quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- ledger[ledger 词源字典]
- 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[ledger etymology, ledger origin, 英语词源] - lig
- lig: [20] The verb lig, meaning ‘freeload, sponge’, and its derivative ligger, achieved a particular prominence in late 20th-century British English. But in fact its roots go back far into the past. In origin it is simply a variant version of the verb lie ‘recline’. In Old English times this was licgan, and although in the mainstream language licgan became lie, liggen survived dialectally. The sense ‘lie about’ passed naturally into ‘lounge about lazily’, and apparently merged with another dialectal sense ‘steal’ to produce the word’s current meaning.
=> lie - outrigger (n.)
- device used in Pacific and Indian oceans to stabilize canoes, 1748, altered (by influence of rig) from outligger (late 15c.) "a spar projecting from a vessel," probably from the same root as Dutch uitlegger, literally "out-lyer."