英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

acknowledge [acknowledge 词源字典]: acknowledge: see know
[acknowledge etymology, acknowledge origin, 英语词源]
addled: addled: [13] Addled may be traceable back ultimately to a confusion between ‘wind’ and ‘urine’ in Latin. In Middle English the term was adel eye ‘addled egg’. of which the first part derived from Old English adela ‘foul-smelling urine or liquid manure’. It seems possible that this may be a loan-translation of the Latin term for ‘addled egg’, ōvum ūrīnae, literally ‘urine egg’. This in turn was an alteration, by folk etymology, of ōvum ūrīnum, a partial loantranslation of Greek oúrion ōón, literally ‘wind egg’ (a wind egg is an imperfect or addled egg).
antecedent: antecedent: see ancestor
apple-pie bed: apple-pie bed: see ply
ashamed: ashamed: [OE] Ashamed is an Old English compound, formed ultimately from the noun scamu ‘shame’. The verb derived from this, scamian, meant ‘feel shame’ as well as (as in modern English) ‘put to shame’, and in this sense the intensive prefix ā- was added to it. The resulting verb ashame died out in the 16th century, but its past participle ashamed has survived.
=> shame
bed: bed: [OE] Bed is common throughout the Germanic languages (German bett, Dutch bed), and comes from a prehistoric Germanic *bathjam. Already in Old English times the word meant both ‘place for sleeping’ and ‘area for growing plants’, and if the latter is primary, it could mean that the word comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhodh-, source of Latin fodere ‘dig’ (from which English gets fosse and fossil), and that the underlying notion of a bed was therefore originally of a sleeping place dug or scraped in the ground, like an animal’s lair.
=> fosse, fossil
bedizen: bedizen: see distaff
bedlam: bedlam: [15] The word bedlam is a contraction of Bethlehem. It comes from the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem founded in 1247 by Simon FitzMary, Sheriff of London, as the Priory of St Mary Bethlehem. Situated outside Bishopsgate, in the City of London, the hospital began to admit mental patients in the late 14th century. In the 16th century it officially became a lunatic asylum. The word bedlam came to be used for any ‘madhouse’, and by extension for a ‘scene of noisy confusion’, in the 17th century.
bleed: bleed: [OE] As its form suggests, bleed is a derivative of blood, but a very ancient one. From Germanic *blōtham ‘blood’ was formed the verb *blōthjan ‘emit blood’, which came into Old English as blēdan, ancestor of bleed.
=> blood
breed: breed: [OE] The Old English verb brēdan came from West Germanic *brōdjan, a derivative of *brōd-, which produced brood. This in turn was based on *brō-, whose ultimate source was the Indo-European base *bhrē- ‘burn, heat’ (its other English descendants include braise, breath, and probably brawn). The underlying notion of breed is thus not ‘reproduction’ so much as ‘incubation, the warmth which promotes hatching’.
=> braise, brawn, breath, brood
cack-handed: cack-handed: [19] Cack comes from a 15thcentury dialect verb meaning ‘defecate’, which probably came from Middle Dutch cacken. It goes back via Latin cacāre to an ultimate Indo- European base *kak-, from which a lot of other Indo-European languages get words connected with ‘excrement’. The connection with cackhanded is usually explained as being that clumsy people make a mess; on this view ‘left-handed’, which cack-handed also means, is a secondary sense derived from ‘clumsy’. It may be nearer the mark to place ‘left-handed’ first, however, bearing in mind the traditional role of the left hand in many cultures for wiping the anus.
