英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

aim [aim 词源字典]: aim: [14] Etymologically, aim is a contraction of estimate (see ESTEEM). The Latin verb aestimāre became considerably shortened as it developed in the various Romance languages (Italian has stimare, for instance, and Provençal esmar). In Old French its descendant was esmer, to which was added the prefix a- (from Latin ad- ‘to’), producing aesmer; and from one or both of these English acquired aim. The notion of estimating or calculating was carried over into the English verb, but died out after about a hundred years. However, the derived sense of calculating, and hence directing, one’s course is of equal antiquity in the language.
=> esteem, estimate[aim etymology, aim origin, 英语词源]
Alsatian: Alsatian: [17] Alsatian has been around since at least the late 17th century (although in early use it generally denoted not the Franco-German border province of Alsace but a no-go area in London, near the banks of the Thames, where criminals, vagabonds and prostitutes hung out, which was nicknamed ‘Alsatia’ because of the real Alsace’s reputation as a harbour for the disaffected).

It really came into its own, however, during World War I. A breed of dog known as the ‘German sheepdog’ or ‘German shepherd dog’ (German deutscher Schäferhund) had been introduced into Britain, but understandably, between 1914 and 1918 its stock fell considerably. When it was reintroduced after the war it was thought politic to give it a less inflammatory name, so it became officially the ‘Alsatian wolf-dog’ (even though it has nothing to do with Alsace, and there is no element of wolf in its genetic make-up).

It continued to be called the German shepherd in the USA, and in the latter part of the 20th century that usage crept back into Britain.
anther: anther: [18] Greek ánthos originally meant ‘part of a plant which grows above ground’ (this was the basis of the Homeric ‘metaphor’ translated as ‘flower of youth’, which originally referred to the first growth of beard on young men’s faces). Later it narrowed somewhat to ‘flower’. The adjective derived from it was anthērós, which was borrowed into Latin as anthēra, a noun meaning ‘medicine made from flowers’.

In practice, herbalists often made such medicines from the reproductive part of the flower, and so anther came to be applied to the pollen-bearing part of the stamen. More remote semantically, but also derived from Greek ánthos, is anthology [17]. The second element represents Greek logíā ‘collecting’, a derivative of the verb legein ‘gather’ (which is related to legend and logic).

The notion of a collection of flowers, anthologíā, was applied metaphorically to a selection of choice epigrams or brief poems: borrowed into English, via French anthologie or medieval Latin anthologia, it was originally restricted to collections of Greek verse, but by the mid 19th century its application had broadened out considerably. The parallel Latin formation, florilegium, also literally ‘collection of flowers’, has occasionally been used in English for ‘anthology’.
=> anthology
camouflage: camouflage: [20] Camouflage reached the English language during World War I, when the art of concealing objects from the enemy was considerably developed. It is of French origin, a derivative of the verb camoufler ‘disguise’, which came from Italian camuffare ‘disguise, trick’.
concern: concern: [15] In earliest use, English concern meant ‘distinguish, discern’. This was a reflection of its ultimate source, Latin cernere ‘sift, separate’. In combination with the prefix com- ‘together’ it produced concernere, which in classical times meant specifically ‘mix together preparatory to sifting’. Later, however, the prefix seems to have taken on a more intensive role, with concernere reverting to the same range of senses as cernere.

By the Middle Ages these not only included ‘discern, perceive’ and ‘decide’ (whence English certain, from the past participle of cernere), but had widened considerably to ‘relate to’ – a meaning which emerged in English concern in the 16th century. Connotations of distress or worry began to develop in the late 17th century.
=> certain, discern
dismal: dismal: [13] Etymologically, dismal means ‘bad day’. It comes, via Anglo-Norman dis mal, from Latin diēs malī, literally ‘evil days’, a term used to denote the two days in each month which according to ancient superstition were supposed to be unlucky (these days, of set date, were said originally to have been computed by Egyptian astrologers, and were hence also called Egyptian days). The term dismal thus acquired connotations of ‘gloom’ and ‘calamity’. Its earliest adjectival use, somewhat tautologically, was in the phrase dismal day, but in the late 16th century it broadened out considerably in application.
egg: egg: English has two distinct words egg, but surprisingly the noun, in the form in which we now have it, has not been in the language as long as the verb. Egg ‘reproductive body’ [14] was borrowed from Old Norse egg. Old English had a related word, ǣg, which survived until the 16th century as eye (plural eyren). Although it does not begin to show up in the written records until the 14th century, the form egg was presumably introduced into English by Norse immigrants considerably earlier, but even so, as late as the end of the 15th century there was still considerable competition between the native eye and the imported egg: ‘What sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren, certaynly it is harde to playse every man’, William Caxton, Eneydos 1490.

