英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

aeroplane [aeroplane 词源字典]: aeroplane: [19] The prefix aero- comes ultimately from Greek āér ‘air’, but many of the terms containing it (such as aeronaut and aerostat) reached English via French. This was the case, too, with aeroplane, in the sense of ‘heavier-than-air flying machine’. The word was first used in English in 1873 (30 years before the Wright brothers’ first flight), by D S Brown in the Annual Report of the Aeronautical Society – he refers vaguely to an aeroplane invented by ‘a Frenchman’.

The abbreviated form plane followed around 1908. (An earlier, and exclusively English, use of the word aeroplane was in the sense ‘aerofoil, wing’; this was coined in the 1860s, but did not long survive the introduction of the ‘aircraft’ sense.) Aeroplane is restricted in use mainly to British English (and even there now has a distinctly old-fashioned air). The preferred term in American English is airplane, a refashioning of aeroplane along more ‘English’ lines which is first recorded from 1907.
=> air[aeroplane etymology, aeroplane origin, 英语词源]
appeal: appeal: [14] The ultimate Latin source of appeal, the verb adpellere (formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and pellere ‘drive’ – related to anvil, felt, and pulse), seems to have been used in nautical contexts in the sense ‘direct a ship towards a particular landing’. It was extended metaphorically (with a modification in form to appellāre) to mean ‘address’ or ‘accost’, and from these came two specific, legal, applications: ‘accuse’ and ‘call for the reversal of a judgment’. Appeal had both these meanings when it was first adopted into English from Old French apeler.

The former had more or less died out by the beginning of the 19th century, but the second has flourished and led to the more general sense ‘make an earnest request’. Peal [14], as in ‘peal of bells’, is an abbreviated form of appeal, and repeal [14] comes from the Old French derivative rapeler.
=> anvil, felt, peal, pulse, repeal
archipelago: archipelago: [16] Originally, archipelago was a quite specific term – it was the name of the Aegean Sea, the sea between Greece and Turkey. Derivationally, it is a compound formed in Greek from arkhi- ‘chief’ and pélagos ‘sea’ (source of English pelagic [17] and probably related to plain, placate, and please). The term ‘chief sea’ identified the Aegean, as contrasted with all the smaller lagoons, lakes, and inlets to which the word pélagos was also applied.

An ‘Englished’ form of the word, Arch-sea, was in use in the 17th century, and in sailors’ jargon it was often abbreviated to Arches: ‘An island called Augusto near Paros, in the Arches’, Sir T Roe, Negotiations 1626. A leading characteristic of the Aegean Sea is of course that it contains a large number of islands, and from the 16th century onwards we see a strong and steady move towards what is now the word’s main meaning, ‘large group of islands’.

The immediate source of the English word was Italian arcipelago, and some etymologists have speculated that rather than coming directly from Greek arkhipélagos, this may have been a sort of folk-etymological resuscitation of it based on a misunderstanding of Greek Aigaion pelagos ‘Aegean Sea’.
=> pelagic
because: because: [14] Because originated in the phrase by cause, which was directly modelled on French par cause. At first it was always followed by of or by a subordinate clause introduced by that or why: ‘The Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified’, St John’s Gospel, 7:39, 1611. But already by the end of the 14th century that and why were beginning to be omitted, leaving because to function as a conjunction, a move which would perhaps have exercised contemporary linguistic purists as much as ‘The reason is because …’ does today. The abbreviated form ’cause first appears in print in the 16th century.
=> cause
bluestocking: bluestocking: [18] The term bluestocking ‘female intellectual’ derives from the gatherings held at the houses of fashionable mid-18th- century hostesses to discuss literary and related topics. It became the custom at these not to put on full formal dress, which for gentlemen included black silk stockings. One habitué in particular, Mr Benjamin Stillingfleet, used to wear greyish worsted stockings, conventionally called ‘blue’.