cathedral: cathedral: [13] Cathedral is a shortening of cathedral church, which was originally the ‘church housing the bishop’s throne’. For ultimately cathedral comes from Greek kathédrā (source also of English chair), a compound noun meaning ‘seat’, formed from katá- ‘down’ and *hed- ‘sit’. The adjectival form was created in late Latin as cathedrālis, and reached English via Old French. The notion of the bishop’s authority residing in his throne recurs in see, which comes from Latin sēdem ‘seat’, a relative of English sit.
=> chair
cede: cede: [17] Cede comes, either directly or via French céder, from Latin cēdere ‘go away, withdraw, yield’. The Latin verb provided the basis for a surprisingly wide range of English words: the infinitive form produced, for instance, accede, concede, precede, proceed, and succeed, while the past participle cessus has given ancestor, cease, excess, recession, etc.
=> accede, ancestor, cease, concession, excess, necessary, proceed, recession, succeed
comedy: comedy: [14] Comedy is of Greek origin. It comes ultimately from Greek kōmos ‘revelry’. This appears to have been combined with ōidós ‘singer, poet’ (a derivative of aeídein ‘sing’, source of English ode and odeon) to produce kōmōidós, literally ‘singer in the revels’, hence ‘actor in a light amusing play’. From this was derived kōmōidíā, which came to English via Latin cōmoedia and Old French comedie.
=> encomium, ode
crabbed: crabbed: [13] Because of their tendency to deploy their pincers at the slightest provocation, and also perhaps because of their sidelong method of locomotion, crabs seem always to have had a reputation for being short-tempered and perverse. Hence the creation of the adjective crabbed, which literally means ‘like a crab’. Its meaning has subsequently been influenced by crab the apple, famous for its sourness. (The semantically similar crabby is a 16th-century formation.)
creed: creed: [OE] Creed was the first of a wide range of English words borrowed from Latin crēdere ‘believe’. Others include credible [14] (from Latin crēdibilis), credence [14] (from Old French credence), credential [16] (from medieval Latin crēdentiālis), credit [16] (from French crédit), and credulous [16] (from Latin crēdulus). Also ultimately from the same source are grant and miscreant [14] (from Old French mescreant, the present participle of mescroire ‘disbelieve’).
=> credible, credit, grant, miscreant
dedicate: dedicate: see indicate
deed: deed: [OE] Etymologically, a deed is ‘that which is done’. An ancient word, it can be traced back as far as a hypothetical *dhētis, a noun derived from *dhē-, *dhō- ‘place, put’, the Indo- European base from which do comes. This passed into Germanic as *dǣdiz, which produced German tat, Dutch daad, and Swedish dåad as well as English deed. The word’s application to a legal document is a 14th-century development.
=> do
deed poll: deed poll: [16] Contrary to what the term’s modern pronunciation might seem to suggest, with the main stress on its first element rather than its second, a deed poll is a sort of deed, not a sort of poll. It originally referred to a legal document made and signed by one person only. Such documents were drawn up on parchment cut evenly, or ‘polled’, rather than indented, as was the case with documents relating to two or more people.
depredation: depredation: see prey
dishevelled: dishevelled: [15] Semantically, dishevelled ‘with untidy hair’ and unkempt ‘with uncombed hair’ are closely parallel formations. Dishevelled originated as an adaptation of deschevele, the past participle of Old French descheveler ‘disarrange the hair’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and chevel ‘hair’, a descendant of Latin capillus ‘hair’ (from which English got capillary [17]).

