英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

ago [ago 词源字典]: ago: [14] Historically, ago is the past participle of a verb. Its earlier, Middle English, form – agone – reveals its origins more clearly. It comes from the Old English verb āgān ‘pass away’, which was formed from gān ‘go’ and the prefix ā- ‘away, out’. At first it was used before expressions of time (‘For it was ago five year that he was last there’, Guy of Warwick 1314), but this was soon superseded by the now current postnominal use.
=> go[ago etymology, ago origin, 英语词源]
base: base: There are two distinct words base in English. Base meaning ‘lower part, foundation’ [14] came either via Old French base or was a direct anglicization of Latin basis (acquired by English in its unaltered form at around the same time). The Latin word in its turn came from Greek básis, which meant originally ‘step’ and came ultimately from the Indo-European base *gwm-, from which English gets come; the semantic progression involved was ‘going, stepping’ to ‘that on which one walks or stands’ to ‘pedestal’.

The derivative basement [18] is Italian in origin (Italian basamento means ‘base of a column’), but probably reached English via early modern Dutch basement ‘foundation’. Base meaning ‘low’ [14] comes via Old French bas from medieval Latin bassus ‘short, low’. The ultimate antecedents of this are uncertain, although some have suggested a connection with básson, the comparative form of Greek bathús ‘deep’.

The adjective bass is historically the same word as base, but since the 16th century has been distinguished from it by spelling.
=> basis; bass
champion: champion: [13] Etymologically, a champion is someone who fought in the campus or arena. Latin campus (source of English camp) meant, among other things, ‘field of battle’ – both a fullscale military battlefield and an area for staged battles between gladiators. Those who fought in such battles – the gladiators – were called in medieval Latin campiones.

The word passed into English via Old French champion. The word’s original meaning survives historically in such phrases as ‘king’s champion’, someone who will fight on behalf of the king, and by extension in ‘supporter’, as in ‘a champion of prisoners’ rights’. The modern sense ‘winner’ did not develop until the early 19th century. The abbreviated form champ is 19th-century American.

An alternative and now obsolete form of the word is campion, from Old Northern French, and it has been speculated that this is the origin of the plant-name campion [16], on the basis that it was used to make garlands for fighters.
=> camp, campion, champagne, champion
chicken: chicken: [OE] Chicken is a widespread Germanic word (Dutch has kuiken, for instance, and Danish kylling), whose ancestor has been reconstructed as *kiukīnam. This was formed, with a diminutive suffix, on a base *keuk-, which some have claimed is a variant of a base which lies behind cock; if that is so, a chicken would amount etymologically to a ‘little cock’ (and historically the term has been applied to young fowl, although nowadays it tends to be the general word, regardless of age). Chick is a 14thcentury abbreviation.

The modern adjectival sense ‘scared’ is a 20th-century revival of a 17thand 18th-century noun sense ‘coward’, based no doubt on chicken-hearted.
=> cock
colonel: colonel: [17] Historically, a colonel was so called because he commanded the company at the head of a regiment, known in Italian as the compagna colonnella, literally the ‘little-column company’; hence the commander himself took the title colonnella. The word colonnella is a diminutive form of colonna, which is descended from Latin columna ‘pillar’ (source of English column).

