link 词源(Etymology) - 趣词词源[英文版]

link [link 词源字典]: link: [14] Link goes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic *khlangkjaz, whose underlying meaning element was ‘bending’ (it also has close relatives in English flank [12], flinch [16], and lank [OE]). ‘Bending’ implies ‘joints’ and ‘links’, and this is the meaning which is the word is presumed to have had when it passed into Old Norse as *hlenkr – from which English acquired link.There is, incidentally, no etymological connection with the now obsolete link ‘torch’ [16], which may have come via medieval Latin linchinus from Greek lúkhnos ‘lamp’, nor with the links on which golf is played, which goes back to Old English hlincas, the plural of hlinc ‘rising ground, ridge’.
=> flank, flinch, lank[link etymology, link origin, 英语词源]
link (n.): early 15c., "one of a series of rings or loops which form a chain; section of a cord," probably from Old Norse *hlenkr or a similar Scandinavian source (compare Old Norse hlekkr "link," Old Swedish lænker "chain, link," Norwegian lenke, Danish lænke), from Proto-Germanic *khlink- (cognates: German lenken "to bend, turn, lead," gelenk "articulation, joint, link," Old English hlencan (plural) "armor"), from PIE root *kleng- "to bend, turn." Missing link between man and apes dates to 1880.
link (v.): "bind, fasten, to couple," late 14c., believed to be from link (n.), though it is attested earlier. Related: Linked; linking.
link (n.2): "torch," 1520s, of uncertain origin, possibly from Medieval Latin linchinus, from lichinus "wick," from Greek lykhnos "portable light, lamp."