英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abdicate [abdicate 词源字典]: abdicate: see indicate
[abdicate etymology, abdicate origin, 英语词源]
addict: addict: [16] Originally, addict was an adjective in English, meaning ‘addicted’. It was borrowed from Latin addictus, the past participle of addicere, which meant ‘give over or award to someone’. This in turn was formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and the verb dicere. The standard meaning of dicere was ‘say’ (as in English diction, dictionary, and dictate), but it also had the sense ‘adjudge’ or ‘allot’, and that was its force in addicere.
=> dictate, diction, dictionary
Alzheimer's disease: Alzheimer's disease: [20] This serious brain disorder was first described in a scientific journal in 1912, and was given its name in honour of the German neurologist Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915). For many decades the term was largely confined to specialist medical journals, but in the 1970s, as the disease became better known, it seeped into the public domain.
appendix: appendix: see penthouse
audible: audible: [16] Audible is one of a wide range of English words based ultimately on the Latin verb audīre ‘hear’ (which came from the Indo- European root *awiz-, source also of Greek aithánesthai ‘perceive’ and Sanskrit āvis ‘evidently’). Others include audience [14], audio- [20], audit [15] (from Latin audītus ‘hearing’; audits were originally done by reading the accounts out loud), audition [16], and auditorium [17].
=> obey, oyez
bandit: bandit: [16] Etymologically, a bandit is someone who has been ‘banished’ or outlawed. The word was borrowed from Italian bandito, which was a nominal use of the past participle of the verb bandire ‘ban’. The source of this was Vulgar Latin *bannīre, which was formed from the borrowed Germanic base *bann- ‘proclaim’ (from which English gets ban). Meanwhile, in Old French, bannīre had produced banir, whose lengthened stem form baniss- gave English banish [14].
=> ban, banish
bedizen: bedizen: see distaff
bodice: bodice: [16] Originally, bodice was identical with bodies – that is, the plural of body. This use of body began early in the 16th century, when it referred to the part of a woman’s dress that covered the trunk, as opposed to the arms; and it soon became restricted specifically to the part above the waist. The reason for the adoption of the plural form (which was often used originally in the phrase pair of bodies) was that the upper portion of women’s dresses was usually in two parts, which fastened down the middle. In the 17th and 18th centuries the term bodice was frequently applied to ‘corsets’.
=> body
candid: candid: [17] Originally, candid meant simply ‘white’; its current sense ‘frank’ developed metaphorically via ‘pure’ and ‘unbiased’. English acquired the word, probably through French candide, from Latin candidum, a derivative of the verb candēre ‘be white, glow’ (which is related to English candle, incandescent, and incense).

The derived noun candour is 18th-century in English. Candida, the fungus which causes the disease thrush, got its name from being ‘white’. And in ancient Rome, people who were standing for election wore white togas; they were thus called candidāti, whence English candidate [17].
=> candidate, candle, incandescent, incense
cardiac: cardiac: see heart
cardigan: cardigan: [19] The cardigan was named after James Thomas Brudenell, 7th earl of Cardigan (1797–1868), an early sporter of button-through woollen jackets. His other, but less successful, claim to fame was that he led the Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) at Balaclava during the Crimean War.
cardinal: cardinal: [12] The ultimate source of cardinal is Latin cardō ‘hinge’, and its underlying idea is that something of particular, or ‘cardinal’, importance is like the hinge on which all else depends. English first acquired it as a noun, direct from ecclesiastical Latin cardinālis (originally an adjective derived from cardō), which in the early church denoted simply a clergyman attached to a church, as a door is attached by hinges; it only gradually rose in dignity to refer to princes of the Roman Catholic church. The adjective reached English in the 13th century, via Old French cardinal or Latin cardinālis.
celandine: celandine: [12] Etymologically the celandine, a buttercup-like spring flower, is the ‘swallow’s’ flower. Its name comes, via Old French, from Greek khelidonion, which was based on khelidon ‘swallow’. The original reference was no doubt to the appearance of the flowers around the time when the swallows began to arrive in Europe from Africa. Its juice was used in former times as a remedy for poor eyesight, and, no doubt in an over-interpretation of the name, it was said that swallows used the juice to boost the sight of their young.
chiropodist: chiropodist: see surgeon
commodious: commodious: [15] Latin commodus meant ‘convenient’. It was a compound adjective formed from com- ‘with’ and modus ‘measure’, and thus meaning literally ‘conforming with due measure’. From it was derived the medieval Latin adjective commodiōsus, which passed, probably via French commodieux, into English. This originally meant ‘advantageous, useful, convenient’, and it was not really until the 16th century that it developed the meaning ‘affording a conveniently large amount of space’.