Both the Old English and the Old Norse forms came from a prehistoric Germanic *ajjaz (source also of German and Dutch ei). This in turn was a descendant of an Indo- European *ōwo- (whence Greek ōión, Latin ōvum, French oeuf, Italian uovo, Spanish huevo, and Russian jajco), which was probably derived ultimately from a base signifying ‘bird’ (source of Sanskrit vís and Latin avis ‘bird’, the ancestor of English aviary). Egg ‘incite’ [10], as in ‘egg on’, is a Scandinavian borrowing too.

It comes from Old Norse eggja, which was a relative or derivative of egg ‘edge’ (a cousin of English edge).
=> aviary; edge
evict: evict: [15] Ultimately, evict and evince [17] are the same word, although they have diverged considerably over the centuries. Both come from Latin ēvincere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and vincere (source of English victory). This originally meant ‘defeat, conquer’, but a whole range of secondary legal senses developed: ‘recover something by defeating an opponent in a legal action’; ‘eject by judicial process’; and ‘prove by legal argument’.

Both evict (acquired from the Latin past participle ēvictus) and evince have in the past been used for ‘conquer’ and ‘prove’, and it was not until the 18th century that they settled into their present meanings.
=> evince, victory
genius: genius: [16] Latin genius originally meant ‘deity of generation and birth’. It came ultimately from the Indo-European base *gen- ‘produce’ (source of English gene, generate, genitive, etc), probably via a derivative *gnjos. It broadened out considerably in meaning, initially to ‘attendant spirit’, the sense in which English originally acquired it (French took it over as génie, a word which, because of its phonetic and semantic similarity to Arabic jinn, 18th-century translators of the Arabian nights eagerly adopted into English as genie).

The main modern English sense, ‘person of outstanding intellectual ability’, which dates from the 17th century, goes back to a comparatively rare Latin ‘intellectual capacity’. Genial [16] comes from Latin geniālis, a derivative of genius, which again originally meant ‘of generation and birth’ (a sense which survived into English: ‘And thou, glad Genius! in whose gentle hand the bridal bower and genial bed remain’, Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion 1595).

It later developed in Latin to ‘pleasant, festive’.
=> general
how: how: [OE] How belongs to the large family of question-words which in Indo-European began with qw- (as in English quantity, query, etc). The phonetic descendant of this in prehistoric Germanic was khw-, which in modern English is represented by wh-. How itself comes from a West Germanic adverb *khwō formed from the base that also produced English what and who; like who it has lost its /w/ sound, but since who did not lose it until considerably later the spelling wh remains as a reminder of it.

The how! with which North American Indians supposedly greet each other is not the same word, incidentally. It is an imitation of a Sioux word, such as Dakota háo or Omaha hau.
=> what, who
implement: implement: [15] The idea underlying implement is of ‘filling up’. It comes ultimately from Latin implēre, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix in- and plēre ‘fill’ (as in English complete). This originally meant ‘fill up’, and hence ‘fulfil’, but in post-classical times, under the influence of implicāre (source of English employ) it came to mean ‘use, employ’, and so the derived plural noun implēmenta denoted ‘things used, equipment’.

It was originally used in the plural in English too, and it was not until the 16th century that the singular ‘tool’ emerged. The original Latin sense ‘fulfil’ is preserved much more closely in the verb implement, which was an independent and considerably later introduction, first recorded in Scottish English in the 19th century. (From the same source come English complement and supplement.)
=> complement, complete, supplement
narrate: narrate: [17] To narrate something is etymologically to ‘make it known’. The word comes from Latin narrāre ‘give an account of’, which was derived from gnārus ‘knowing’ and is hence related to English ignore, recognize, and, distantly, know. English acquired the derived noun narration [15] considerably earlier than the verb (which was widely condemned in the 18th century for its inelegance), and it could be that narrate represents a back-formation from narration rather than a new introduction directly from the Latin verb.
=> ignore, know, recognize
object: object: Object the noun [14] and object the verb [15] have diverged considerably over the centuries, but they come from the same ultimate source: Latin obicere. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- ‘towards’ and jacere ‘throw’ (source of English ejaculate, inject, subject, etc), and hence originally meant literally ‘throw towards’, but by classical times it had been extended metaphorically to ‘place a hindrance in the way of, oppose’.