This lack of decorum was looked on with scorn in some quarters, and Admiral Boscawan dubbed the participants the ‘Blue Stocking Society’. Women who attended their highbrow meetings thus became known as ‘Blue Stocking Ladies’ (even though it was a man who had worn the stockings), and towards the end of the century this was abbreviated to simply bluestockings.
boulder: boulder: [13] Boulder is an abbreviated form of the original compound noun boulder-stone, which was a partial translation of a Scandinavian word which survives in Swedish dialect bullersten ‘large stone in a stream’. Sten is ‘stone’, of course, and buller is usually identified with Swedish buller ‘rumbling noise’, on the basis presumably of the sound of a stream gurgling over rocks. Boulder first appears on its own, outside the compound boulder-stone, in the 17th century.
bra: bra: [20] The word bra made its first appearance in English in the mid 1930s. It is of course an abbreviation of brassiere (an early alternative abbreviated form was bras), which was borrowed from French around 1910. The French term originated in the 17th century, when it meant simply ‘bodice’; it appears to have been an alteration of an earlier, Old French braciere ‘piece of armour for the arm or wrist’ (borrowed into English as bracer in the 14th century), a derivative of bras ‘arm’.
brandy: brandy: [17] English acquired the word for this distilled spirit from Dutch brandewijn, and at first altered and translated it minimally to brandewine. Soon however this became brandy wine, and by the mid-17th century the abbreviated brandy was in common use. The Dutch compound meant ‘distilled wine’, from branden, which denoted ‘distil’ as well as ‘burn’ (it was a derivative of brand ‘fire’, cognate with English brand).
=> brand
brigade: brigade: [17] Brigade is one of a small set of words (others are brigand and brigantine) which go back to Italian briga ‘strife’. It is not clear where this came from; theories have centred either on a Celtic origin, comparing Old Irish brig ‘strength’, or on a derivation from the Indo- European base *bhreg-, which produced English break.

Either way, the noun briga produced the verb brigare ‘contend, brawl’, from which in turn came the noun brigata. This originally meant simply ‘crowd or gang of people’, but soon developed the special sense ‘military company’. English acquired the word via French brigade. Meanwhile, the present participle of the Italian verb had given brigante, which English borrowed via Old French as brigand [14], and the diminutive brigantino ‘fighting ship’, source of English brigantine [16] (abbreviated in the 18th century to brig). Brigadier is a 17th-century adoption, from French.
=> brig, brigand, brigantine
brothel: brothel: [14] Originally, brothel was a general term of abuse for any worthless or despised person (John Gower, in his Confessio Amantis 1393, writes: ‘Quoth Achab then, there is one, a brothel, which Micheas hight [who is called Micheas]’); it was a derivative of the Old English adjective brothen ‘ruined, degenerate’, which was originally the past participle of the verb brēothan ‘deteriorate’ (possibly a relative of brēotan ‘break’, which may be connected with brittle).

In the late 15th century we have the first evidence of its being applied specifically to a ‘prostitute’. Thence came the compound brothel-house, and by the late 16th century this had been abbreviated to brothel in its current sense.
budgerigar: budgerigar: [19] When the first English settlers arrived at Port Jackson (now Sydney Harbour) in the late 18th century, they heard the local Aborigines referring to a small green parrot-like bird as budgerigar. In the local language, this meant literally ‘good’ (budgeri) ‘cockatoo’ (gar). The English language had acquired a new word, but to begin with it was not too sure how to spell it; the first recorded attempt, in Leichhardt’s Overland Expedition 1847, was betshiregah. The abbreviated budgie is 1930s.
bunkum: bunkum: [19] Buncombe is a county of North Carolina, USA. Around 1820, during a debate in the US Congress, its representative Felix Walker rose to make a speech. He spoke on – and on – and on. Fellow congressmen pleaded with him to sit down, but he refused to be deflected, declaring that he had to make a speech ‘for Buncombe’. Most of what he said was fatuous and irrelevant, and henceforth bunkum (or buncombe, as it was at first spelled) became a term for political windbagging intended to ingratiate the speaker with the voters rather than address the real issues.

