英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

champagne [champagne 词源字典]: champagne: [17] Champagne comes (as does campaign) from late Latin campānia, a derivative of Latin campus ‘open field’ (source of English camp). This passed into Old French as champagne ‘open country’, a word borrowed into English in the 14th century as champaign (now archaic). It came to be applied specifically to a province of northeastern France (an area largely of open rolling countryside) and hence to the wine produced in that area.

There are references to ‘brisk Champagne’ and ‘sparkling Champagne’ in English from the 1660s and 1670s, but it was not until about two hundred years ago that modern champagne, produced by secondary fermentation in bottle, was invented (according to legend, by the monk Dom Perignon).
=> camp, campaign, champion[champagne etymology, champagne origin, 英语词源]
gondola: gondola: [16] The gondola, the narrow boat used on Venetian canals, gets its name from the way it rocks gently in the water. Italian gondola is an adaptation of gondolà, a word meaning ‘roll, rock’ in the Rhaeto-Romanic dialect of Friuli, in northeastern Italy (Rhaeto-Romanic is a cover term for a group of Romance-language dialects spoken in southern Switzerland, northern Italy, and the Tyrol). Gondola was first applied to the cabin suspended from an airship or balloon in the 1890s (probably as a translation of German gondel).
hack: hack: English has two distinct words hack. By far the older, ‘cut savagely or randomly’ [OE], goes back via Old English haccian to a prehistoric West Germanic *khak-, also reproduced in German hacken and Dutch hakken. It perhaps originated in imitation of the sound of chopping. Hack ‘worn-out horse’ [17] is short for hackney (as in hackney carriage), a word in use since the 14th century in connection with hired horses.

It is thought that this may be an adaptation of the name of Hackney, now an inner-London borough but once a village on the northeastern outskirts of the capital where horses were raised before being taken into the city for sale or hire. Most rented horses being past their best from long and probably ill usage, hackney came to mean ‘broken-down horse’ and hence in general ‘drudge’.

This quickly became respecified to ‘someone who writes for hire, and hence unimaginatively’, which influenced the development of hackneyed ‘trite’ [18]. The modern sense of hacker, ‘someone who gains unauthorized access to computer records’, comes from a slightly earlier ‘one who works like a hack – that is, very hard – at writing and experimenting with software’.
ivy: ivy: [OE] Ivy has been traced back to a prehistoric Germanic *ibakhs, which also lies behind modern German efeu and Dutch eilof. This has been linked by some etymologists with Latin ibex ‘mountain goat’ (itself acquired by English in the 17th century), the semantic connection being ‘climber’. The expression Ivy League, denoting the eight old-established and prestigious universities of the northeastern USA (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale), was inspired by the idea of ancient ivy-covered walls. It dates from the 1930s.
juggernaut: juggernaut: [17] Hindi Jagganath is a title of Krishna, one of the avatars, or incarnations, of the god Vishnu, the Preserver. It comes from Sanskrit Jagganātha, a compound of jagat- ‘world’ and nāthás ‘lord’. It is applied also to a large wagon on which an image of the god is carried in procession (notably in an annual festival in Puri, a town in the northeastern Indian state of Orissa).

It used to be said, apocryphally, that worshippers of Krishna threw themselves under the wheels of the wagon in an access of religious ecstasy, and so juggernaut came to be used metaphorically in English for an ‘irresistible crushing force’: ‘A neighbouring people were crushed beneath the worse than Jaggernaut car of wild and fierce democracy’, J W Warter, Last of the Old Squires 1854.

