英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

arrant [arrant 词源字典]: arrant: [16] Arrant is an alteration of errant, as in knight errant. This originally meant ‘roaming, wandering’, but its persistent application to nouns with negative connotations, such as rogue and thief, gradually drove its meaning downwards by association, to ‘notorious’.
=> errant[arrant etymology, arrant origin, 英语词源]
dip: dip: [OE] Like deep, dip comes ultimately from a Germanic base *d(e)up- ‘deep, hollow’. The derived verb, *dupjan, produced Old English dyppan, ancestor of modern English dip. It originally meant quite specifically ‘immerse’ in Old English, sometimes with reference to baptism; the sense ‘incline downwards’ is a 17th-century development.
=> deep, dimple
grovel: grovel: [16] Old and Middle English had a suffix -ling, used for making adverbs denoting direction or condition. Few survive, and of those that do, most have had their -ling changed to the more logical-sounding -long (headlong and sidelong, for instance, used to be headling and sideling; darkling still hangs on – just – unchanged).

Among them was grovelling, an adverb meaning ‘face downwards’ based on the phrase on grufe ‘on the face or stomach’, which in turn was a partial translation of Old Norse á grúfu, literally ‘on proneness’ (grúfu may be related to English creep). It was not long before grovelling came to be regarded as a present participle, and the new verb grovel was coined from it.
=> creep
down (adv.): late Old English shortened form of Old English ofdune "downwards," from dune "from the hill," dative of dun "hill" (see down (n.2)). A sense development peculiar to English.

Used as a preposition since c. 1500. Sense of "depressed mentally" is attested from c. 1600. Slang sense of "aware, wide awake" is attested from 1812. Computer crash sense is from 1965. As a preposition from late 14c.; as an adjective from 1560s. Down-and-out is from 1889, American English, from situation of a beaten prizefighter. Down home (adj.) is 1931, American English; down the hatch as a toast is from 1931; down to the wire is 1901, from horse-racing. Down time is from 1952. Down under "Australia and New Zealand" attested from 1886; Down East "Maine" is from 1825; Down South "in the Southern states of the U.S." is attested by 1834.
downright (adv.): c. 1200, "straight down," from down (adv.) + right (adj.1). Meaning "thoroughly" attested from c. 1300. Old English had dunrihte "downwards," and inverted form right-down is attested 17c.
downward (adv.): c. 1200, from down (adv.) + -ward. Old English had aduneweard in this sense. Downwards, with adverbial genitive, had a parallel in Old English ofduneweardes.
nether (adj.): Old English niþera, neoþera "down, downwards, below, beneath," from Proto-Germanic *nitheraz (cognates: Old Saxon nithar, Old Norse niðr, Old Frisian nither, Dutch neder, German nieder), from comparative of PIE *ni- "down, below" (cognates: Sanskrit ni "down," nitaram "downward," Greek neiothen "from below," Old Church Slavonic nizŭ "low, down"). Has been replaced in most senses by lower (adj.).
stamp (v.): Old English stempan "to pound in a mortar," from Proto-Germanic *stamp- (cognates: Old Norse stappa, Danish stampe, Middle Dutch stampen, Old High German stampfon, German stampfen "to stamp with the foot, beat, pound," German Stampfe "pestle"), from nasalized form of PIE root *stebh- "to support, place firmly on" (cognates: Greek stembein "to trample, misuse;" see staff (n.)). The vowel altered in Middle English, perhaps by influence of Scandinavian forms.

Sense of "strike the foot forcibly downwards" is from mid-14c. The meaning "impress or mark (something) with a die" is first recorded 1550s. Italian stampa "stamp, impression," Spanish estampar "to stamp, print," French étamper (13c., Old French estamper) "to stamp, impress" are Germanic loan-words. Related: Stamped; stamping. To stamp out originally was "extinguish a fire by stamping on it;" attested from 1851 in the figurative sense. Stamping ground "one's particular territory" (1821) is from the notion of animals. A stamped addressed envelope (1873) was one you enclosed in a letter to speed or elicit a reply.