英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

ginger [ginger 词源字典]: ginger: [OE] Few foodstuffs can have been as exhaustively etymologized as ginger – Professor Alan Ross, for instance, begetter of the U/non-U distinction, wrote an entire 74-page monograph on the history of the word in 1952. And deservedly so, for its ancestry is extraordinarily complex. Its ultimate source was Sanskrit śrngavēram, a compound formed from śrngam ‘horn’ and vẽra- ‘body’; the term was applied to ‘ginger’ because of the shape of its edible root.

This passed via Prakrit singabēra and Greek ziggíberis into Latin as zinziberi. In postclassical times the Latin form developed to gingiber or gingiver, which Old English borrowed as gingifer. English reborrowed the word in the 13th century from Old French gingivre, which combined with the descendant of the Old English form to produce Middle English gingivere – whence modern English ginger.

Its verbal use, as in ‘ginger up’, appears to come from the practice of putting a piece of ginger into a lazy horse’s anus to make it buck its ideas up.
[ginger etymology, ginger origin, 英语词源]
America: 1507, in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller's treatise "Cosmographiae Introductio," from Modern Latin Americanus, after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to have discovered it. His published works put forward the idea that it was a new continent, and he was first to call it Novus Mundus "New World." Amerigo is more easily Latinized than Vespucci.

The name Amerigo is Germanic, said to derive from Gothic Amalrich, literally "work-ruler." The Old English form of the name has come down as surnames Emmerich, Emery, etc. The Italian fem. form merged into Amelia.

Colloquial pronunciation "Ameri-kay," not uncommon 19c., goes back to at least 1643 and a poem that rhymed the word with away. Amerika "U.S. society viewed as racist, fascist, oppressive, etc." first attested 1969; the spelling is German, but may also suggest the KKK.
It is interesting to remember that the song which is essentially Southern -- "Dixie" -- and that which is essentially Northern -- "Yankee Doodle" -- never really had any serious words to them. ["The Bookman," June 1910]

FREDONIA, FREDONIAN, FREDE, FREDISH, &c. &c.
These extraordinary words, which have been deservedly ridiculed here as well as in England, were proposed sometime ago, and countenanced by two or three individuals, as names for the territory and people of the United States. The general term American is now commonly understood (at least in all places where the English language is spoken,) to mean an inhabitant of the United States; and is so employed, except where unusual precision of language is required. [Pickering, 1816]
condign (adj.): late 15c., "well-deserved," from Old French condigne "deserved, appropriate, equal in wealth," from Latin condignus "wholly worthy," from com- "together, altogether" (see com-) + dignus "worthy" (see dignity). Of punishment, "deservedly severe," from 1510s, which by Johnson's day (1755) was the only use.
tawdry (adj.): "no longer fresh or elegant but worn as if it were so; in cheap and ostentatious imitation of what is rich or costly," 1670s, adjective use of noun tawdry "silk necktie for women" (1610s), shortened from tawdry lace (1540s), an alteration (with adhesion of the -t- from Saint) of St. Audrey's lace, a necktie or ribbon sold at the annual fair at Ely on Oct. 17 commemorating St. Audrey (queen of Northumbria, died 679). Her association with lace necklaces is that she supposedly died of a throat tumor, which, according to Bede, she considered God's punishment for her youthful stylishness. Related: Tawdriness.
"I know of a surety that I deservedly bear the weight of my trouble on my neck, for I remember that, when I was a young maiden, I bore on it the needless weight of necklaces; and therefore I believe the Divine goodness would have me endure the pain in my neck, that so I may be absolved from the guilt of my needless levity, having now, instead of gold and pearls, the fiery heat of a tumour rising on my neck." [A.M. Sellar translation, 1907]
undeserved (adj.): late 14c., from un- (1) "not" + past participle of deserve (v.). Related: Undeservedly.