It appears first to have entered English via French in the form coronel, in which the first l had mutated to r. Spellings with this r occur in English from the 17th and 18th centuries, and it is the source of the word’s modern pronunciation. Colonel represents a return to the original Italian spelling.
=> column
contrary: contrary: [14] Contrary originated as a Latin adjectival formation based on the preposition contrā ‘against’, which historically was a derivative of com or cum ‘with’. Latin contrārius passed into English via Old French contraire and Anglo-Norman contrarie. Originally contrary was pronounced with the main stress on its middle syllable, but this survives only in the sense ‘obstinately self-willed’; from the 18th century onwards, the stress has usually been placed on the first syllable.
crisp: crisp: [OE] Historically, crisp means ‘curly’. It was borrowed into Old English from Latin crispus ‘curled’ (which was also the source of French crêpe, acquired by English as crape in the 17th century and then reborrowed in the original French form in the 19th century). The reason for the emergence of the word’s modern sense ‘brittle’, which happened in the early 16th century, is not clear, it may simply be that the sound of the word suggested brittleness.
=> crape, crêpe
dais: dais: [13] Ultimately, dais and disc are the same word. Both came from Latin discus ‘quoit’, which by medieval times had come to mean ‘table’ (see DESK). Its Old French descendant was deis, which was borrowed into Middle English as deis. It died out in English around 1600, but it survived in Scottish English, and was revived in England by antiquarians, its spelling based on the modern French form dais. Historically it is a monosyllabic word, and the modern two-syllable pronunciation represents an attempt to render the unfamiliar French word.
=> desk, disc, dish
epoch: epoch: [17] Historically, epoch means ‘point in time’, but its particular application to ‘point marking the beginning of a new period of time’ has led increasingly to its use in modern English for simply ‘historical period’. The word comes via modern Latin epocha from Greek epokhé, literally ‘pause, stoppage’, and hence ‘fixed point in time’. This was a derivative of epékhein ‘pause, hold back’, a compound verb formed from the prefix epí- ‘back’ and ékhein ‘hold’ (source of English hectic and related to scheme and sketch).
=> hectic, scheme, sketch
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
fly: fly: [OE] Historically, ‘move through the air’ is something of a secondary semantic development for fly. Its distant Indo-European ancestor, *pleu-, denoted rapid motion in general, and in particular ‘flowing’ or ‘floating’, and it produced such offspring as Greek pléo ‘sail, float’ and Sanskrit plu- ‘sail, swim’, as well as English fleet, flood, flow, fowl, plover, and pluvial.

An extension to that base, *pleuk-, gave rise to Lithuanian plaukti ‘float, sail, swim’, and to prehistoric West and North Germanic *fleugan, source of German fliegen, Dutch vliegen, Swedish flyga, and English fly, all meaning ‘move with wings’. The insect-name fly is also of considerable antiquity, going back to a prehistoric Germanic derivative *fleugōn or *fleugjōn, but the origins of the adjective fly ‘crafty, sharp’ [19] are not known.
=> fleet, flood, flow, fowl, plover, pluvial
friend: friend: [OE] Etymologically, friend means ‘loving’. It and its Germanic relatives (German freund, Dutch vriend, Swedish frände, etc) go back to the present participle of the prehistoric Germanic verb *frijōjan ‘love’ (historically, the German present participle ends in -nd, as in modern German -end; English -ng is an alteration of this). *Frijōjan itself was a derivative of the adjective *frijaz, from which modern English gets free, but which originally meant ‘dear, beloved’.
=> free
high: high: [OE] High is an ancient word. It goes right back to Indo-European *koukos, which is related to a number of terms denoting roughly ‘rounded protuberance’: Sanskrit kucas ‘breast’, for instance, Russian húcha ‘heap’, and Lithuanian kaukas ‘swelling, boil’. Evidently the notion of ‘tallness’, central to modern English high, is historically a secondary development from the notion of being ‘heaped up’ or ‘arched up’. The Germanic descendant of *koukos was *khaukhaz, which produced German hoch, Dutch hoog, Swedish hög, Danish hoj, and English high. Height is a derivative of *khaukh-.
=> height
hoar: hoar: [OE] Hoar now survives mainly in hoary, a disparaging term for ‘old’, and hoarfrost, literally ‘white frost’. Between them, they encapsulate the meaning of hoar – ‘greyishwhite haired with age’. But it is the colour that is historically primary, not the age. The word goes back to an Indo-European *koi-, whose other descendants include German heiter ‘bright’ and Russian ser’iy ‘grey’.