It early passed into the more general sense ‘nonsense, claptrap’. Its abbreviated form, bunk, is 20th-century; it was popularized by Henry Ford’s remark ‘History is more or less bunk’, made in 1916. Of the other English words bunk, ‘bed’ [19] is probably short for bunker, which first appeared in 16th-century Scottish English, meaning ‘chest, box’; while bunk as in do a bunk and bunk off [19] is of unknown origin.
canter: canter: [18] Canter comes from phrases such as Canterbury trot, Canterbury pace, etc, which were terms applied to the pace at which medieval pilgrims rode on their way by horse to the shrine of Thomas à Beckett at Canterbury in Kent (earliest references to it are from the 17th century, much later than the time of Chaucer’s pilgrims in the Middle Ages). The abbreviated from canter appeared in the 18th century, initially as a verb, and Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary 1755 defined Canterbury gallop as ‘the hand gallop of an ambling horse, commonly called a canter’.
champion: champion: [13] Etymologically, a champion is someone who fought in the campus or arena. Latin campus (source of English camp) meant, among other things, ‘field of battle’ – both a fullscale military battlefield and an area for staged battles between gladiators. Those who fought in such battles – the gladiators – were called in medieval Latin campiones.

The word passed into English via Old French champion. The word’s original meaning survives historically in such phrases as ‘king’s champion’, someone who will fight on behalf of the king, and by extension in ‘supporter’, as in ‘a champion of prisoners’ rights’. The modern sense ‘winner’ did not develop until the early 19th century. The abbreviated form champ is 19th-century American.

An alternative and now obsolete form of the word is campion, from Old Northern French, and it has been speculated that this is the origin of the plant-name campion [16], on the basis that it was used to make garlands for fighters.
=> camp, campion, champagne, champion
cinema: cinema: [20] The cinema is so named because it shows moving pictures. The Greek verb for ‘move’ was kīnein (source of English kinetic and, via the related Latin cīre, a range of -cite words, including excite, incite, and recite). Its noun derivative was kínēma ‘movement’, from which in 1896 Auguste and Louis Jean Lumière coined the French term cinématographe for their new invention for recording and showing moving pictures.

This and its abbreviated form cinéma soon entered English, the latter in 1909. In early years the graecized form kinema had some currency in English, but this had virtually died out by the 1940s.
=> cite, excite, kinetic, incite, recite
culprit: culprit: [17] Culprit appears to be a fossilized survival of the mixture of English and French once used in English courts. The usually accepted account of its origin is that it is a lexicalization of an exchange in court between the accused and the prosecutor. If the prisoner pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge read out against him, the prosecutor would have countered, in Law French, with ‘Culpable: prit d’averrer …’, literally ‘Guilty: ready to prove’. (English culpable [14] comes ultimately from Latin culpa ‘guilt’, and prit is the Anglo- Norman form of what in modern French has become prêt ‘ready’, from Latin praestus – source of English presto).

The theory is that this would have been noted down by those recording the proceedings in abbreviated form as cul. prit, which eventually came to be apprehended as a term used for addressing the accused.
=> culpable, presto
effect: effect: [14] Etymologically, an effect is that which is ‘accomplished’ or ‘done’. The word comes (probably via Old French effect) from effectus, the past participle of Latin efficere ‘perform, accomplish, complete’, or literally ‘work out’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and facēre ‘make, do’ (source of English fact, factory, etc).