This was the strand of the word’s meaning taken up by English in the verb object, and also originally in the noun (‘how Christ answered to objects [that is, objections] of false Jews’, John Wycliffe 1380). The standard present-day meaning of the noun, however, comes from a post-classical meaning of Latin objectum (the noun formed from the past participle of obicere): ‘something put in someone’s way so that it can be seen’, hence a ‘visible object’.
=> ejaculate, inject, jet, subject
wall: wall: [OE] Wall was borrowed into Old English from Latin vallum ‘rampart’. This originally denoted a ‘stockade made of stakes’, and it was derived from vallus ‘stake’. German wall, Dutch wal, and Swedish vall, also borrowings from Latin, preserve its meaning ‘rampart, embankment’, but English wall has become considerably wider in its application. An interval is etymologically a space ‘between ramparts’.
=> interval
amid (prep.): late 14c., from amidde (c. 1200), from Old English on middan "in the middle," from dative singular of midde "mid, middle" (see middle); the phrase evidently was felt as "in (the) middle" and thus followed by a genitive case, and if this had endured we would follow it today with of. (See amidst for further evolution along this line).

The same applies to equivalents in Latin (in medio) and Greek (en meso), both originally adjective phrases which evolved to take the genitive case. But in later Old English on middan also was treated as a preposition and followed by dative. Used in compounds from early 13c. (such as amidships, attested from 1690s and retaining the genitive, as the compounds usually did in early Middle English, suggesting this one is considerably older than the written record of it.)
autoharp (n.): 1882, name on a patent taken out by Charles F. Zimmermann of Philadelphia, U.S.A., for an improved type of harp, an instrument considerably different from the modern autoharp, actually a chord zither, which was invented about the same time by K.A. Gütter of Markneukirchen, Germany, who called it a Volkszither.
caddie (n.): 1630s, Scottish form of French cadet (see cadet). Originally "person who runs errands;" meaning of "golfer's assistant" is 1851. A letter from Edinburgh c. 1730 describes the city's extensive and semi-organized "Cawdys, a very useful Black-Guard, who attend ... publick Places to go at Errands; and though they are Wretches, that in Rags lye upon the Stairs and in the Streets at Night, yet are they often considerably trusted .... This Corps has a kind of Captain ... presiding over them, whom they call the Constable of the Cawdys."
considerable (adj.): mid-15c., "capable of being considered," from Medieval Latin considerabilis "worthy to be considered," from Latin considerare (see consider). Meaning "pretty large" is from 1640s (implied in considerably).
CONSIDERABLE. This word is still frequently used in the manner out by Dr. Witherspoon in the following remark: "He is considerable of a surveyor; considerable of it may found in the country. This manner of speaking in the northern parts." [Pickering, 1816]
doggone (adj.): 1851, American English, a "fantastic perversion of god-damned" [Weekley]. But Mencken favors the theory that it is "a blend form of dog on it; in fact it is still often used with it following. It is thus a brother to the old English phrase, 'a pox upon it,' but is considerably more decorous."
gey (adj.): a Scottish variant of gay (compare gray/grey), used 18c.-19c. also with the Scottish sense of "considerable, pretty much, considerably."
inconsiderable (adj.): 1590s, from French inconsidérable (16c.), from in- "not" (see in- (1)) + considérable (see considerable). Related: Inconsiderably.
long (adj.): "that extends considerably from end to end," Old English lang "long," from Proto-Germanic *langgaz (cognates: Old Frisian and Old Saxon lang, Old High German and German lang, Old Norse langr, Middle Dutch lanc, Dutch lang, Gothic laggs "long").

The Germanic words are perhaps from PIE *dlonghos- (cognates: Latin longus, Old Persian darga-, Persian dirang, Sanskrit dirghah, Greek dolikhos "long," Greek endelekhes "perpetual," Latin indulgere "to indulge"), from root *del- "long."

The adverb is from Old English lange, longe, from the adjective. No longer "not as formerly" is from c. 1300; to be not long for this world "soon to die" is from 1714.

The word illustrates the Old English tendency for short "a" to become short "o" before -n- (also retained in bond/band and West Midlands dialectal lond from land and hond from hand).

Long vowels (c. 1000) originally were pronounced for an extended time. Sporting long ball is from 1744, originally in cricket. Long jump as a sporting event is attested from 1864. A ship's long-boat so called from 1510s. Long knives, name Native Americans gave to white settlers (originally in Virginia/Kentucky) is from 1774. Long in the tooth (1841 of persons) is from horses showing age by recession of gums. Long time no see, imitative of American Indian speech, is first recorded 1900. To be long on something, "have a lot" of it, is from 1900, American English slang.
Topsy: slave-girl character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852), immortal in cliche for her response to a question about her origin put to her by the pious Northern abolitionist Miss Ophelia:
"Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?"
The child looked bewildered, but grinned, as usual.
"Do you know who made you?"
"Nobody as I knows on," said the child, with a short laugh.
The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added--
"I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me."
In addition to being often misquoted by the addition of a "just" (or "jes'"), the line is sometimes used inappropriately in 20c. writing to indicate something that got large without anyone intending it to.