Another Germanic offshoot was *khairaz – but here the association between ‘grey hair’ and ‘age, venerability’ began to cloud the issue. For while English took the word purely as a colour term, German and Dutch have turned it into a title of respect, originally for an elderly man, now for any man: herr and mijnheer respectively.
=> hare, herring
icicle: icicle: [14] Historically, icicle is a tautology, meaning literally ‘ice icicle’. It originated in Middle English as a compound of ice and ickel ‘icicle’. This word, which survived dialectally into the 20th century as ickle, goes back to Old English gicel, which in turn was descended from a prehistoric Germanic *jakulaz (source also of modern Icelandic jökull ‘glacier’).
ilk: ilk: [OE] Historically ilk means simply ‘same’. Its Old English form was ilca, which was ultimately a compound made up of the demonstrative particle *i- ‘that (same)’ and *līk- ‘form’ (as in the English verb like). It had virtually died out by the mid-16th century as a straight synonym for same, but one context in which it survived, particularly in Scottish English, was in the increasingly fossilized phrase of that ilk ‘of the same’, which was used originally to express the notion that someone’s name was the same as that of the place they came from: thus Nairn of that ilk would have signified ‘someone called Nairn from a place called Nairn’.

In due course it came to be applied specifically to landed Scottish families, and so strong did the connection with ‘family’ become that by the 19th century we see the first signs of ilk being treated as if it were a noun, meaning ‘family’. That led on in time to an even more general sense ‘type, sort’, capable of use in such expressions as ‘of a different ilk’.
indolent: indolent: [18] Historically, indolent means ‘feeling no pain’ – indeed, that is how it was used as a technical medical term in English in the 17th and 18th centuries. It comes from late Latin indolens, which was based on the Latin verb dolere ‘suffer pain’ (source also of English dolour [13] and doleful [13]). English took the term directly from Latin, but meanwhile in French indolent had broadened out in meaning via ‘insensitive’ to ‘inactive, lethargic, lazy’, and that is the basis of the current English use of the adjective, acquired in the early 18th century.
=> doleful, dolour
left: left: [13] The Old English word for ‘left’ was winestra. Etymologically this meant ‘friendlier’ (it is related to Swedish vän ‘friend’), and its euphemistic application to ‘left’ is a reminder that historically the left-hand side of the body has been superstitiously regarded as of ill omen. To call it ‘friendly’ (a usage which survives in Swedish vänster and Danish venstre ‘left’) was an attempt to placate the evil forces of the left. (Latin sinister ‘left’ is similarly fraught with negative connotations.

It too had euphemistic origins – it came from a source meaning ‘more useful’ – and it developed the figurative senses ‘unfavourable’, ‘injurious’, etc, taken over and extended by English in sinister [15].) An ancestor of left existed in Old English – left or *lyft. But it meant ‘weak’ or ‘foolish’, and it was not until the 13th century that it came to be used as the partner of right.

Its ultimate origins are not known.
mane: mane: [OE] Mane goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *manō, which also produced German mähne and Dutch mane. Related forms such as Swedish manke ‘neck’, Irish muin ‘nape of the neck’, archaic Welsh mwn ‘neck’, Latin monīle ‘necklace’, and Sanskrit manyā- ‘nape of the neck’ suggest that historically ‘neck’ is the primary, ‘neck-hair’ a secondary meaning of this word-family. It has been speculated that it goes back ultimately to Indo-European *men- ‘project’ (source of English eminent, prominent, etc).
mind: mind: [12] Mind is a member of a large and diverse family of English words (including mandarin, mathematics, memory, and reminisce) that go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *men- ‘think’. Amongst its other descendants were Latin mēns ‘mind’, source of English mental [15], and prehistoric Germanic *gamunthiz (formed with the collective prefix *ga-).

This passed into Old English as gemynd, but its prefix was dropped in the early Middle English period, giving modern English mind. Historically, ‘memory’ has been as important an element in the word’s meaning as ‘mental faculty’, but it now survives mainly in the derived verb remind.
=> mandarin, mathematics, memory, mental, reminisce
near: near: [12] Historically, near is a comparative form, and its ancestor originally meant ‘nearer’. It was borrowed from Old Norse náer, the comparative of ná- ‘near’, which came from the same prehistoric Germanic source as produced English nigh [OE] and next (not to mention German nah ‘near’). By the time it reached English it had lost its comparative force, and simply meant ‘close’ (which is also the sense of its modern Scandinavian descendants, Swedish nära and Danish nær).
=> neighbour, next, nigh
pew: pew: [14] Historically, pew and podium are the same word. Both go back ultimately to Greek pódion ‘small foot, base’, a diminutive form of poús ‘foot’ (a distant relative of English foot). This passed into Latin as podium ‘raised place, balcony’, acquired directly by English as podium [18]. Its plural podia passed into English via Old French puie ‘raised seat, balcony’ as pew.