The noun derivative commodity entered English in the 14th century, and from earliest times had the concrete meaning ‘article of commerce’, deriving from the more general sense ‘something useful’. Commodus was borrowed into French as commode ‘convenient’, which came to be used as a noun meaning both ‘tall headdress for women’ and ‘chest of drawers’. English adopted the word in the 17th century, and in the 19th century added the new sense ‘chair housing a chamber pot’ (a semantic development paralleling the euphemistic use of convenience for lavatory).
=> commode, commodity
compendium: compendium: see ponder
condign: condign: [15] From its virtually exclusive modern use in the phrase condign punishment, condign has come to be regarded frequently as meaning ‘severe’, but etymologically it signifies ‘fully deserved’. It comes via Old French condigne from Latin condignus, a compound adjective formed from the intensive prefix comand dignus ‘worthy’ (source of English dainty, deign, dignity, disdain, and indignant, and related to decent). The collocation with punishment arises from the frequent use of the phrase in Tudor acts of parliament.
=> dainty, decent, deign, dignity, disdain, indignant
condiment: condiment: see recondite
condition: condition: [14] Latin condīcere originally meant literally ‘talk together’ – it was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and dicere ‘talk’ (whose base dic- forms the basis of a wide range of English words from abdicate to vindicate, including diction and dictionary). Gradually the idea of ‘talking together, discussing’ passed to ‘agreeing’, and the derived Latin noun conditiō originally meant ‘agreement’. From this came ‘stipulation, provision’, and hence ‘situation, mode of being’, all of them senses which passed via Old French condicion into English condition.
=> abdicate, diction, dictionary, predict, vindicate
crocodile: crocodile: [13] The crocodile gets its name from its habit of basking in the sun on sandbanks or on the shores of rivers. The word means literally ‘pebble-worm’, and it was coined in Greek from the nouns krókē ‘pebbles’ and drilos ‘worm’. The resulting Greek compound *krokódrīlos has never actually been found, for it lost its second r, giving krokódīlos, and this r reappeared and disappeared capriciously during the word’s journey through Latin and Old French to English. Middle English had it – the 13th century form was cokodrille – but in the 16th century the modern r-less form took over, based on Latin crocodīlus.
cupidity: cupidity: [15] The Latin verb cupere meant ‘desire’ (related forms such as Sanskrit kup- ‘become agitated’, Church Slavonic kypeti ‘boil’, and Latvian kūpēt ‘boil, steam’ suggest that its underlying notion is ‘agitation’). One of its derivatives was the noun cupīdō ‘desire’, which was used as the name of the Roman god of love – hence English cupid [14]. Another was the adjective cupidus ‘desirous’, which produced the further noun cupiditās, source, perhaps via French, of English cupidity, and also ultimately of English covet. Concupiscence [14] also comes from Latin cupere.
=> concupiscence, covet
daffodil: daffodil: [16] Originally, this word was affodil, and referred to a plant of the lily family, the asphodel; it came from medieval Latin affodillus, and the reason for the change from asph- (or asf-, as it often was in medieval texts) to aff- is probably that the s in medieval manuscripts looked very like an f. The first evidence of its use to refer to a ‘daffodil’, rather than an ‘asphodel’, comes in the middle of the 16th century. It is not entirely clear where the initial d came from, but the likeliest explanation is that daffodil represents Dutch de affodil ‘the daffodil’ (the Dutch were then as now leading exponents of bulb cultivation).
dedicate: dedicate: see indicate
diabetes: diabetes: [16] Diabetes means literally ‘passing through’; it was originally so named in Greek because one of the symptoms of the disease is excessive discharge of urine. Greek diabétēs was a derivative of diabaínein ‘pass through’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dia- ‘through’ and baínein ‘go’ (a relative of English basis and come). English acquired it via medieval Latin diabētēs. Compare DIARRHOEA.
=> basis, come
diabolical: diabolical: see devil
diadem: diadem: [13] A diadem was originally something that was bound round someone’s head. The word comes, via Old French diademe and Latin diadēma, from Greek diádēma; this was a derivative of diadein, a compound verb formed from the prefix dia- ‘across’ and dein ‘bind’. In Greek it was often applied specifically to the regal headband worn by Alexander the Great and his successors.
diaeresis: diaeresis: see heresy
diagnosis: diagnosis: [17] The underlying meaning of Greek diágnōsis was ‘knowing apart’. It was derived from diagignóskein ‘distinguish, discern’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dia- ‘apart’ and gignóskein ‘know, perceive’ (a relative of English know): In postclassical times the general notion of ‘distinguishing’ or ‘discerning’ was applied specifically to medical examination in order to determine the nature of a disease.
=> know
diagonal: diagonal: [16] Diagonal is commonly used simply as a synonym for oblique, but in strict mathematical terms it denotes a line joining two non-adjacent angles of a polygon. This reveals far more clearly its origins. It comes from diagōnālis, a Latin adjective derived from Greek diagónios. This was a compound formed from the prefix dia- ‘across’ and gōníā ‘angle’ (as in English polygon), meaning ‘from angle to angle’. Gōníā is related ultimately to English knee and genuine.
=> genuine, knee, polygon
dial: dial: [15] The original application of the word dial in English is ‘sundial’. The evidence for its prehistory is patchy, but it is generally presumed to have come from medieval Latin diālis ‘daily’, a derivative of Latin diēs ‘day’, the underlying notion being that it records the passage of a 24- hour period.
dialect: dialect: [16] The notion underlying dialect and its relatives dialectic [14] and dialogue [13] is of ‘conversation’. They come ultimately from Greek dialégesthai ‘converse’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dia- ‘with each other’ and légein ‘speak’ (source of English lecture and a wide range of related words). This formed the basis of two derived nouns.