In Middle English its meaning was extended to ‘without a head-dress’, and even to ‘undressed’, but its modern metaphorical application is the more general ‘untidy’. (The verb dishevel was a late 16th-century back-formation from dishevelled.)
=> capillary
dredge: dredge: English has two distinct words dredge, neither with a particularly well-documented past. Dredge ‘clear mud, silt, etc from waterway’ [16] may be related in some way to the 15thcentury Scottish term dreg-boat, and similarities have been pointed out with Middle Dutch dregghe ‘drag-net’, although if the two are connected, it is not clear who borrowed from whom.

It has also been suggested that it is related ultimately to drag. Dredge ‘sprinkle with sugar, flour, etc’ [16] is a verbal use based on a now obsolete noun dredge, earlier dradge, which meant ‘sweet’. This was borrowed from Old French dragie (its modern French descendant gave English dragée [19]), which may be connected in some way to Latin tragēmata and Greek tragémata ‘spices, condiments’ (these Latin and Greek terms, incidentally, may play some part in the obscure history of English tracklements ‘condiments to accompany meat’ [20], which the English food writer Dorothy Hartley claimed to have ‘invented’ on the basis of an earlier – but unrecorded – dialect word meaning more generally ‘appurtenances’).
=> dragée
dromedary: dromedary: [14] The dromedary, or onehumped camel, got its name from its swiftness of foot. The word comes via Old French dromedaire from late Latin dromedārius, an adjective formed from dromas, the Latin term for ‘camel’. This in turn was derived from the Greek dromás ‘runner’, a close relative of drómos ‘running, course’, which is the source of the -drome in such English words as hippodrome, aerodrome, and palindrome.
=> aerodrome, hippodrome, palindrome
eddy: eddy: [15] The ultimate source of eddy appears to be a prehistoric Germanic particle meaning ‘back, again’, represented in Old English by ed-, in Old High German by et-, and in Old Norse by ith- (it is related to Latin et ‘and’ and its various Romance descendants, such as French et and Italian ed). According to this theory, an eddy would thus be ‘water that flows back’.

What is not altogether clear, however, is precisely how that prehistoric particle became eddy. Perhaps the most likely candidate as the missing link is Old Norse itha ‘whirlpool’, but it has also been suggested that Old English may have had a word *edwǣg, whose second element, ‘wave’, would be related to English way and vogue.
edge: edge: [OE] Edge is probably the main native English representative of the Indo-European base *ak- ‘be sharp or pointed’, which has contributed so many words to the language via Latin and Greek (such as acid, acrid, acute, acne, alacrity, and oxygen). Its Germanic descendant was *ag-, on which was based the noun *agjā, source of German ecke ‘corner’, Swedish egg ‘edge’ (a probable relative of English egg ‘urge’), and English edge. The word’s application to a ‘border’ or ‘boundary’ dates from the late 14th century.
=> acid, acne, acrid, acute, alacrity, egg, oxygen
edict: edict: [15] An edict is literally that which is ‘spoken out’ or ‘proclaimed’. It was acquired directly from Latin ēdictum, which comes from the past participle of ēdīcere ‘proclaim’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and dīcere ‘say’ (source of English diction, dictionary, dictate amongst a host of others). The passing resemblance of edict to edit is quite fortuitous, for they are completely unrelated.
=> dictate, diction, dictionary
edify: edify: [14] As its close relative edifice [14] suggests, edify has to do literally with ‘building’. And in fact its underlying etymological sense is ‘building a hearth’. That was the original sense of Latin aedis. Gradually, though, it was extended, in a familiar metaphorical transition, from ‘hearth’ to ‘home’ and ‘dwelling’. Addition of a verbal element related to facere ‘make’ produced aedificāre ‘build a house’, or simply ‘build’.

Its figurative application to ‘instruction’ or ‘enlightenment’ took place in Latin, and has no doubt been reinforced in English (which acquired the word from Old French edifier) by its accidental similarity to educate.
edit: edit: [18] Etymologically, someone who edits a newspaper ‘gives it out’, or in effect ‘publishes’ it. And that in fact is how the word was first used in English: when William Enfield wrote in his 1791 translation of Brucker’s Historia critica philosophiae that a certain author ‘wrote many philosophical treatises which have never been edited’, he meant ‘published’.

