quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- oscillate[oscillate 词源字典]
- oscillate: [18] Latin ōs originally meant ‘mouth’ (it was the source of English oral), but it was also used for ‘face’. Its diminutive form ōscillum ‘little face’ was applied to a mask depicting the god Bacchus that was hung up as a charm in vineyards, to be swung to and fro by the breeze. In due course its meaning broadened out to ‘swing’ generally, and a verb ōscillāre ‘swing’ was derived from it – whence English oscillate.
=> oral[oscillate etymology, oscillate origin, 英语词源] - aorta (n.)
- 1570s, from Medieval Latin aorta, from Greek aorte, term applied by Aristotle to the great artery of the heart, literally "what is hung up," from aeirein "to lift, heave, raise," which is of uncertain origin; related to the second element in meteor. Used earlier by Hippocrates of the bronchial tubes. Related: Aortal; aortic.
- file (v.1)
- "place (papers) in consecutive order for future reference," mid-15c., from Old French filer "string documents on a thread or wire for preservation or reference" (15c.), earlier "to spin thread," from fil "thread, string" (12c.), from Latin filum "a thread, string; thread of fate; cord, filament," from PIE *gwhis-lom (cognates: Armenian jil "sinew, string, line," Lithuanian gysla "vein, sinew," Old Church Slavonic zila "vein"), from root *gwhi- "thread, tendon." The notion is of documents hung up on a line in consecutive order for ease of reference.
File (filacium) is a threed or wyer, whereon writs, or other exhibits in courts, are fastened for the better keeping of them. [Cowel, "The Interpreter," 1607]
Methods have become more sophisticated, but the word has stuck. Meaning "place among the records of a court or office" is from 1510s; of newspaper reporters sending in stories, 1954. Intransitive sense "march in a line (as soldiers do) one after another" is from 1610s. Related: Filed; filing. - fox (n.)
- Old English fox "a fox," from Proto-Germanic *fuhsaz "fox" (cognates Old Saxon vohs, Middle Dutch and Dutch vos, Old High German fuhs, German Fuchs, Old Norse foa, Gothic fauho), from Proto-Germanic *fuh-, from PIE *puk- "tail" (source also of Sanskrit puccha- "tail").
The bushy tail also inspired words for "fox" in Welsh (llwynog, from llwyn "bush"); Spanish (raposa, from rabo "tail"); and Lithuanian (uodegis, from uodega "tail"). Metaphoric extension to "clever person" was in late Old English. Meaning "sexually attractive woman" is from 1940s; but foxy in this sense is recorded from 1895. A fox-tail was anciently one of the badges of a fool (late 14c.).
A late Old English translation of the Medicina de Quadrupedibus of Sextus Placitus advises, for women "who suffer troubles in their inward places, work for them into a salve a foxes limbs and his grease, with old oil and with tar; apply to the womens places; quickly it healeth the troubles." It also recommends, for sexual intercourse without irritation, "the extremest end of a foxes tail hung upon the arm." Rubbing a fox's testicles on warts was supposed a means to get rid of them. - knucklehead (n.)
- "stupid person," 1890, American English, from knuckle (n.) + head (n.).
"That infernal knuckle-head at the camp ought to have reported before now," he thought to himself, as he smoked. [Charles H. Shinn, "The Quicksands of Toro," in "Belford's Magazine," vol. V, June-November 1890, New York]
From 1869 as the name of a part in a type of mechanical coupling device. Popularized in the "stupid person" sense from 1942, from character R.F. Knucklehead, star of "Don't" posters hung up at U.S. Army Air Force training fields.
Everything Knucklehead does is wrong and ends in disaster. He endures one spectacular crash after another so that the students at the Gulf Coast Air Force Training Center may profit by his mistakes, and it looks now as if there will be no let-up in his agony. ["Life," May 25, 1942]
- oscillation (n.)
- 1650s, from French oscillation, from Latin oscillationem (nominative oscillatio), noun of action from past participle stem of oscillare "to swing," supposed to be from oscillum "little face," literally "little mouth," a mask of open-mouthed Bacchus hung up in vineyards as a charm (the sense evolution would be via the notion of "swing in the breeze"); from PIE *os- "mouth" (see oral).
- shewel (n.)
- "something hung up to keep wild animals away," mid-13c., perhaps in Old English, from the same source as shy (adj.); a derivative of the verb which in German became scheuen "to scare."