First diálektos ‘conversation, discourse’, hence ‘way of speaking’ and eventually ‘local speech’, which passed into English via Latin dialectus and Old French dialecte (from it was produced the adjective dialektikós ‘of conversation, discussion, or debate’, which was eventually to become English dialectic). Secondly diálogos ‘conversation’, which again reached English via Latin and Old French.
=> lecture
dialysis: dialysis: [16] As in the case of its close relative analysis, the underlying etymological notion contained in dialysis is of undoing or loosening, so that the component parts are separated. The word comes ultimately from Greek diálusis, a derivative of dialúein ‘tear apart’; this was a compound verb formed from the prefix dia- ‘apart’ and lúein ‘loosen, free’ (related to English less, loose, lose, and loss).

In Greek it meant simply ‘separation’, but it was borrowed into English, via Latin dialysis, as a rhetorical term denoting a set of propositions without a connecting conjunction. The chemical sense, ‘separation of molecules or particles’ (from which the modern application to ‘renal dialysis’ comes), was introduced in the 1860s by the chemist Thomas Graham (1805–69).
=> analysis, less, loose, lose, loss
diamond: diamond: [13] Diamond is an alteration of adamant, a rather archaic term which nowadays refers to hard substances in general, but formerly was also used specifically for ‘diamond’. The alteration appears to have come about in Latin of post-classical times: adamant- (stem of Latin adamas) evidently became Vulgar Latin *adimant- (source of French aimant ‘magnet’), which appears to have opened the way to confusion, or at least association, with words beginning dia-. The result was medieval Latin diamant-, which passed into English via Old French diamant.
=> adamant
diapason: diapason: [14] Diapason, a musical term now used mainly for the main stops on an organ, and also metaphorically for ‘range, scope’ in general, originally meant literally ‘through all’. It comes, via Latin diapāsōn, from the Greek phrase hē dia pasōn khordon sumphonía ‘concord through all the notes’: dia means ‘through’, and pasōn is the feminine genitive plural of pas ‘all’ (as in the English prefix pan- ‘all’).
diaper: diaper: [14] The notion underlying diaper is of extreme whiteness. It comes ultimately from Byzantine Greek díaspros, which was a compound formed from the intensive prefix diaand áspros ‘white’. (Aspros itself has an involved history: it started life as Latin asper ‘rough’ – source of English asperity – which was applied particularly to bas-relief on carvings and coins; it was borrowed into Byzantine Greek and used as a noun to designate silver coins, and their brightness and shininess led to its reconversion into an adjective, meaning ‘white’.) Díaspros appears originally to have been applied to ecclesiastical vestments, and subsequently to any shiny fabric.

