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amphibious [amphibious 词源字典]: amphibious: [17] The Greek prefix amphimeant ‘both, on both sides’ (hence an amphitheatre [14]: Greek and Roman theatres were semicircular, so two joined together, completely surrounding the arena, formed an amphitheatre). Combination with bios ‘life’ (as in biology) produced the Greek adjective amphibios, literally ‘leading a double life’. From the beginning of its career as an English word it was used in a very wide, general sense of ‘combining two completely distinct or opposite conditions or qualities’ (Joseph Addison, for example, used it as an 18th-century equivalent of modern unisex), but that meaning has now almost entirely given way to the word’s zoological application.

At first, amphibious meant broadly ‘living on both land and water’, and so was applied by some scientists to, for example, seals; but around 1819 the zoologist William Macleay proposed the more precise application, since generally accepted, to frogs, newts, and other members of the class Amphibia whose larvae have gills but whose adults breathe with lungs.
=> biology[amphibious etymology, amphibious origin, 英语词源]
anathema: anathema: [16] Originally in Greek anáthēma was a ‘votive offering’ (it was a derivative of the compound verb anatithénai ‘set up, dedicate’, formed from the prefix ana- ‘up’ and the verb tithénai ‘place’, source of English theme and related to English do). But from being broadly ‘anything offered up for religious purposes’, the word gradually developed negative associations of ‘something dedicated to evil’; and by the time it reached Latin it meant ‘curse’ or ‘accursed person’.
=> do, theme
chalk: chalk: [OE] Latin calx meant broadly ‘lime, limestone’ (it probably came from Greek khálix ‘pebble’). This was borrowed in early times into the Germanic languages, and in most of them it retains this meaning (German kalk, for instance, means ‘limestone’). In English, however, it fairly soon came to be applied to a particular soft white form of limestone, namely chalk (the Old English word was cealc). The Latin word is also the source of English calculate, calcium, and causeway.
=> calcium, calculate, causeway
cod: cod: [13] Like most fish-names, the origins of cod are obscure. It has been suggested, not all that convincingly, that it comes from another word cod [OE], now obsolete, which meant broadly ‘pouch’ – the idea being that the fish supposedly has a ‘baglike’ appearance. Among the specific applications of this other cod, which was of Germanic origin, were ‘seedcase’ (which survived into the twentieth century in the archaic compound peascod ‘pea pod’) and ‘scrotum’.

By transference the latter came to mean ‘testicles’, whence codpiece, a 15th- to 17thcentury garment somewhat analogous to the jockstrap. The cuttle of cuttlefish comes from the same source.
=> cuttlefish
cup: cup: [OE] Cup is a member of a large Indo- European family of words denoting broadly ‘round container’ that go back ultimately to the bases *kaup- (source of English head) and *keup-. This produced Greek kúpellon ‘drinking vessel’, English hive, and Latin cūpa ‘barrel’, source of English coop [13] (via Middle Dutch kūpe) and cooper ‘barrel-maker’ [14] (from a derivative of Middle Dutch kūpe). A postclassical by-form of cūpa was cuppa, from which came German kopf ‘head’ and English cup.
=> coop, cupola
energy: energy: [16] Energy comes ultimately from Greek érgon ‘deed, work’. This was a descendant of Indo-European *wergon, which also produced English work, liturgy, organ, and orgy. Addition of the prefix en- ‘at’ produced the adjective energés or energōs ‘at work’, hence ‘active’, which Aristotle used in his Rhetoric as the basis of a noun enérgeia, signifying a metaphor which conjured up an image of something moving or being active. This later came to mean ‘forceful expression’, or more broadly still ‘activity, operation’. English acquired the word via late Latin energīa.
=> liturgy, organ, orgy, work
excise: excise: English has two words excise. The one meaning ‘tax’ [15] is essentially a Dutch usage. English borrowed it in the late 15th century from Middle Dutch excijs, which came via Old French acceis from Vulgar Latin *accēnsum, a compound noun formed from the Latin prefix ad- ‘against, to’ and cēnsus ‘tax’ (source of English census [17]).