This was originally used for a sort of raised enclosure in a church, court, etc. rather like a pulpit or dock; then for an enclosure in a church set aside for particular people to sit in (now known as a box pew); and finally (in the 17th century) for a church bench.
=> foot, pedal, podium
pond: pond: [13] Pond is historically the same word as pound ‘enclosure’. The differentiation between the two was established early on, although pound continued to be used for ‘pond’ in Scotland and in some English dialects until quite recently. The common denominator is that ponds were originally specifically used for keeping fish in. The reason for the phonetic change from pound to pond is not known.
=> pound
ratchet: ratchet: [17] Ratchet was originally acquired, in the form rochet, from French rochet. This was a diminutive form descended ultimately from Frankish *rokko ‘spool’, which is related to English rocket. The notion of having teeth, which is central to the idea of a ratchet, therefore appears to be historically secondary; it presumably arose from the addition of ‘teeth’ to a rotating ‘spool’ or ‘spindle’ in a machine. The change from rochet to ratchet, which began in the 18th century, may have been influenced by German ratsch ‘ratchet’.
=> rocket
redoubt: redoubt: [17] Redoubt ‘stronghold’ has no etymological connection with doubt (although redoubtable [14] does – it derives from the French ancestor of doubt, which originally meant ‘fear’, and so historically denotes ‘to be feared’). It was borrowed from French redoute, which goes back via obsolete Italian ridotta to medieval Latin reductus ‘hidden place, refuge’, a noun use of the past participle of Latin redūcere ‘bring back, withdraw’ (source of English reduce). The b was inserted under the influence of redoubtable.
=> reduce
road: road: [OE] Road comes from the same ultimate source as ride – and indeed in the Old English period it meant either simply ‘riding’ or ‘hostile incursion on horseback’ (a sense preserved in inroads [16] and also in raid, which is historically the same word as road). By the 14th century the sense ‘sheltered anchorage’ (now represented by the plural roads) had emerged, but the central modern meaning ‘track for traffic’ did not put in an appearance until the late 16th century (hitherto the main words for expressing this concept had been way and street).
=> inroads, raid, ride
rut: rut: The rut of deer [15] and the rut of a wheel [16] are not related. The latter in fact is historically the same word as route. Both go back ultimately to Vulgar Latin *rupta, which was a noun use of the past participle of Latin rumpere ‘break’ (source also of English rout and rupture). The etymological notion underlying it is therefore of a path that has been ‘broken’ by constant use, a ‘beaten track’.

It passed into Old French as rute or rote, and it was this that gave English rut, which originally denoted the ‘track’ made by a wheel. The later French form route is the source of English route [16]. Routine [17] comes from a French derivative of route. Rut ‘oestrus’ comes via Old French rut from Latin rugītus, a derivative of rugīre ‘roar’.
=> rout, rupture
scaffold: scaffold: [14] Historically, scaffold and catafalque [17] ‘coffin-stand’ are virtually the same word. Catafalque comes via French catafalque and Italian catafalco from Vulgar Latin *catafalcum, a word of uncertain origin. Combination with the prefix ex- produced *excatafalcum, which passed into English via Old French eschaffaut and Anglo-Norman *scaffaut.