When the word first entered English, via medieval Latin diasprum and Old French diapre, it referred to a rather rich silk fabric embellished with gold thread, but by the 16th century it was being used for less glamorous textiles, of white linen, with a small diamond-shaped pattern. The specific application to a piece of such cloth used as a baby’s nappy (still current in American English) seems to have developed in the 16th century.
=> asperity
diaphanous: diaphanous: [17] Semantically, diaphanous is the ancestor of modern English see-through. It comes, via medieval Latin diaphanus, from Greek diaphanés, a compound adjective formed from dia- ‘through’ and the verb phaínein ‘show’. Originally in English it meant simply ‘transparent’, without its present-day connotations of delicacy: ‘Aristotle called light a quality inherent, or cleaving to a Diaphanous body’, Walter Raleigh, History of the World 1614.
diaphragm: diaphragm: [17] The etymological notion underlying diaphragm is of a sort of ‘fence’ or ‘partition’ within the body. It comes via late Latin diaphragma from Greek diáphragma. This in turn was a derivative of diaphrássein ‘divide off, barricade’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dia- and phrássein ‘fence in, enclose’. Originally in Greek diáphragma was applied to other bodily partitions than that between the thorax and the abdomen – to the septum which divides the two nostrils, for instance.
diarrhoea: diarrhoea: [16] Diarrhoea means literally ‘through-flow’ (and hence semantically is a parallel formation to diabetes). It comes via late Latin diarrhoea from Greek diárrhoia, a term coined by the physician Hippocrates for ‘abnormally frequent defecation’. It was formed from the prefix dia- ‘through’ and rhein ‘flow’ (a relative of English rheumatism and stream).

Of other -rrhoea formations (or -rrhea, as it is generally spelled in American English), pyorrhoea ‘inflammation of the tooth sockets’ was coined in the early 19th century, and logorrhoea at around the turn of the 20th, originally as a clinical term in psychology (although subsequently hijacked as a facetious synonym for ‘talkativeness’).
=> rheumatism, stream
diary: diary: [16] Like its semantic cousin journal, a diary is literally a ‘daily’ record. It comes from Latin diarium, a derivative of diēs ‘day’. Originally in classical Latin the word meant ‘daily allowance of food or pay’, and only subsequently came to be applied to a ‘record of daily events’. From the 17th to the 19th century English also had an adjective diary, from Latin diarius, meaning ‘lasting for one day’.
diaspora: diaspora: see sporadic
diatribe: diatribe: [16] Diatribe’s connotations of acrimoniousness and abusiveness are a relatively recent (19th-century) development. Originally in English it meant simply ‘learned discourse or disquisition’. It comes via Latin diatriba from Greek diatribé ‘that which passes, or literally wears away, the time’, and hence, in scholarly circles, ‘study’ or ‘discourse’. This was a derivative of diatribein ‘pass, waste, while away’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dia- and tríbein ‘rub’.
=> attrition, detriment, trite
dice: dice: [14] Dice originated, as every schoolboy knows, as the plural of die, which it has now virtually replaced in British English as the term for a ‘cube marked with numbers’. Die itself comes via Old French de from Latin datum, the past participle of the verb dare (and source also of English date). The main meaning of dare was ‘give’, but it also had the secondary sense ‘play’, as in ‘play a chess piece’.

The plural of the Old French word was dez (itself occasionally used as a singular), which gave rise to such Middle English forms as des, dees, and deys and, by around 1500, dyse. The singular die survives for ‘dice’ in American English, and also in the later subsidiary sense ‘block or other device for stamping or impressing’ (which originated around 1700).
=> date, donate
dictionary: dictionary: [16] The term dictionary was coined in medieval Latin, probably in the 13th century, on the basis of the Latin adjective dictionārius ‘of words’, a derivative of Latin dictiō ‘saying’, or, in medieval Latin, ‘word’. English picked it up comparatively late; the first known reference to it is in The pilgrimage of perfection 1526: ‘and so Peter Bercharius [Pierre Bercheur, a 15thcentury French lexicographer] in his dictionary describeth it’.

