg- came in due course to be used for ‘milk’. It passed into Germanic as *melk-, which formed the basis of the noun *meluks, and this over the centuries has become German milch, Dutch and Danish melk, Swedish mjölk, and English milk.

The now virtually obsolete adjective milch ‘giving milk’ [OE] (as in milch cow) goes back to a Germanic derivative of *meluks. Another derivative of Indo-European *melgwas the Latin verb mulgēre ‘milk’, which has given English emulsion and promulgate.
=> emulsion, promulgate
mollusc: mollusc: [18] Etymologically, a mollusc is a ‘soft’ creature. The word comes ultimately from Latin molluscus ‘soft’, a derivative of mollis ‘soft’. In classical times it was used as a noun for various ‘soft’ things, such as a sort of thinshelled nut and a species of fungus that grew from maple trees, but its application to a range of invertebrate animals seems to have been introduced by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.

Latin mollis (source also of English mollify [15]) goes back ultimately to Indo-European *mel-, *mol-, *ml- ‘grind’, which also produced English meal ‘flour’, mill, and molar.
=> meal, melt, mild, mill, molar, mollify
mustang: mustang: [19] Etymologically, a mustang is a ‘mixed’ animal. The word comes from Mexican Spanish mestengo, which originally in Spanish meant ‘stray’. This was derived from mesta ‘annual roundup of cattle, participated in by all the herdsmen, in which stray cattle were disposed of’, which in turn goes back to medieval Latin mixta. And mixta (literally ‘mixed’) was used for the wild or stray animals that got ‘mixed’ in with the graziers’ herds (it was a noun use of the feminine past participle of miscēre ‘mix’, source of English miscellaneous and mix).

The word passed early on from ‘stray cattle’ to ‘stray horses’.
=> miscellaneous, mix
oestrus: oestrus: [17] Greek oistros had an extraordinarily wide range of meanings, from ‘madness, frenzy’ through ‘sting’ to ‘gadfly’, and including also ‘breeze’. If, as has been suggested, it is related to Latin īra ‘anger’ (source of English ire [13]), Lithuanian aistra ‘passion’, etc, ‘frenzy’ is presumably the primary sense, but in fact English originally adopted it (via Latin oestrus) as the genus name for a variety of horsefly or botfly. ‘Sting’ was taken up, in the sense ‘impetus, goad’, as a learned borrowing in the mid-19th century (‘They too were pricked by the oestrus of intellectual responsibility’, John Morley, On Compromise 1874), but oestrus was not used for ‘period of sexual receptiveness in female animals’ (based of course on the notion of sexual ‘frenzy’) until the end of the 19th century.

The derived oestrogen dates from the 1920s.
=> ire
offal: offal: [14] Etymologically, offal is simply material that has ‘fallen off’. English borrowed the word from Middle Dutch afval, a compound formed from af ‘off’ and vallen ‘fall’ which denoted both the ‘extremities of animals cut off by the butcher, such as feet, tail, etc’ and ‘shavings, peelings, or general refuse’. English originally took it over in the latter sense, but by the 15th century offal was being used for ‘animals’ entrails’.
=> fall, off
protozoa: protozoa: [19] Greek prótos meant ‘first’ (like English first and Latin prīmus ‘first’ it goes back ultimately to Indo-European *pro ‘before, in front’). It forms the basis of a wide range of English words, both original Greek compounds and post-classical formations, among them protagonist [17] (etymologically the ‘first or leading actor’), protein, protocol, proton [20], protoplasm [19], and prototype [17]. Protozoa itself was coined in modern Latin by the zoologist Goldfuss in 1818 from proto- and Greek zóia ‘animals’ (source of English zoo), the notion being that the protozoa are the simplest or most primitive forms of life.
=> zoo
pudding: pudding: [13] The original puddings were sausages – whose present-day survivor is the black pudding. They were encased in the intestines or stomachs of animals, and it was this casing that provided the spring-board for the word’s subsequent development in meaning. It came to be applied to any food cooked in a bag (hence the cannon-ball shape of the traditional Christmas pudding).