The word originally denoted any sort of platform, and did not narrow down to ‘platform for executions’ until the 16th century. The derivative scaffolding, a term which originally alluded to the platforms set up around a building rather than to poles supporting them, also dates from the 14th century.
=> catafalque
serenade: serenade: [17] A serenade is strictly a ‘song sung in the evening’, but in fact historically it has nothing to do with ‘night’ – etymologically it is a ‘serene’ piece of music. The word comes via French sérénade from Italian serenata, a derivative of sereno ‘serene’. The notion of a serenata as a piece of ‘night’ music arose through association with sera ‘evening’ (a relative of French soir ‘evening’, from which English gets soirée [19]). Italian sereno came from Latin serēnus ‘bright, clear’, which also produced English serene [16].
=> serene
slim: slim: [17] Slim is now quite an upbeat word, but that is a comparatively new departure, for historically it has been neutral if not downright derogatory. It was borrowed from Dutch slim ‘small, inferior’, which went back via Middle Dutch slim ‘slanting, bad’ to a prehistoric Germanic *slimbaz ‘oblique, crooked’ (source also of German schlimm ‘bad’). It may be distantly related to Latvian slīps ‘crooked, steep’.
tadpole: tadpole: [15] A tadpole is etymologically a ‘toad-head’. The word was coined from Middle English tadde ‘toad’ and pol ‘head’ (ancestor of modern English poll ‘voting’, historically a counting of ‘heads’). Tadpoles, with their moonlike faces appearing to take up about half of their small globular bodies, seem rather like animated heads.
=> poll, toad
through: through: [OE] Through comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *thurkh, which also produced German durch and Dutch door. Its ultimate source was the Indo-European base *tr-, which also produced Latin trans ‘across’. Thorough is historically the same word as through.
=> nostril, thorough, thrill
to: to: [OE] To comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *tō, which also produced German zu and Dutch toe. This went back ultimately to an Indo-European *do, which also produced Russian do ‘to’. Too is historically the same word as to.
=> too
too: too: [16] Too is historically the same word as to, but the two were not differentiated orthographically until the 16th century. The sense ‘also’ comes from the notion of addition implicit in putting something ‘to’ something else; and ‘addition’ led on to ‘excess’.
=> to
truce: truce: [13] Historically, truce is simply the plural of the noun version of the adjective true. In Old English this was trēow, which meant ‘faith, pledge’. It was often used in the plural with the same meaning as the singular, and this tendency increased in early Middle English to the point where the singular disappeared altogether. It had meanwhile narrowed down in meaning to a ‘pledge to stop fighting’.
=> true
wick: wick: [OE] Wick ‘burning fibre in a candle or lamp’ has West Germanic relatives in German wieche and Dutch wiek, but its ultimate ancestry is uncertain (a connection has been suggested with Old Irish figim ‘I weave’). The wick of get on someone’s wick ‘annoy someone’, incidentally (first recorded in 1945), is probably a different word. It appears to be short for Hampton Wick, rhyming slang for ‘prick, penis’ (Hampton Wick is a district in southwest London; its wick means historically ‘village, town’, and is the same word ultimately as the -wich, -wick of English place-names).
agitator (n.): 1640s, agent noun from agitate (v.); originally "elected representative of the common soldiers in Cromwell's army," who brought grievances (chiefly over lack of pay) to their officers and Parliament.

Political sense is first recorded 1734, and negative overtones began with its association with Irish patriots such as Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847). Historically, in American English, often with outside and referring to people who stir up a supposedly contented class or race. Latin agitator meant "a driver, a charioteer."
Ashkenazim (n.): (plural) "central and northern European Jews" (as opposed to Sephardim, Jews of Spain and Portugal), 1839, from Hebrew Ashkenazzim, plural of Ashkenaz, eldest son of Gomer (Gen. x:3), also the name of a people mentioned in Jer. li:27 (perhaps akin to Greek skythoi "Scythians," compare Akkadian ishkuzai); identified historically with various people; in Middle Ages, with the Germans.
assault (n.): late 14c., earlier asaut (c. 1200), from Old French asaut, assaut "an attack, an assault, attacking forces" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *adsaltus "attack, assault," from ad "to" (see ad-) + Latin saltus "a leap," from salire "to leap, spring" (see assail). In law by 1580s; historically, assault includes menacing words or actions; battery is an actual blow.
behoove (v.): Old English behofian "to have need of, have use for," verbal form of the ancient compound word represented by behoof.
Historically, it rimes with move, prove, but being now mainly a literary word, it is generally made to rime with rove, grove, by those who know it only in books. [OED]
burn (v.): 12c., combination of Old Norse brenna "to burn, light," and two originally distinct Old English verbs: bærnan "to kindle" (transitive) and beornan "to be on fire" (intransitive), all from Proto-Germanic *brennan/*brannjan (cognates: Middle Dutch bernen, Dutch branden, Old High German brinnan, German brennen, Gothic -brannjan "to set on fire"). This perhaps is from PIE *gwher- "to heat, warm" (see warm (adj.)), or from PIE *bhre-n-u, from root *bhreue- "to boil forth, well up" (see brew (v.)). Related: Burned/burnt (see -ed); burning.

