英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

bottom [bottom 词源字典]: bottom: [OE] Bottom is a word with cognates widely represented in other Indo-European languages. It comes ultimately from the Indo- European base *bhudh- or *bhundh- ‘base, foundation’, source of Latin fundus, from which English gets fund, fundamental, foundation, and founder ‘sink’. An extended form of the base passed into Germanic as *buthm- or *buthn-, which produced German boden ‘ground, earth’ and English bottom. The application of the word to the ‘buttocks’ seems to have arisen towards the end of the 18th century.
=> foundation, fund, fundamental[bottom etymology, bottom origin, 英语词源]
cotton: cotton: [14] As with knowledge of the plant, its name cotton came to Europe from the Middle East. It originated in Arabic qutn, which passed via Spanish into the other languages of Europe. English acquired it via Old French coton. The verbal idiom cotton (on) to ‘come to understand’ developed in the 20th century from an earlier ‘harmonize, agree’. This in turn has been traced back to a still earlier ‘prosper’, which seems to have originated in the 16th century with the notion of the successful raising of the nap on cotton cloth.
grotto: grotto: [17] Grotto and crypt are ultimately the same word. The source of both was Greek krúptē, originally ‘hidden place’, hence ‘vault’. English acquired crypt directly from krúptē’s Latin descendant, crypta, but grotto came via a more circuitous route. Crypta became *crupta or *grupta in Vulgar Latin, and this produced Italian grotta, later grotto. French borrowed it as grotte, and the earliest English form, the now obsolete grot [16], came from French, but in the 17th century the Italian version of the word established itself.
=> crypt, grotesque
bell-bottoms (n.): type of trousers, 1882, from bell (n.) + bottom (n.). Distinguished in the late 1960s from flares by the shape of the expanded part (flares straight, bell-bottoms curved).
blotto (adj.): "drunk," c. 1905, from some signification of blot (v.) in its "soak up liquid" meaning.
bottom (n.): Old English botm, bodan "ground, soil, foundation, lowest part," from Proto-Germanic *buthm- (cognates: Old Frisian boden "soil," Old Norse botn, Dutch bodem, Old High German bodam, German Boden "ground, earth, soil"), from PIE root *bhu(n)d(h)- (cognates: Sanskrit budhnah, Avestan buna- "bottom," Greek pythmen "foundation," Latin fundus "bottom, piece of land, farm," Old Irish bond "sole of the foot"). Meaning "posterior of a person" is from 1794. Bottom dollar "the last dollar one has" is from 1882. Bottom-feeder, originally of fishes, is from 1866.
bottom (v.): 1540s, "to put a bottom on," from bottom (n.). Meaning "to reach the bottom of" is from 1808 (earlier figuratively, 1785). Related: Bottomed; bottoming.
bottom line (n.): figurative sense is attested from 1967, from profit and loss accounting, where the final figure after both are calculated is the bottom line on the page. Also (especially as an adjective) bottomline.
bottomless (adj.): early 14c., from bottom + -less.
cotton (n.): late 13c., from Old French coton (12c.), ultimately (via Provençal, Italian, or Old Spanish) from Arabic qutn, a word perhaps of Egyptian origin. Philip Miller of the Chelsea Physic Garden sent the first cotton seeds to American colony of Georgia in 1732. Also ultimately from the Arabic word, Dutch katoen, German Kattun, Provençal coton, Italian cotone, Spanish algodon, Portuguese algodão. Cotton gin is recorded from 1794 (see gin (n.2)).
cotton (v.): "to get on with" someone (usually with to), 1560s, perhaps from Welsh cytuno "consent, agree." But perhaps also a metaphor from cloth finishing and thus from cotton (n.). Related: Cottoned; cottoning.
cotton-picking (adj.): as a deprecatory term first recorded in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but a similar noun meaning "contemptible person" dates to around 1919, perhaps with racist overtones that have faded over the years. Before mechanization, cotton picking was the most difficult labor on a cotton plantation.
I drove out to a number of the farms near Denison and found many very young white children working all day in the hot sun picking and dragging sacks of cotton. In one field the labor corps consisted of one woman and six children, one of them 5 years, one 6 years, one 7 years, one 9 years, and two about 11. The father was plowing. The 5 and 6 year olds worked all day as did the rest. The 7-year-old said he picked 50 pounds a day and the 9 year old 75 pounds. (A good picker averages several hundred a day.) School begins late on account of the cotton picking, but the children nearly all prefer school to the picking. Picking hours are long, hot, and deadly monotonous. While the very young children seem to enjoy it, very soon their distaste for it grows into all-absorbing hatred for all work. ["Field Notes of Lewis W. Hine, Child-Labor Conditions in Texas," report to U.S. Congressional Commission on Industrial Relations, 1916]
Cottonian: library in the British Museum, named for antiquarian Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1570-1631). He donated some book to the state and his grandson donated the rest. It was badly damaged in a fire in 1731. The surname represents Old English cotum, plural of cot "cottage."
glotto-: word-forming element meaning "language," from Attic Greek glotto-, from glotta, variant of glossa "tongue; language" (see gloss (n.2)).
glottochronology (n.): 1953, from glotto- + chronology.
grotto (n.): "picturesque cavern or cave," 1610s, from Italian grotta, earlier cropta, a corruption of Latin crypta "vault, cavern," from Greek krypte "hidden place" (see crypt). Terminal -o may be from its being spelled that way in many translations of Dante's "Divine Comedy."
lotto (n.): 1778, "type of card game," from French loto and directly from Italian lotto "a lot," from Old French lot "lot, share, reward, prize," from Frankish or some other Germanic source (compare Old English and Old Frisian hlot; see lot (n.)). Meaning "a lottery, a game of chance" is attested from 1787.
motto (n.): 1580s, from Italian motto "a saying, legend attached to a heraldic design," from Late Latin muttum "grunt, word," from Latin muttire "to mutter, mumble, murmur" (see mutter).
Ottoman: 1580s (n.), c. 1600 (adj.), from French Ottoman, from Italian Ottomano, from Arabic 'Uthmani "of or belonging to 'Uthman," Arabic masc. proper name, which in Turkish is pronounced Othman (see Osmanli), name of the founder of the dynasty and empire. Ending altered in Italian by formation of a new false singular, because -i was a plural inflection in Italian. Byron used the more correct form Othman, and a few writers have followed him. The type of couch so called (1806) because one reclined on it, which was associated with Eastern customs (see couch).
risotto (n.): rice cooked in broth with meat and cheese, 1848, from Italian risotto, from riso "rice" (see rice). At first in Italian contexts; it begins to appear in English cookery books c. 1880.
rock-bottom (adj.): "lowest possible," 1884, from noun (1815), from rock (n.1) + bottom (n.).
sotto voce: 1737, Italian, literally "under voice," from sotto, from Latin subtus "below" (source also of French sous; see sub-) + voce, from Latin vocem (nominative vox); see voice (n.).
potto: "A small, slow-moving nocturnal primate with a short tail, living in the tropical forests of Africa", Early 18th century: perhaps from Guinea dialect.
bottomry: "A system of merchant insurance in which a ship is used as security against a loan to finance a voyage, the lender losing their money if the ship sinks", Late 16th century: from bottom (in the sense 'ship') + -ry, influenced by Dutch bodemerij.