The English verbal use, ‘bring about’, is a 16th-century development based on the noun. (The similar affect also comes ultimately from Latin facēre, but with the prefix ad- ‘to’ rather than ex-.) Latin efficere is also the source of English efficacious [16] and efficient [14]. The feck- of feckless is an abbreviated version of effect.
=> efficacious, efficient, fact, factory, fashion, feckless
garden: garden: [14] Ultimately, garden and yard are the same word. Both come from prehistoric Germanic *gardon, but whereas yard reached English via a direct Germanic route, garden diverted via the Romance languages. Vulgar Latin borrowed *gardon as *gardo ‘enclosure’, and formed from it the adjective *gardīnus ‘enclosed’. The phrase hortus gardīnus ‘enclosed garden’ came to be abbreviated to gardīnus, which gave Old Northern French gardin, the source of the English word (more southerly dialects of Old French had jardin, borrowed by Italian as giardino).
=> yard
get: get: [13] Get, now one of the most pervasive of English words, has only been in the language for the (comparatively) short period of 800 years. It was borrowed from Old Norse geta (although a related, hundred-per-cent English -get, which occurs in beget and forget, dates back to Old English times). Both come via a prehistoric Germanic *getan from Indo-European *ghed-, which signified ‘seize’ (guess is ultimately from the same source). Gotten is often quoted as an American survival of a primeval past participle since abandoned by British English, but in fact the original past participle of got was getten, which lasted into the 16th century; gotten was a Middle English innovation, based on such models as spoken and stolen. Got originated as an abbreviated form of gotten, which in due course came to be used, on both sides of the Atlantic, as the past tense of the verb (replacing the original gat).
=> beget, forget, guess
grenade: grenade: [16] The original grenades were small spherical explosive-filled cases with a wick on top. In shape, they bore more than a passing resemblance to pomegranates. The Old French term for ‘pomegranate’ was pome grenate, or just grenate for short, and it was this abbreviated form, altered to grenade under the influence of the related Spanish granada, that was applied to the explosive device. Grenadier [17] came from the French derivative grenadier ‘grenadethrower’.
=> grain, grenadier, pomegranate
grid: grid: [19] Grid is simply an abbreviated version of gridiron [13]. This in turn seems to have been an alteration (through association with iron) of griddle [13], which is traceable back via Old French gridil to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *crāticulum, a diminutive form of Latin crātis ‘wickerwork, hurdle’ (from which English gets grate). A parallel feminine Vulgar Latin derivative, crāticula, produced English grill [17] and grille [17].
=> grate, griddle, grill
husband: husband: [OE] The Anglo-Saxons used wer ‘man’ (as in werewolf) for ‘husband’, and not until the late 13th century was the word husband drafted in for ‘male spouse’. This had originally meant ‘master of a household’, and was borrowed from Old Norse húsbóndi, a compound formed from hús ‘house’ and bóndi. Bóndi in turn was a contraction of an earlier bóandi, búandi ‘dweller’, a noun use of the present participle of bóa, búa ‘dwell’, This was derived from the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’, which also produced English be, boor, booth, bound ‘intending to go’, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre, and the -bour of neighbour.

The ancient link between ‘dwelling in a place’ and ‘farming the land’ comes out in husbandman [14] and husbandry [14], reflecting a now obsolete sense of husband, ‘farmer’. The abbreviated form hubby dates from the 17th century.
=> be, boor, booth, bower, build, byre, house
mackintosh: mackintosh: [19] The rubberized material from which this waterproof coat was originally made was invented in the early 1820s by the British chemist Charles Macintosh (1766–1843). His name (misspelled with a k) is first recorded as being applied to the coat in 1836. The abbreviated form mac (or occasionally mack) dates from around the turn of the 20th century.
master: master: [OE] The Latin word for ‘master, chief’ was magister (which is generally assumed to have been based on the root of Latin magis ‘more’ and magnus ‘big’, source of English magnify, magnitude, etc). Its more obvious English descendants include magistrate and magisterial, and indeed English originally acquired magister itself in the 10th century in the form mægister, but over the years (partly under the influence of Old French maistre) this developed to master.

The feminine counterpart mistress [14] was borrowed from Old French maistresse, a form maintained in English for some time. The alteration of mais- to mis- began in the 15th century, due probably to the weakly-stressed use of the word as a title (a phenomenon also responsible for the emergence of mister [16] from master). The abbreviated miss followed in the 17th century.
=> magistrate, magnitude, magnum, miss, mister, mistress
mathematics: mathematics: [16] Etymologically, mathematics means ‘something learned’. Its ultimate source was the Greek verb manthánein ‘learn’, which came from the same Indo- European base (*men-, *mon-, *mn- ‘think’) as produced English memory and mind. Its stem form math- served as a basis of a noun máthēma ‘science’, whose derived adjective mathēmatikós passed via Latin mathēmaticus and Old French mathematique into English as mathematic, now superseded by the contemporary mathematical [16]. Mathematics probably comes from French les mathématiques, a rendering of the Latin plural noun mathēmatica.

From earliest times the notion of ‘science’ was bound up with that of ‘numerical reasoning’, and when mathematics reached English it was still being used for various scientific disciplines that involved geometrical calculation, such as astronomy and physics, but gradually over the centuries it has been narrowed down to a cover term for the abstract numerical sciences such as arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.