This usage comes directly from ēditus, the past participle of Latin ēdere ‘put out, exhibit, publish’, which was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and dare ‘put, give’ (source of English date, donate, etc). In its modern application, ‘prepare for publication’, it is mainly a back-formation from editor [17], which acquired this particular sense in the 18th century. (French éditeur still means ‘publisher’, and the term editor is used in that sense in some British publishing houses.)
=> date, donate
educate: educate: [15] To educate people is literally to ‘lead them out’. The word comes from the past participle of Latin ēducāre, which meant ‘bring up, rear’ as well as more specifically ‘educate’. It was related to ēdūcere ‘lead out’ (source of English educe [15]), a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and dūcere ‘lead’ (source of English duct, duke, and a whole host of derivatives such as deduce and seduce).
=> conduct, deduce, duct, duke, educe, produce, seduce
eisteddfod: eisteddfod: [19] An eisteddfod is literally a ‘session’ or ‘sitting’. It comes from the Welsh verb eistedd ‘sit’, a derivative of sedd ‘seat’, which goes back to the same Indo-European base (*sed-) as produced English sit and session. The final element, -fod, comes from the Welsh verb bod ‘be’.
=> session, sit
encyclopedia: encyclopedia: [16] Etymologically, encyclopedia means ‘general education’. It is a medieval formation, based on the Greek phrase egkúklios paideíā (egkúklios, a compound adjective formed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and kúklos ‘circle’ – source of English cycle – meant originally ‘circular’, and hence ‘general’, and is the ultimate source of English encyclical [17]; paideíā ‘education’ was a derivative of país ‘boy, child’, which has given English paederast [18], paedophilia [20], pedagogue [14], pedant [16], and paediatrician [20]).

This referred to the general course of education which it was customary to give a child in classical Greece, and after it was merged into a single word egkuklopaideíā and transmitted via medieval Latin encyclopedia into English, it retained that meaning at first. However, in the 17th century the term began to be applied to compendious reference works (the first, or at least the one which did most to establish the name, was perhaps that of J H Alsted in 1632).

The Encyclopedia Britannica was first published in 1768.
=> cycle, encyclical, paederast, pedagogue, pedant, pediatrician
expedition: expedition: [15] The Latin verb expedīre originally had the rather mundane meaning ‘free one’s feet’ – from a snare, for example It was formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and pēs ‘foot’ (source of English pedal, pedestrian, etc and related to English foot). Its literal meaning was soon lost sight of, progressing via ‘extricate, liberate’ to ‘bring out, make ready’ and ‘put in order, arrange, set right’.

The notion of ‘freeing’ something, enabling it to go forward without hindrance, is reflected in the verb’s English descendant expedite [17]. It also survives in the derived noun expedition, as ‘promptness, dispatch’; in the main, however, this has taken a different semantic route, via ‘sending out a military force’ to ‘long organized journey for a particular purpose’.
=> expedite, foot, pedal, pedestrian
federal: federal: [17] The modern political use of federal and its various derivatives is a comparatively recent development, ushered in by the formation of the USA in the late 18th century. Its original meaning was ‘of a league or treaty’ (it was formed from Latin foedus ‘league, treaty’, which came from the same ultimate Indo-European base – *bhidh-, *bhoidh- – as faith), and its application to a ‘joining together of states into a single unit’ seems to have arisen from such phrases as federal union, which would originally have meant ‘union by treaty’.
=> confide, defy, faith, perfidy
feed: feed: [OE] Feed was formed from the noun food in prehistoric Germanic times. It comes via Old English fēdan from Germanic *fōthjan, a derivative of *fōthon, the noun from which modern English food is descended. Its use as a noun, for ‘food, fodder’, dates from the 16th century.
=> food
fledge: fledge: [16] The notion underlying fledge is the ‘ability to fly’. Historically, the idea of ‘having feathers’ is simply a secondary development of that underlying notion. The verb comes from an obsolete adjective fledge ‘feathered’, which goes back ultimately to a pre-historic West Germanic *fluggja (source also of German flügge ‘fledged’). This was derived from a variant of the base which produced English fly.