At first it was used broadly for any ‘tax’, but in 1643 (following the example of Holland) it was officially adopted as the term for a tax imposed on certain forms of goods (originally domestically produced or imported, but since the 19th century only domestically produced – the tax on imports being termed customs duty). Dr Johnson in his Dictionary 1755 defined excise as ‘a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and ajudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whome excise is paid’. Excise ‘cut out’ [16] comes from the past participle of Latin excīdere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and caedere ‘cut’ (source also of English concise, decide, and incision).
=> census, concise, decide, incision
eyrie: eyrie: [16] Latin ager (source of English agriculture and related to English acre) meant ‘field’, or more broadly ‘piece of land’. In postclassical times this extended via ‘native land’ to ‘lair of a wild animal, particularly a bird of prey’, the meaning of its Old French descendant aire. The Old French form was taken back into medieval Latin as aeria, the immediate source of the English word.
=> acre, agriculture
fallow: fallow: English has two words fallow, both of considerable antiquity. Fallow ‘uncultivated’ [OE] originally meant ‘ploughed land’. Its present-day adjectival meaning ‘ploughed but not sown’ or, more broadly, just ‘uncultivated’, developed in the 15th century. Fallow ‘pale yellowish-brown’ [OE] (now used only in fallow deer) comes via Germanic *falwaz from Indo- European *polwos, a derivative of the base *pol-, *pel-, which also produced English appal [14] (originally ‘grow pale’), pale, and pallid.

Its Germanic relatives include German fahl ‘pale, fawn’ and falb ‘pale yellow’. (Germanic *falwaz, incidentally, was the ancestor of French fauve ‘wild animal’, source of the term fauvism [20] applied to an early 20th-century European art movement that favoured simplified forms and bold colours.)
=> appal, pale, pallid
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
gloss: gloss: English has two words gloss. The one meaning ‘shining surface’ [16] is of unknown origin, although no doubt it belongs ultimately to the general nexus of words beginning gl- which mean broadly ‘bright, shining’. Forms such as Icelandic glossi ‘spark’ and Swedish dialect glossa ‘glow’ suggest a Scandinavian origin. Gloss ‘explanation, definition’ [16] goes back to Greek glossa ‘tongue’, source also of English epiglottis [17].

This developed the secondary sense ‘language’ (as English tongue itself has done), and was borrowed by Latin as glōssa meaning ‘foreign word needing an explanation’, and eventually the ‘explanation’ itself. It passed into English via medieval Latin glōsa and Old French glose as gloze in the 14th century, and was reformulated as gloss on the basis of classical Latin glōssa in the 16th century. Glossary [14] comes from the Latin derivative glossārium.
=> epiglottis, glossary
mole: mole: English has four distinct words mole. The oldest is ‘brown spot’ [OE]. It is the descendant of Old English māl, which meant broadly ‘discoloured mark’. This developed in Middle English to ‘spot on the skin’, but the specific sense ‘brown mark’ did not emerge until fairly recently. The word goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *mailam, a derivative of a base meaning ‘spot, mark’ which also produced German malen ‘paint’ and Dutch maalen ‘paint’ (source of English maulstick ‘stick used as a rest by painters’ [17]). Mole the animal [14] was borrowed from Middle Dutch mol.

No one knows for sure where this came from, but its similarity to the now obsolete mouldwarp ‘mole’ [14] (a compound noun whose etymological meaning is ‘earththrower’) suggests that it could represent a truncated version of mouldwarp’s prehistoric Germanic ancestor. The metaphorical application of the word to a ‘traitor working secretly’ has been traced back as far as the 17th century, but its modern currency is due to its use by the British espionage writer John le Carré. Mole ‘harbour wall’ [16] comes via French môle and medieval Greek mólos from Latin mōlēs ‘mass, massive structure’.

The diminutive form of this, coined in modern times, is mōlēcula, from which, via French molécule, English gets molecule [18]. Other relatives are demolish and, possibly, molest [14], which comes ultimately from Latin molestus ‘troublesome’, connected by some scholars with mōlēs. And German mol, a convenient shortening of molekulargewicht ‘molecular weight’, has given English its fourth mole [20], used as the basic unit of measurement for the amount of a substance.
=> maulstick; molecule, molest
occult: occult: [16] Something that is occult is etymologically ‘hidden’. The word comes from the past participle of Latin occulere ‘hide’, a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- and an unrecorded *celere, a relative of cēlāre ‘hide’ (which forms the second syllable of English conceal). When English acquired it, it still meant broadly ‘secret, hidden’ (‘Metals are nothing else but the earth’s hid and occult plants’, John Maplet, Green Forest 1567), a sense preserved in the derived astronomical term occultation ‘obscuring of one celestial body by another’ [16].

The modern associations with supernatural mysteries did not begin to emerge until the 17th century.
=> cell, conceal, hall, hell
posh: posh: [20] Although it only appeared as recently as the early 20th century, posh is one of the oldest chestnuts of English etymology. The story got around that it was an acronym for port out, starboard home, an allusion to the fact that wealthy passengers could afford the more expensive cabins on the port side of the ships going out to India, and on the starboard side returning to Britain, which kept them out of the heat of the sun.