The abbreviated form maths dates from the early 20th century, the preferred American form math from the late 19th century. The original meaning of the word’s Greek ancestor is preserved in English polymath ‘person of wide learning’ [17].
=> memory, mind, polymath
mitten: mitten: [14] Etymologically, a mitten is ‘half a glove’. The word comes via Old French mitaine from Vulgar Latin *medietāna ‘cut off in the middle’ (originally an adjective, and applied to gloves, but subsequently used independently as a noun meaning ‘cut-off glove’). This in turn came from Latin medietās ‘half’ (source of English moiety [15]), a derivative of medius ‘middle’ (source of English medium). The abbreviated mitt dates from the 18th century.
=> medium, moiety
penthouse: penthouse: [14] Penthouse has no etymological connection with house. It comes from Anglo- Norman *pentis, an abbreviated version of Old French apentis. This in turn went back to Latin appendicium ‘additional attached part’, a derivative of appendēre ‘attach’ (source of English append [15] and appendix [16]), which was a compound verb formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and pendēre ‘hang’ (source of English pending, pendulum, etc).

It arrived in English as pentis, and was used for a sort of ‘lean-to with a sloping roof’. A perceived semantic connection with houses led by the late 14th century to its reformulation as penthouse, but its application to a ‘(luxurious) flat on top of a tall block’ did not emerge until the 20th century.
=> append, pendulum
pink: pink: English has three distinct words pink. The colour term [18] appears to have come, by a bizarre series of twists, from an early Dutch word meaning ‘small’. This was pinck (source also of the colloquial English pinkie ‘little finger’ [19]). It was used in the phrase pinck oogen, literally ‘small eyes’, hence ‘half-closed eyes’, which was borrowed into English and partially translated as pink eyes.

It has been speculated that this was a name given to a plant of the species Dianthus, which first emerged in the abbreviated form pink in the 16th century. Many of these plants have pale red flowers, and so by the 18th century pink was being used for ‘pale red’. Pink ‘pierce’ [14], now preserved mainly in pinking shears, is probably of Low German origin (Low German has pinken ‘peck’).

And pink (of an engine) ‘make knocking sounds’ [20] is presumably imitative in origin.
posse: posse: [17] Posse was the Latin verb for ‘be able’. It was a conflation of an earlier expression potis esse ‘be able’; and potis ‘able’ was descended from an Indo-European base *potthat also produced Sanskrit pati- ‘master, husband’ and Lithuanian patis ‘husband’. In medieval Latin posse came to be used as a noun meaning ‘power, force’.

It formed the basis of the expression posse comitātus, literally ‘force of the county’, denoting a body of men whom the sheriff of a county was empowered to raise for such purposes as suppressing a riot. The abbreviated form posse emerged at the end of the 17th century, but really came into its own in 18th- and 19th-century America.
=> possible, potent
pounce: pounce: [15] Pounce was originally a noun, denoting the ‘claw of a bird of prey’. It is thought it may have come from puncheon ‘stamping or perforating tool’, which was also abbreviated to punch ‘stamping or perforating tool’ and is probably related to punch ‘hit’. The verb pounce emerged in the 17th century. It at first meant ‘seize with talons’, and was not generalized to ‘attack swoopingly’ until the 18th century.
=> punch
punch: punch: English has three distinct words punch, not counting the capitalized character in the Punch and Judy show, but two of them are probably ultimately related. Punch ‘hit’ [14] originated as a variant of Middle English pounce ‘pierce, prod’. This came from Old French poinsonner ‘prick, stamp’, a derivative of the noun poinson ‘pointed tool’ (source of the now obsolete English puncheon ‘pointed tool’ [14]).

And poinson in turn came from Vulgar Latin *punctiō, a derivative of *punctiāre ‘pierce, prick’, which went back to the past participle of Latin pungere ‘prick’ (source of English point, punctuation, etc). Punch ‘tool for making holes’ [15] (as in ‘ticket punch’) probably originated as an abbreviated version of puncheon. Punch ‘drink’ [17] is said to come from Hindi pānch, a descendant of Sanskrit panchan ‘five’, an allusion to the fact that the drink is traditionally made from five ingredients: spirits, water, lemon juice, sugar, and spice.

