英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

exchange [exchange 词源字典]: exchange: [14] Like change, exchange comes ultimately from Latin cambīre ‘barter’. In postclassical times this had the prefix ex- added to it, here functioning as an indicator of ‘change’, producing late Latin *excambiāre. In Old French this became eschangier (whence modern French échanger), which English acquired via Anglo- Norman eschaunge. A 15th-century reversion to the original Latin spelling of the prefix produced modern English exchange.
=> change[exchange etymology, exchange origin, 英语词源]
moot: moot: [OE] Etymologically, a ‘moot point’ is one talked about at a ‘meeting’. For ‘meeting’ is the original sense of the noun moot – particularly as applied in early medieval England to a meeting functioning as a court of law. The word goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *mōtam ‘meeting’, source also of English meet. Its modern adjectival usage seems to have emerged in the 16th century. The derived verb moot goes back to Old English times (mōtian ‘converse, plead in court’), but again its present-day use, for ‘suggest, propose’, is a more recent development, dating from the 17th century.
=> meet
protein: protein: [19] The word protein was coined (as French protéine) by the Dutch chemist Mulder in the late 1830s. He based it on late Greek prōteios ‘primary’, a derivative of Greek prótos ‘first’ (see PROTOZOA), the notion being that proteins were substances of ‘primary’ importance to the proper functioning of the body.
cowardice (n.): c. 1300, from Old French coardise (13c.), from coard, coart (see coward) + noun suffix -ise.
Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. [Ernest Hemingway, "Men at War," 1942]
function (v.): 1844, "perform a function" (intransitive), from function (n.). Related: Functioned; functioning.
malfunction (n.): 1827, from mal- "bad, badly, wrong" + function. As a verb, by 1888. Related: Malfunctioned; malfunctioning.
pejorate: "To make worse; to cause to deteriorate. In later use also: to endow (a word) with a less favourable meaning", Mid 17th cent.; earliest use found in Richard Saunders. From post-classical Latin peiorat-, past participial stem of peiorare to make worse (late 2nd or early 3rd cent. a.d.) from classical Latin pēior worse (functioning as the comparative of malus bad: see mal-) from the same Indo-European base as foot; compare -ior. Compare Middle French pejorer (1611 in Cotgrave in an apparently isolated attestation; French péjorer (rare) 1923 or earlier in reflexive use, 1970 in transitive use), Italian peggiorare, both in sense ‘to become worse’, Spanish †peorar, Portuguese piorar, Italian peggiorare, all in sense ‘to make (something) worse’. Compare earlier meliorate.