Pleasant as this story is, though, it has never been substantiated. Another possibility is that posh may be the same word as the now obsolete posh ‘dandy, swell’, a slang term current around the end of the 19th century. This too is of unknown origin, but it has been tentatively linked with the still earlier 19thcentury slang term posh ‘halfpenny’, hence broadly ‘money’, which may have come ultimately from Romany posh ‘half’.
sanctity: sanctity: [14] Latin sanctus ‘holy’ (source of English saint) originated as the past participle of sancīre ‘consecrate’, a verb derived from the same base that produced sacer ‘sacred’ (source of English sacred, sacrifice, etc). Amongst its derivatives to have reached English are sanctify [14], sanctimonious [17], sanctity, sanctuary [14], and sanctum [16]. And its stem sanctformed the basis of the Latin noun sanctiō ‘ordaining of something as sacred or inviolable’, hence more broadly a ‘decree, sanction’, from which English gets sanction [16].
=> sacred, saint
science: science: [14] Etymologically, science simply means ‘knowledge’, for it comes via Old French science from Latin scientia, a noun formed from the present participle of the verb scīre ‘know’. It early on passed via ‘knowledge gained by study’ to a ‘particular branch of study’, but its modern connotations of technical, mathematical, or broadly ‘non-arts’ studies did not begin to emerge until the 18th century. The derivative scientist was coined in 1840 by William Whewell: ‘We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist’, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences 1840.
=> conscious
scrutinize: scrutinize: [17] The etymological notion underlying scrutinize is of ragpickers searching through piles of garbage looking for anything of use or value. For its ultimate source is Latin scrūta ‘rubbish’. From this was formed the verb scrūtārī ‘rummage through rubbish’, hence broadly ‘search, examine’. This in turn formed the basis of the noun scrūtinium, source of English scrutiny [15], from which scrutinize was derived.
swashbuckle: swashbuckle: [19] Swashbuckle is a backformation from swashbuckler [16], which originally denoted a warrior who struck his shield with his sword as a sign of aggression and machismo, rather like a gorilla beating its chest. It was a compound formed from swash ‘hit’ [16], a word of imitative origin which is now restricted to the sound of water splashing against a surface, and buckler ‘shield’. It was used broadly for a ‘swaggering fellow’, but the word’s modern associations of romantic swordplay and high adventure did not begin to emerge until the early 19th century.
tick: tick: English now has no fewer than four distinct words tick in general use. The oldest, tick ‘mite’ [OE], comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *tik-, which may be related to Armenian tiz ‘bug’. Tick ‘sound of a clock, mark of correctness, etc’ [13] originally meant broadly ‘light touch, tap’; its modern uses are secondary and comparatively recent developments (‘sound of a clock’ appears to have evolved in the 16th century, and ‘mark of correctness’ did not emerge until the 19th century). Tickle [14] is probably a derivative. Tick ‘mattress case’ [15] was borrowed from Middle Dutch tēke, which went back via Latin thēca to Greek thékē ‘cover, case’.

And tick ‘credit’ [17] (as in on tick) is short for ticket.
=> tickle; ticket
broad (adj.): Old English brad "broad, flat, open, extended," from Proto-Germanic *braithaz (cognates: Old Frisian bred, Old Norse breiðr, Dutch breed, German breit, Gothic brouþs), which is of unknown origin. Not found outside Germanic languages. No clear distinction in sense from wide. Related: Broadly. Broad-brim as a style of hat (1680s, broad-brimmed) in 18c.-19c. suggested "Quaker male" from their characteristic attire.
cartridge (n.): 1570s, cartage, corruption of French cartouche "a full charge for a pistol," originally wrapped in paper (16c.), from Italian cartoccio "roll of paper," an augmentative form of Medieval Latin carta "paper" (see card (n.)). The notion is of a roll of paper containing a charge for a firearm. The modern form of the English word is recorded from 1620s. Extended broadly 20c. to other small containers and their contents.
courage (n.): c. 1300, from Old French corage (12c., Modern French courage) "heart, innermost feelings; temper," from Vulgar Latin *coraticum (source of Italian coraggio, Spanish coraje), from Latin cor "heart," from PIE root *kerd- (1) "heart" (see heart (n.)) which remains a common metaphor for inner strength. In Middle English, used broadly for "what is in one's mind or thoughts," hence "bravery," but also "wrath, pride, confidence, lustiness," or any sort of inclination. Replaced Old English ellen, which also meant "zeal, strength."
cross (n.): Old English cros "instrument of Christ's crucifixion; symbol of Christianity" (mid-10c.), from Old Irish cros, probably via Scandinavian, from Latin crux (accusative crucem, genitive crucis) "stake, cross" on which criminals were impaled or hanged (originally a tall, round pole); hence, figuratively, "torture, trouble, misery." The word is possibly of Phoenician origin. Replaced Old English rood.