Such dishes could be savoury (like today’s steak-and-kidney pudding) or sweet, but it was not until the 20th century that pudding came to be used specifically for the ‘sweet course of a meal’. The word comes via Old French boudin from Vulgar Latin *botellīnus, a diminutive form of Latin botellus ‘sausage’ (source of English botulism).
=> botulism
ravenous: ravenous: [15] Ravenous was borrowed from Old French ravineux, a derivative of the verb raviner ‘seize by force’ (source of English raven, which nowadays appears mainly in its present participial form ravening). This came from Latin rapere ‘seize by force’, ancestor also of English rape. The central modern meaning of ravenous, ‘very hungry’, developed from the notion of predatory animals that ‘seize’ and eat their prey. Other English descendants of Latin rapere include rapacious, rapid, rapture, ravage, ravine, ravish [13], surreptitious, and usurp.
=> rape, rapture, raven
rebate: rebate: [15] A rebate is etymologically an amount that has been ‘re-abated’. The word, originally a verb, comes from Old French rabattre ‘beat down again’, hence ‘reduce’, a compound formed from the prefix re- ‘again’ and abattre ‘beat down’ (source of English abate [13], and also of abattoir [19], euphemistically a place where animals are ‘beaten down’ or killed). This in turn went back to Vulgar Latin *abbattuere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ad- ‘completely’ and battuere ‘beat’ (source of English battle, combat, etc).
=> abate, abattoir, battle, combat
shepherd: shepherd: [OE] Shepherd is of course a compound of sheep and herd – but not herd ‘group of animals’. This is a different herd, meaning ‘herdsman’, which now survives only in compounds (cowherd and goatherd are other examples). It comes from the same Germanic source as herd ‘group of animals’.
=> herd, sheep
skin: skin: [11] The ancestral English word for ‘skin’ is hide. Skin was borrowed at the end of the Old English period from Old Norse skinn (source of Swedish skin and Danish skind). The etymological notion underlying the word is of ‘peeling’ or ‘slicing’ off an outer layer (it goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European base *sken- ‘cut off’, which was an extension of *sek- ‘cut’, source of English section, sector, sickle, etc), and so it presumably referred originally to the pelts removed from hunted animals.
=> section, segment, sickle
stable: stable: English has two distinct words stable, but both come ultimately from the same source: the Indo-European base *stā- ‘stand’, ancestor also of English stand. The adjective stable [13] comes via Old French estable from Latin stabilis ‘standing firm’, which has also given English establish, stability [15], and stabilize [19]. It was formed from the base *stā-, as was Latin stabulum ‘standing-place’, hence ‘enclosure for animals’, which English acquired via Old French estable as stable [13]. The corresponding Germanic formation, also based on *stā-, is stall. A constable is etymologically an ‘officer in charge of stables’.
stimulate: stimulate: [16] Latin stimulus denoted a ‘pointed stick for goading animals on’ (it probably came ultimately from an Indo-European base *sti- ‘point, prick, pierce’, extensions of which lie behind English stick, stitch, style, etc). It was used metaphorically for ‘something that incites or causes a response’, and in that sense was borrowed into English as stimulus [17]. Stimulate itself comes from the past participle of the derived verb stimulāre ‘goad on’.
=> stick, stitch, style
stud: stud: Stud ‘place where horses are bred’ and stud ‘nail’ [OE] are different words. The former (like stable and stall) denotes etymologically a place where animals ‘stand’, in this case for breeding purposes. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *stōtham, a derivative of the base *sta-, *stō- ‘stand’ (source also of English stand, and of steed [OE], which originally denoted a ‘male horse used for breeding’).

The use of the word for a ‘man who is highly active and proficient sexually’ dates from the end of the 19th century. The ancestry of stud ‘nail’ is not altogether clear, although it appears to be related to German stützen ‘support’. It originally meant ‘post, support’, a sense preserved in the building term stud ‘upright post to which boards are fixed’, and ‘nail’ (presumed to represent the same word) did not emerge until the 15th century.
=> stand, steed
team: team: [OE] The etymological notion underlying the word team is ‘pulling’. It goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *deuk- ‘pull’, which also produced Latin dūcere ‘pull, lead’ (source of English abduct, duke, etc). Its Germanic descendant was *taukh-. From this was derived a noun *taugmaz, whose later form *taumaz gave English team.