Figuratively (of passions, battle, etc.) in Old English. Meaning "cheat, swindle, victimize" is first attested 1650s. In late 18c, slang, burned meant "infected with venereal disease." To burn one's bridges (behind one) "behave so as to destroy any chance of returning to a status quo" (attested by 1892 in Mark Twain), perhaps ultimately is from reckless cavalry raids in the American Civil War. Slavic languages have historically used different and unrelated words for the transitive and intransitive senses of "set fire to"/"be on fire:" for example Polish palić/gorzeć, Russian žeč'/gorel.
canicular (adj.): late 14c., in reference to the "dog days," from Latin canicularis "pertaining to the dog days," from canicula "little dog," also "the Dog Star," diminutive of canis (see canine). Also see heliacal; Sirius. In literal use ("pertaining to a dog") historically only as attempt at humor.
denizen (n.): early 15c., from Anglo-French deinzein, from deinz "within, inside," from Late Latin deintus, from de- "from" + intus "within" (see ento-). Historically, an alien admitted to certain rights of citizenship; a naturalized citizen.
generation (n.): early 14c., "body of individuals born about the same period" (historically 30 years but in other uses as few as 17), on the notion of "descendants at the same stage in the line of descent," from Old French generacion "race, people, species; progeny, offspring; act of procreating" (12c., Modern French génération) and directly from Latin generationem (nominative generatio) "generating, generation," noun of action from past participle stem of generare "bring forth, beget, produce," from genus "race, kind" (see genus).

From late 14c. as "act or process of procreation; process of being formed; state of being procreated; reproduction; sexual intercourse;" also "that which is produced, fruit, crop; children; descendants, offspring of the same parent." Generation gap first recorded 1967; generation x is 1991, by author Douglas Coupland (b.1961) in the book of that name; generation y attested by 1994. Adjectival phrase first-generation, second-generation, etc. with reference to U.S. immigrant families is from 1896. Related: Generational.
goose (v.): "jab in the rear," c. 1880, from goose (n.), possibly from resemblance of the upturned thumb to a goose's beak, or from the notion of creating nervous excitement. Related: Goosed; goosing. In 19c. theatrical slang, to be goosed meant "to be hissed" (by 1818). A broad range of sexual slang senses historically cluster around goose and gooseberry; goose and duck was rhyming slang for "fuck;" Farmer identifies Winchester goose as "a woman; whence, by implication, the sexual favor," and goose as a verb "to go wenching, to womanize, also to possess a woman." He also has goose-grease for a woman's sexual juices, while gooser and goose's neck meant "the penis." Gooseberries (they are hairy) was "testicles," and gooseberry pudding "a woman."
gun (n.): mid-14c., gunne "an engine of war that throws rocks, arrows or other missiles from a tube by the force of explosive powder or other substance," apparently a shortening of woman's name Gunilda, found in Middle English gonnilde "cannon" and in an Anglo-Latin reference to a specific gun from a 1330 munitions inventory of Windsor Castle ("... una magna balista de cornu quae Domina Gunilda ..."). Also compare gonnilde gnoste "spark or flame used to fire a cannon" (early 14c.). The woman's name is from Old Norse Gunnhildr, a compound of gunnr and hildr, both meaning "war, battle." First element from PIE *gwhen- "to strike, kill" (see bane); for second, see Hilda. The identification of women with powerful weapons is common historically (such as Big Bertha, Brown Bess, Mons Meg, etc.). Or perhaps directly from Old Norse gunnr "battle." The word was perhaps influenced by or confirmed by (or possibly from) Old French engon, dialectal variant of engin "engine."