This has never been definitely established, however, and an alternative possibility is that it is an abbreviation of puncheon ‘barrel’ [15], a word of uncertain origin. The name of Mr Punch [17] is short for Punchinello, which comes from a Neapolitan dialect word polecenella. This may have been a diminutive of Italian polecena ‘young turkey’, which goes back ultimately to Latin pullus ‘young animal, young chicken’ (source of English poultry).

It is presumably an allusion to Punch’s beaklike nose.
=> point, punctuation
quarter: quarter: [13] Quarter is one of a large family of English words that go back ultimately to Latin quattuor ‘four’ and its relatives. Direct descendants of quattuor itself are actually fairly few – among them quatrain [16] and quatrefoil [15] (both via Old French). But its ordinal form quārtus ‘fourth’ has been most prolific: English is indebted to it for quart [14], quarter (via the Latin derivative quartārius ‘fourth part’), quartet [18], and quarto [16].

In compounds quattuor assumed the form quadr-, which has given English quadrangle [15] (and its abbreviation quad [19]), quadrant [14], quadratic [17], quadrille [18], quadruped [17], quadruplet [18] (also abbreviated to quad [19]), quarantine, quarrel ‘arrow’, not to mention the more heavily disguised cadre [19], carfax [14] (which means etymologically ‘four-forked’), squad, and square.

And the derivative quater ‘four times’ has contributed carillon [18] (etymologically a peal of ‘four’ bells), quaternary [15], and quire of paper [15] (etymologically a set of ‘four’ sheets of paper).
=> cadre, carfax, carillon, quad, quarrel, quarry, quire, squad, square
rhinoceros: rhinoceros: [13] Rhinoceros means literally ‘nose-horn’. The term was coined in Greek from rhīno-, the stem form of rhīs ‘nose’, and kéras ‘horn’ (a distant relative of English horn). Greek rhīnókerōs reached English via Latin rhīnocerōs. The abbreviated form rhino is first recorded in the 1880s.
=> antirrhinum, horn, keratin
sir: sir: [13] In common with many other European terms of address for men (such as monsieur and señor), sir goes back ultimately to Latin senior ‘older’ (source also of English senior). This was reduced in Vulgar Latin to *seior, which found its way into Old French as *sieire, later sire. English borrowed this as sire [13], which in weakly-stressed positions (prefixed to names, for instance) became sir.

Other titles based on senior that have found their way into English include French monsieur [15] (literally ‘my sire’), together with its plural messieurs [17], abbreviated to messrs [18]; French seigneur [16]; Spanish señor [17]; and Italian signor [16]. Surly [16] is an alteration of an earlier sirly ‘lordly’, a derivative of sir.

The meaning ‘grumpy’ evolved via an intermediate ‘haughty’.
=> senator, senior, sire, surly
soap opera: soap opera: [20] The original soap operas were a radio phenomenon, in 1930s America. Serial dramas dealing with humdrum-butoccasionally- melodramatic domestic life were as common then as they are on television now, and several of those on the commercial US networks were sponsored by soap manufacturers. A writer on the Christian Century in 1938 said ‘These fifteen-minute tragedies…I call the “soap tragedies”…because it is by the grace of soap I am allowed to shed tears for these characters who suffer so much from life’.

The soap connection soon linked up with horse opera, a mildly derisive term for a Western movie that had been around since the 1920s, to produce soap opera (a later coinage on the same model was space opera). The abbreviated version soap is recorded as early as 1943.
super: super: [17] Super has been used over the centuries as an abbreviated form of a variety of English words containing the Latin element super ‘above’. Its earliest manifestation, short for the now defunct insuper ‘balance left over’, did not last long and it was the 19th century which really saw an explosion in the use of the word. In 1807 it appeared as an abbreviation for the chemical term supersalt, and in the 1850s its long career as an ‘extra person’ (short for supernumerary [17]) began.

Its application to superintendant [16], today its commonest noun usage, dates from around 1870. But it is as an adjective that it has made its greatest impact. In this context it is short for superfine [15], and originally, in the mid 19th century, its use was restricted to denoting the ‘highest grade of goods’ (‘showing me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super’, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield 1850); not until the early 20th century did it really begin to come into its own as a general term of approval.