Also from Latin crux are Italian croce, French croix, Spanish and Portuguese cruz, Dutch kruis, German Kreuz.

By c. 1200 as "ornamental likeness of the cross, something resembling or in the form of a cross; sign of the cross made with the right hand or with fingers." From mid-14c. as "small cross with a human figure attached; a crucifix;" late 14c. as "outdoor structure or monument in the form of a cross." Also late 14c. as "a cross formed by two lines drawn or cut on a surface; two lines intersecting at right angles; the shape of a cross without regard to religious signification." From late 12c. as a surname.

From c. 1200 in the figurative sense "the burden of a Christian; suffering; a trial or affliction; penance in Christ's name," from Matt. x.38, xvi.24, etc. Theological sense "crucifixion and death of Christ as a necessary part of his mission" is from late 14c.

As "a mixing of breeds in the production of animals" from 1760, hence broadly "a mixture of the characteristics of two different things." In pugilism, 1906, from the motion of the blow (1880s as a verb; cross-counter (n.) is from 1883).
gazette (n.): "newspaper," c. 1600, from French gazette (16c.), from Italian gazzetta, Venetian dialectal gazeta "newspaper," also the name of a small copper coin, literally "little magpie," from gazza; applied to the monthly newspaper (gazeta de la novità) published in Venice by the government, either from its price or its association with the bird (typical of false chatter), or both. First used in English 1665 for the paper issued at Oxford, whither the court had fled from the plague.

The coin may have been so called for its marking; Gamillscheg writes the word is from French gai (see jay). The general story of the origin of the word is broadly accepted, but there are many variations in the details:
We are indebted to the Italians for the idea of newspapers. The title of their gazettas was, perhaps, derived from gazzera, a magpie or chatterer; or, more probably, from a farthing coin, peculiar to the city of Venice, called gazetta, which was the common price of the newspapers. Another etymologist is for deriving it from the Latin gaza, which would colloquially lengthen into gazetta, and signify a little treasury of news. The Spanish derive it from the Latin gaza, and likewise their gazatero, and our gazetteer, for a writer of the gazette and, what is peculiar to themselves, gazetista, for a lover of the gazette. [Isaac Disraeli, "Curiosities of Literature," 1835]

Gazzetta It., Sp. gazeta, Fr. E. gazette; prop. the name of a Venetian coin (from gaza), so in Old English. Others derive gazette from gazza a magpie, which, it is alleged, was the emblem figured on the paper; but it does not appear on any of the oldest Venetian specimens preserved at Florence. The first newspapers appeared at Venice about the middle of the 16th century during the war with Soliman II, in the form of a written sheet, for the privilege of reading which a gazzetta (= a crazia) was paid. Hence the name was transferred to the news-sheet. [T.C. Donkin, "Etymological Dictionary of the Romance Languages" (based on Diez), 1864]

GAZETTE. A paper of public intelligence and news of divers countries, first printed at Venice, about the year 1620, and so called (some say) because una gazetta, a small piece of Venetian coin, was given to buy or read it. Others derive the name from gazza, Italian for magpie, i.e. chatterer.--Trusler. A gazette was printed in France in 1631; and one in Germany in 1715. [Haydn's "Dictionary of Dates," 1857]
smith (n.): Old English smið "blacksmith, armorer, one who works in metal" (jewelers as well as blacksmiths), more broadly, "handicraftsman, practitioner of skilled manual arts" (also including carpenters), from Proto-Germanic *smithaz "skilled worker" (cognates: Old Saxon smith, Old Norse smiðr, Danish smed, Old Frisian smith, Old High German smid, German Schmied, Gothic -smiþa, in aiza-smiþa "coppersmith"), from PIE root *smi- "to cut, work with a sharp instrument" (cognates: Greek smile "knife, chisel"). Attested as a surname since at least c.975.
arthrozoic: "(In some former classifications) designating a division of the Metazoa including arthropods and segmented worms (corresponding broadly to the Articulata of Cuvier); relating to this group", Late 19th cent.; earliest use found in Thomas Huxley (1825–1895), biologist and science educationist. From arthro- + -zoic, after scientific Latin Arthrozoa, former group name.