英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

ambergris [ambergris 词源字典]: ambergris: [15] The original term for ambergris (a waxy material from the stomach of the sperm whale) was amber. But as confusion began to arise between the two substances amber and ambergris, amber came to be used for both in all the languages that had borrowed it from Arabic, thus compounding the bewilderment. The French solution was to differentiate ambergris as ambre gris, literally ‘grey amber’, and this eventually became the standard English term. (Later on, the contrastive term ambre jaune ‘yellow amber’ was coined for ‘amber’ in French.) Uncertainty over the identity of the second element, -gris, has led to some fanciful reformulations of the word.

In the 17th century, many people thought ambergris came from Greece – hence spellings such as amber-degrece and amber-greece. And until comparatively recently its somewhat greasy consistency encouraged the spelling ambergrease.
=> amber[ambergris etymology, ambergris origin, 英语词源]
chamelion: chamelion: [14] Etymologically, a chamelion is a ‘ground lion’. The word comes from Greek khamailéōn, a compound formed from khamaí ‘on the ground’ (English humus and humble are related to it) and léōn ‘lion’. Until the 19th century the word was usually spelled camelion, which led to popular association of the first element with camel; this is turn encouraged an identification with camelopard, a now obsolete word for ‘giraffe’, and in the 14th and 15th centuries camelion was used for ‘giraffe’.
=> humble, humus, lion
enthusiasm: enthusiasm: [17] Enthusiasm has had a chequered semantic history. Like giddiness, it meant originally ‘state of being inspired by a god’. It comes ultimately from Greek énthous or éntheos ‘possessed, inspired’, a compound formed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and theós ‘god’ (as in English theology). From this in turn was derived the verb enthousiázein ‘be inspired’ and the noun enthousiasmós, which passed into English via Latin or French, still with the sense ‘divine inspiration’ (‘Doth he think they knew it by enthusiasm or revelation from heaven?’ Richard Baxter, Infants’ church membership and baptism 1651).

In the stern climate of Puritanism, however, divine inspiration was not something to be encouraged, and as the 17th century progressed enthusiasm took on derogatory connotations of ‘excessive religious emotion’. The modern approbatory meaning, ‘eagerness’, had its beginnings at the start of the 18th century, and by the early 19th century had ousted the deprecatory sense from leading place.
=> theology
vintage: vintage: [15] The vintage is etymologically the ‘taking away of wine’. The word’s ultimate source is Latin vindēmia ‘grape gathering’, a compound noun formed from vīnum ‘wine’ (source of English wine) and dēmere ‘take away, take off’ (which in turn was a compound verb based on emere ‘buy, take’). This passed into English via Old French vendange as vendage, which by association with vintner [15] (another derivative ultimately of Latin vīnum) soon changed to vintage.

It continued at first to be restricted to the general sense ‘grape crop’. The specific application to the crop of a particular year did not begin to emerge until the 18th century, and this led at the end of the 19th century to the broad use of the word for ‘year when something was produced’. Connotations of ‘oldness’ were encouraged by its application to ‘vintage cars’, first recorded in 1928.
=> vine, vintner, wine
encourage (v.): early 15c., from Old French encoragier "make strong, hearten," from en- "make, put in" (see en- (1)) + corage "courage, heart" (see courage). Related: Encouraged; encouraging; encouragingly.
fencing (n.): mid-15c., "defending, act of protecting or keeping (something) in proper condition" (short for defencing); 1580s in the sense "art of using a sword or foil in attack and defense" (also fence-play); verbal noun from fence (v.). Meaning "putting up of fences" is from 1620s; that of "an enclosure" is from 1580s; meaning "receiving stolen goods" is from 1851 (see fence (n.)); meaning "materials for an enclosure" is from 1856.

Despite the re-enactment in 1285 of the Assize of Arms of 1181, fencing was regarded as unlawful in England. The keeping of fencing schools was forbidden in the City of London, "as fools who delight in mischief do learn to fence with buckler, and thereby are encouraged in their follies."
fiddle (n.): "stringed musical instrument, violin," late 14c., fedele, fydyll, fidel, earlier fithele, from Old English fiðele "fiddle," which is related to Old Norse fiðla, Middle Dutch vedele, Dutch vedel, Old High German fidula, German Fiedel "a fiddle;" all of uncertain origin.