Latin dictiō (source also of English diction [15]) was a derivatives of the verb dicere ‘say’. Its original meaning was ‘point out’ rather than ‘utter’, as demonstrated by its derivative indicāre (source of English indicate) and words in other languages, such as Greek deiknúnai ‘show’, Sanskrit diç- ‘show’ (later ‘say’), and German zeihen ‘accuse’, which come from the same ultimate source.

Its past participle gave English dictum [16], and the derived verb dictāre ‘assert’ produced English dictate [17] and dictator [14]. It has been the basis of a wide range of other English words, from the more obvious derivatives like addict and predict to more heavily disguised offspring such as condition, index, and judge.
=> addict, condition, dictate, diction, ditto, index, indicate, judge, predict
didactic: didactic: see doctor
diddle: diddle: [19] The current meaning of diddle, ‘to cheat or swindle’, was probably inspired by Jeremy Diddler, a character who was constantly borrowing money and neglecting to repay it in James Kenney’s play Raising the Wind (1803) (the expression raise the wind means ‘to procure the necessary money’). Diddler immediately caught on as a colloquialism for a ‘swindler’, and by at the latest 1806 the verb diddle was being used in the corresponding sense. It may be that Kenney based the name Diddler on another colloquial verb diddle current at that time, meaning ‘to move shakily’ or ‘to quiver’.
die: die: English has two distinct words die. The noun, ‘cube marked with numbers’, is now more familiar in its plural form (see DICE). The verb, ‘stop living’ [12], was probably borrowed from Old Norse deyja ‘die’. This, like English dead and death, goes back ultimately to an Indo- European base *dheu-, which some have linked with Greek thánatos ‘dead’.

It may seem strange at first sight that English should have borrowed a verb for such a basic concept as ‘dying’ (although some have speculated that a native Old English verb *dīegan or *dēgan did exist), but in fact it is a not uncommon phenomenon for ‘die’ verbs to change their meaning euphemistically, and therefore to need replacing by new verbs. In the case of the Old English verbs for ‘die’, steorfan survives as starve and sweltan in its derivative swelter, while cwelan is represented by the related cwellan ‘kill’, which has come down to us as quell.
=> dead, death
diesel: diesel: [19] The name of this type of internalcombustion engine (which runs on oil rather than petrol) commemorates its inventor, the Parisborn Bavarian engineer Rudolf Diesel (1858– 1913). He conceived his idea for the engine in the early 1890s. In its development stage he was almost killed when one exploded, but by 1897 he had succeeded in producing an operable engine. Within a year he was a millionaire. The term diesel is first recorded in English in 1894.
diet: diet: [13] Diet comes, via Old French diete and Latin diaeta, from Greek díaita ‘mode of life’. This was used by medical writers, such as Hippocrates, in the specific sense ‘prescribed mode of life’, and hence ‘prescribed regimen of food’. It has been speculated that Latin diaeta, presumably in the yet further restricted sense ‘day’s allowance of food’, came to be associated with Latin diēs ‘day’.

This gave rise to medieval Latin diēta ‘day’s journey’, ‘day’s work’, etc, hence ‘day appointed for a meeting’, and thus ‘meeting (of legislators)’. English acquired this word (coming orthographically full circle as diet) in the 15th century, but it is now mainly used for referring to various foreign legislatures.
different: different: [14] English acquired different via Old French different from different-, the present participial stem of Latin differre, a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and ferre ‘carry’ (related to English bear). Latin differre had two distinct strands of meaning that sprang from the original literal ‘carry apart, scatter, disperse, separate’: one was ‘put off, delay’, from which English gets defer; the other ‘become or be unlike’, whence English differ [14] and different. The derived indifferent [14] originally meant ‘not differentiating or discriminating’.
=> bear, dilatory
difficult: difficult: [14] Difficult means literally ‘not easy’. It is a back-formation from difficulty [14], which was borrowed from Latin difficultās. This was a derivative of the adjective difficilis (source of French difficile), which was a compound formed from the prefix dis- ‘not’ and facilis ‘easy’ (whence English facile [15]).
=> facile