Meaning grew with technology, from cannons to firearms as they developed 15c.; popularly applied to pistols and revolvers from 1744. In modern military use the word is restricted to cannons (which must be mounted), especially long ones used for high velocity and long trajectory. Hence great guns (1884 as an exclamation) distinguished from small guns (such as muskets) from c. 1400. Meaning "thief, rascal" is from 1858. For son of a gun, see son. To jump the gun (1912, American English) is a figurative use from track and field. Guns "a woman's breasts" (especially if prominent) attested by 2006.
[G]un covers firearms from the heaviest naval or siege guns (but in technical use excluding mortars and howitzers) to the soldier's rifle or the sportsman's shotgun, and in current U.S. use even the gangster's revolver. In the other European languages there is no such comprehensive word, but different terms for the small or hand gun of the soldier or sportsman (even these, sometimes differentiated) and the heavy naval guns or artillery pieces .... [Buck, 1949]
heathen: Old English hæðen "not Christian or Jewish," also as a noun, "heathen man, one of a race or nation which does not acknowledge the God of the Bible" (especially of the Danes), merged with Old Norse heiðinn (adj.) "heathen, pagan," of uncertain origin. Cognate with Old Saxon hedhin, Old Frisian hethen, Dutch heiden, Old High German heidan, German Heiden.

Perhaps literally "dweller on the heath, one inhabiting uncultivated land;" see heath + -en (2). Historically assumed to be ultimately from Gothic haiþno "gentile, heathen woman," used by Ulfilas in the first translation of the Bible into a Germanic language (as in Mark vii:26, for "Greek"); like other basic words for exclusively Christian ideas (such as church) it likely would have come first into Gothic and then spread to other Germanic languages. If so it could be a noun use of an unrelated Gothic adjective (compare Gothic haiþi "dwelling on the heath," but a religious sense is not recorded for this). Whether native or Gothic, it may have been chosen on model of Latin paganus, with its root sense of "rural" (see pagan), or for resemblance to Greek ethne (see gentile), or it may be a literal borrowing of that Greek word, perhaps via Armenian hethanos [Sophus Bugge].
historical (adj.): early 15c. (earlier in same sense was historial, late 14c.), from Latin historicus (from Greek historikos "historical, of or for inquiry," from historia; see history) + -al (1). Related: Historically.
Peter: masc. proper name, 12c., from Old English Petrus (genitive Pet(e)res, dative Pet(e)re), from Latin Petrus, from Greek Petros, literally "stone, rock," translation of Syriac kefa "stone" (Latinized as Cephas), nickname Jesus gave to apostle Simon Bar-Jona (Matt. xvi:17), historically known as St. Peter, and consequently a popular name among Christians (Italian Pietro, Spanish and Portuguese Pedro, Old French Pierres, French Pierre, etc.). Slang for "penis" is attested from 1902, probably from identity of first syllable.

The common form of this very common name in medieval England was Peres (Anglo-French Piers), hence surnames Pierce, Pearson, etc. Among the diminutive forms were Parkin and Perkin. To rob Peter to pay Paul (1510s, also in early 17c. French as descouvrir S. Pierre pour couvrir S. Pol) might be a reference to the many churches dedicated to those two saints, and have sprung from the fairly common practice of building or enriching one church with the ruins or revenues of another. But the alliterative pairing of the two names is attested from c. 1400 with no obvious connection to the saints:
Sum medicyne is for peter þat is not good for poul, for þe diuersite of complexioun. [Lanfranc's "Chirurgia Magna," English translation]
plantation (n.): mid-15c., "action of planting," from Middle French plantation, from Latin plantationem (nominative plantatio) "a planting," noun of action from past participle stem of plantare "to plant" (see plant). Historically used for "colony, settlement in a new land" (1610s); meaning "large farm on which tobacco or cotton is grown" is first recorded 1706.