The usual suggestion, based on resemblance in sound and sense, is that it is from Medieval Latin vitula "stringed instrument" (source of Old French viole, Italian viola), which perhaps is related to Latin vitularia "celebrate joyfully," from Vitula, Roman goddess of joy and victory, who probably, like her name, originated among the Sabines [Klein, Barnhart]. Unless the Medieval Latin word is from the Germanic ones.
FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat. [Ambrose Bierce, "The Cynic's Word Book," 1906]
Fiddle has been relegated to colloquial usage by its more proper cousin, violin, a process encouraged by phraseology such as fiddlesticks (1620s), contemptuous nonsense word fiddle-de-dee (1784), and fiddle-faddle. Century Dictionary reports that fiddle "in popular use carries with it a suggestion of contempt and ridicule." Fit as a fiddle is from 1610s.
jellybean (n.): 1905, from jelly (n.) + bean (n.). So called for its shape. Soon used in U.S. slang for "stupid person," probably encouraged by the slang sense of bean as "head."
kindred (n.): c. 1200, kinraden, compound of kin (q.v.) + -rede, from Old English ræden "condition, rule," related to rædan "to advise, rule" (see read (v.)). With intrusive -d- (17c.) probably for phonetic reasons (compare thunder) but perhaps encouraged by kind (n.). As an adjective, 1520s, from the noun.
Pre-Raphaelite (n., adj.): c. 1848, in reference to the "brotherhood" (founded 1847) of Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and others (seven in all) who, encouraged by Ruskin, sought to revive the naturalistic spirit of art in the age before Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520).
th: A sound found chiefly in words of Old English, Old Norse or Greek origin, unpronounceable by Normans and many other Europeans. In Greek, the sound corresponds etymologically to Sanskrit -dh- and English -d-; and it was represented graphically by -TH- and at first pronounced as a true aspirate (as still in English outhouse, shithead, etc.). But by 2c. B.C.E. the Greek letter theta was in universal use and had the modern "-th-" sound. Latin had neither the letter nor the sound, however, and the Romans represented Greek theta by -TH-, which they generally pronounced, at least in Late Latin, as simple "-t-" (passed down to Romanic languages, as in Spanish termal "thermal," teoria "theory," teatro "theater").

In Germanic languages it represents PIE *-t- and was common at the start of words or after stressed vowels. To represent it, Old English and Old Norse used the characters ð "eth" (a modified form of -d-) and þ "thorn," which originally was a rune. Old English, unlike Old Norse, seems never to have standardized which of the two versions of the sound ("hard" and "soft") was represented by which of the two letters.

The digraph -th- sometimes appears in early Old English, on the Roman model, and it returned in Middle English with the French scribes, driving out eth by c. 1250, but thorn persisted, especially in demonstratives (þat, þe, þis, etc.), even as other words were being spelled with -th-. The advent of printing dealt its death-blow, however, as types were imported from continental founders, who had no thorn. For a time y was used in its place (especially in Scotland), because it had a similar shape, hence ye for the in historical tourist trap Ye Olde _______ Shoppe (it never was pronounced "ye," only spelled that way).

The awareness that some Latin words in t- were from Greek th- encouraged over-correction in English and created unetymological forms such as Thames and author, while some words borrowed from Romanic languages preserve, on the Roman model, the Greek -th- spelling but the simple Latin "t" pronunciation (as in Thomas and thyme).
Whig: British political party, 1657, in part perhaps a disparaging use of whigg "a country bumpkin" (1640s); but mainly a shortened form of Whiggamore (1649) "one of the adherents of the Presbyterian cause in western Scotland who marched on Edinburgh in 1648 to oppose Charles I." Perhaps originally "a horse drover," from dialectal verb whig "to urge forward" + mare. In 1689 the name was first used in reference to members of the British political party that opposed the Tories. American Revolution sense of "colonist who opposes Crown policies" is from 1768. Later it was applied to opponents of Andrew Jackson (as early as 1825), and taken as the name of a political party (1834) that merged into the Republican Party in 1854-56.
[I]n the spring of 1834 Jackson's opponents adopted the name Whig, traditional term for critics of executive usurpations. James Watson Webb, editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, encouraged use of the name. [Henry] Clay gave it national currency in a speech on April 14, 1834, likening "the whigs of the present day" to those who had resisted George III, and by summer it was official. [Daniel Walker Howe, "What Hath God Wrought," 2007, p.390]
Whig historian is recorded from 1924. Whig history is "the tendency in many historians ... to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present." [Herbert Butterfield, "The Whig Interpretation of History," 1931]