Amongst the more heavily disguised English descendants of Latin super (a relative of Latin sub ‘below’ and also of English sum and supine) are insuperable [14], soprano [18], soubrette [18], and sovereign. And superior [14] comes from the Latin comparative form superior ‘higher’.
=> insuperable, soprano, soubrette, sovereign, superb, superior, supreme
tarmac: tarmac: [20] The term tarmac commemorates the name of John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836), a Scottish civil engineer who developed a method of levelling roads and covering them with gravel. Setting the gravel in tar produced in the 1880s the term tarmacadam, and in 1903 the abbreviated form tarmac was registered as a trademark. By 1919 the word was being used in British English as a synonym for ‘runway’.
Whitsun: Whitsun: [OE] Whitsun is etymologically ‘white Sunday’. The name comes from the ancient tradition of clothing newly baptized people in white on the feast of Pentecost. The abbreviated form Whit began to be used with other days of the week (such as Whit Monday) in the 16th century, but its broader modern usage (as in Whit week, Whit bank holiday, etc) did not emerge until the end of the 19th century.
=> sunday, white
zoo: zoo: [19] Greek zóion meant ‘animal’ (it came from the Indo-European base *gwei-, which also lies behind English biology, quick, and vital). From it was formed modern Latin zōologia ‘study of animals’, which English adapted as zoology [17]. Zoological was derived from this in the 19th century, and when the Zoological Society of London opened their exhibition of live wild animals in Regent’s Park in 1829, they called it the Zoological Gardens. This was soon abbreviated to ‘the Zoological’, and by the mid 1840s it had shrunk further to zoo.
=> biology, quick, vital
abbreviate (v.): mid-15c., from Latin abbreviatus, past participle of abbreviare "to shorten" (see abbreviation). Also sometimes 15c. abbrevy, from Middle French abrevier (14c.), from Latin abbreviare. Related: Abbreviated; abbreviating.
amplitude (n.): 1540s, from Middle French amplitude or directly from Latin amplitudinem (nominative amplitudo) "wide extent, width," from amplus (see ample). Amplitude modulation in reference to radio wave broadcast (as opposed to frequency modulation) first attested 1921, usually abbreviated A.M.
attention deficit disorder (n.): (abbreviated ADD) became a diagnosis in the third edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (1980); expanded to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ("the co-existence of attentional problems and hyperactivity, with each behavior occurring infrequently alone;" ADHD) in DSM-III (1987).
Austin: surname (also Austen) and masc. proper name, from Old French Aousten, an abbreviated form of Latin Augustine.
beaut (n.): 1866, abbreviated form of beauty in the sense of "a beautiful thing or person."
carbon copy (n.): 1895, from carbon (paper) + copy (n.). A copy on paper made using carbon paper. The figurative sense is from 1944. Also as a verb, "send a carbon copy (of something)," and as such often abbreviated c.c.
cartel (n.): 1550s, "a written challenge," from Middle French cartel (16c.), from Italian cartello "placard," diminutive of carta "card" (see card (n.1)). It came to mean "written agreement between challengers" (1690s) and then "a written agreement between challengers" (1889). Sense of "a commercial trust, an association of industrialists" comes 1902, via German Kartell, which is from French. The older U.S. term for that is trust (n.). The usual German name for them was Interessengemeinschaft, abbreviated IG.
celluloid (n.): transparent plastic made from nitro-celluloses and camphor, 1871, trademark name (reg. U.S.), a hybrid coined by U.S. inventor John Wesley Hyatt (1837-1900) from cellulose + Greek-based suffix -oid. Used figuratively for "motion pictures" from 1934. Abbreviated form cell "sheet of celluloid" is from 1933 (see cel).
Creek: Indian tribe or confederation, 1725, named for creek, the geographical feature, and abbreviated from Ochese Creek Indians, from the place in Georgia where English first encountered them. Native name is Muskogee, a word of uncertain origin.
curriculum vitae (n.): "brief account of one's life and work," 1902, from Latin curriculum vitae, literally "course of one's life" (see curriculum). Abbreviated c.v..
duodecimo: 1650s, from Latin in duodecimo (folded) "in a twelfth" of a sheet, from ablative of duodecimus "twelfth," from duodecim (see dozen). Often abbreviated 12mo.; a book in which each page is the twelfth part of the printer's sheet.