This originally denoted a group of animals harnessed together to ‘pull’ a load, but the modern sense ‘group of people acting together’ did not emerge from this until the 16th century. Another strand in the meaning of the base is ‘giving birth, off-spring’ (presumably based on the notion of children being ‘drawn’ forth from the womb). This has now disappeared from team, but traces of it can still be detected in the related teem [OE], whose modern connotations of ‘abundance’ go back to an earlier ‘bring forth offspring prolifically’.

From the same source come English tie and tow.
=> abduct, duct, duke, educate, teem, tie, tow
treacle: treacle: [14] Treacle is etymologically an ‘antidote to the bite of wild animals’. The word comes via Old French triacle and Latin thēriaca from Greek thēriaké. This was short for antídotos thēriaké ‘antidote to poisonous animals’, thēriaké being a derivative of thēríon ‘wild animal, poisonous animal’, which in turn came from thér ‘wild savage’. It retained its original meaning into English, but it then gradually broadened out into ‘medicine’, and the practice of disguising the unpleasant taste of medicine with sugar syrup led in the 17th century to its application to ‘syrup’.
venison: venison: [13] Latin vēnātiō meant ‘hunting’, hence ‘hunted animals, game’ (it was derived from vēnārī ‘hunt’, which may be distantly related to English win). English acquired it via Old French venison in the sense ‘flesh of hunted animals used for food’, and the modern specialization to ‘deer-meat’ did not begin to emerge until the 18th century.
verge: verge: English has two words verge. The noun [14], which now means ‘edge’, was originally used in English for ‘penis’ (it is to this day a technical term for the male reproductive organ of invertebrate animals). It comes via Old French verge from Latin virga ‘rod’ (source also of English virgule [19]), and the sense ‘edge’ emerged in the 15th century from the notion of the limits of territorial jurisdiction of the Lord High Steward, as symbolized by his ‘rod’ of office.

A verger is likewise etymologically someone who carries an official ‘rod’. The verb verge [17] comes from Latin vergere ‘bend, incline’, which also gave English converge [17] and diverge [17].
=> verger, virgule; converge, diverge
vermin: vermin: [13] Vermin comes via Old French vermin from Vulgar Latin *vermīnum ‘noxious animals’, a derivative of Latin vermis ‘worm’. This came ultimately from Indo-European *wrmi-, which also produced English worm, and among the other contributions it has made to English are vermicelli [17] (from an Italian diminutive meaning ‘little worms’), vermicular [17], vermiculite [19] (so called because when heated it produces wormlike projections), vermifuge [17], and vermilion.
=> vermicelli, vermilion, worm
vet: vet: [19] Vet is short for veterinary surgeon. As a verb, it was originally used (in the 1890s) for ‘examine an animal medically’, but before the end of the 19th century this had broadened out to ‘investigate, screen’. Veterinary [18] itself came from Latin veterīnārius, a derivative of veterīnus ‘of cattle and similar domestic animals’.
yoke: yoke: [OE] The etymological ideal underlying yoke is of ‘joining’ – here, of joining two animals together. The word came ultimately from Indo-European *jugom, which also produced Latin jugum ‘yoke’ (source of English conjugal, jugular [16], and subjugate [15]), Welsh iau ‘yoke’, Czech jho ‘yoke’, Sanskrit yugám ‘yoke’, etc.

The prehistoric Germanic descendant of this was *jukam (borrowed into Finnish as juko), which evolved into German joch, Dutch juk, Swedish ok, Danish aag, and English yoke. The Indo-European form itself was derived from the base *jug-, *jeug-, *joug- ‘join’, which also produced Latin jungere ‘join’ (source of English join, junction, etc) and Sanskrit yoga ‘union’ (acquired by English via Hindi as yoga [19], which literally denotes ‘union with the universal spirit’).
=> conjugate, join, jugular, junction, subjugate, yoga