There is no immediate connection with fletcher ‘arrowmaker’ [14], despite the formal resemblance and the semantic connection with ‘putting feathered flights on arrows’, but further back in time there may be a link. Fletcher came from Old French flechier, a derivative of fleche ‘arrow’. A possible source for this was an unrecorded Frankish *fliugika, which, like fledge, could be traceable back to the same Germanic ancestor as that of English fly.
=> fly
gnarled: gnarled: [17] Gnarled is essentially a 19thcentury word. It is recorded once before then, in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure 1603 (‘Thy sharp and sulphurous bolt splits the unwedgable and gnarled oak’), but its modern currency is due to its adoption by early 19th-century romantic writers. It is probably a variant of knurled [17], itself a derivative of knur or knor ‘rough misshapen lump, as on a tree trunk’ [14], which is related to German knorren ‘knot, gnarled branch or trunk’.
=> knurled
gobbledegook: gobbledegook: [20] This word for pretentious or obfuscatory verbiage was the invention, in the 1940s, of Maury Maverick, Texan lawyer, chairman of the US Smaller War Plants Corporation and a descendant of the Samuel A. Maverick who gave English the word maverick. His explanation of its genesis, that it was probably suggested by ‘the old bearded turkey gobbler back in Texas, who was always gobbledy-gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity’, stikes a disingenuous note in the light of the previously existing US slang phrase gobble the goo, meaning ‘perform fellatio’.
hedge: hedge: [OE] Hedge traces its ancestry back to a prehistoric Germanic *khag-, which also produced the haw of hawthorn and possibly haggard and quay too. From it was derived the West Germanic noun *khagjō, which has since become differentiated into German hecke, Dutch heg, and English hedge. The compound hedgehog, an allusion to the animal’s piglike nose, dates from the 15th century (porcupine, literally ‘pig spine’, conveys much the same idea).
=> haggard, hawthorn, quay
hereditary: hereditary: [16] Latin hērēs ‘heir’ (a relative of Greek khéra ‘widow’ and Sanskrit hā- ‘leave, lose’) has been quite a prolific source of English words. For one thing there is heir [13] itself, acquired via Old French heir. And then there are all the derivatives of the Latin stem form hērēd-, including hereditament [15], hereditary, heredity [16], and, via the late Latin verb hērēditāre, heritage [13] and inherit [14].
=> heredity, heritage, inherit
hundred: hundred: [OE] The main Old English word for ‘hundred’ was hund, whose history can be traced back via a prehistoric Germanic *khundam to Indo-European *kmtóm; this was also the source of Latin centum, Greek hekatón, and Sanskrit çatám, all meaning ‘hundred’. The form hundred did not appear until the 10th century. Its -red ending (represented also in German hundert, Dutch honderd, and Swedish hundrade) comes from a prehistoric Germanic *rath ‘number’.
=> cent, rate, thousand
immediate: immediate: see medium
impede: impede: see pedal
ingredient: ingredient: [15] The -gredi- of ingredient represents the Latin verb gradī ‘step, go’ (whose past participial stem gress- has given English aggression, congress, digress, etc). From it was formed ingredī ‘go in, enter’, whose present participle ingrediēns became English ingredient. The word’s etymological meaning is thus ‘that which “enters into” a mixture’. It was originally used mainly with reference to medicines, and its current application to food recipes seems to be a comparatively recent development.
=> aggression, congress, grade, gradual
intermediate: intermediate: see medium
kindred: kindred: see kin
knurled: knurled: see gnarled
ledger: ledger: [15] Etymologically, a ledger is a book that ‘lies’ in one place. The term was used in 15th- and 16th-century English with various specific applications, including a ‘large copy of the Breviary’ (the Roman Catholic service book), and a ‘large register or record-book’ – both big volumes that would not have been moved around much – but it finally settled on the ‘main book in the set of books used for keeping accounts’. It probably comes from Dutch legger or ligger, agent nouns derived respectively from leggen ‘lay’ and liggen ‘lie’ (relatives of English lay and lie).
=> lay, lie
medal: medal: see metal
meddle: meddle: see mix
medial: medial: see medium