The current application to large heavy lorries is prefigured as long ago as 1841 in William Thackeray’s Second Funeral of Napoleon (‘Fancy, then, the body landed at day-break and transferred to the car; and fancy the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine’); but it did not become firmly established until the late 1960s.
pack: pack: [13] The ultimate origins of pack are unknown. English borrowed it from one of the Germanic languages of northeastern Europe (both Middle Dutch and Middle Low German had pak), but where they got it from is not clear. Its derivatives package [16] and packet [16] are both English formations.
recruit: recruit: [17] Etymologically, a recruit is something that ‘grows again’. The word’s ultimate ancestor is Latin recrēscere ‘regrow’, a compound verb formed from the prefix re- ‘again’ and crēscere ‘grow’ (source of English crescent, increase, etc). This passed into French as recroître, whose feminine past participle in the standard language was recrue. In the dialect of northeastern France, however, it was recrute, and it was this, used as a noun meaning ‘new growth’, hence ‘reinforcement of troops’, that gave English recruit.
=> crescent, croissant, increase
yet: yet: [OE] Yet is one of the mystery words of English. It seems to have emerged from the Anglo-Frisian group of dialects in northeastern Europe before the Angles and Saxons crossed the Channel (Old Frisian had iēta), but its ultimate source is unknown.
Brandenburg: region in northeastern Germany, traditionally said to be ultimately from Slavic, but perhaps German and meaning literally "burned fortress," or else from a Celtic proper name.
Darjeeling: town in northeastern India, from Tibetan dojeling "diamond island," in reference to Vajrayana (literally "vehicle of the diamond") Buddhism. The "island" being the high ground of the place's site. As a type of tea, from 1882.
German (n.): "a native of Germany," 1520s, from Latin Germanus (adjective and noun, plural Germani), first attested in writings of Julius Caesar, who used Germani to designate a group of tribes in northeastern Gaul, of unknown origin. Probably originally the name of an individual tribe, but Gaulish (Celtic) origins have been proposed, from words perhaps originally meaning "noisy" (compare Old Irish garim "to shout") or "neighbor" (compare Old Irish gair "neighbor"). Middle English had Germayns (plural, late 14c.), but only in the sense "ancient Teuton, member of the Germanic tribes." The earlier English word was Almain (early 14c.; see Alemanni) or Dutch.
Þe empere passede from þe Grees to þe Frenschemen and to þe Germans, þat beeþ Almayns. [John of Trevisa, translation of Higdon's Polychronicon, 1387]
Their name for themselves, die Deutschen (see Dutch), dates from 12c. Roman writers also used Teutoni as a German tribal name, and writers in Latin after about 875 commonly refer to the German language as teutonicus (see Teutonic). Meaning "the German language" in English is from 1748. High German (1823 in English) and Low German as a division of dialects is geographical: High German (from 16c. established as the literary language) was the German spoken in the upland regions in southern Germany, Low German (often including Dutch, Frisian, Flemish), also called Plattdeutsch was spoken in the regions near the North Sea. In the U.S. German also was used of descendants of settlers from Germany.
lesbian (adj.): 1590s, "pertaining to the island of Lesbos," from Latin Lesbius, from Greek lesbios "of Lesbos," Greek island in northeastern Aegean Sea (the name originally may have meant "wooded"), home of Sappho, great lyric poet whose erotic and romantic verse embraced women as well as men, hence meaning "relating to homosexual relations between women" (1890; lesbianism in this sense is attested from 1870) and the noun, first recorded 1925. Her particular association in English with erotic love between women dates to at least 1825, though the words formed from it are later. Before this, the principal figurative use (common in 17c.) was lesbian rule (c. 1600) a mason's rule of lead, of a type used on Lesbos, which could be bent to fit the curves of a molding; hence, "pliant morality or judgment."
And this is the nature of the equitable, a correction of law where it is defective owing to its universality. ... For when the thing is indefinite the rule also is indefinite, like the leaden rule used in making the Lesbian moulding; the rule adapts itself to the shape of the stone and is not rigid, and so too the decree is adapted to the facts. [Aristotle, "Nicomachean Ethics"]
See also tribadism. Greek had a verb lesbiazein "to imitate the Lesbians," which implied "sexual initiative and shamelessness" among women, but not necessarily female homosexuality.
Omaha: Siouan Indians of northeastern Nebraska, 1804, perhaps from Omaha umaha, perhaps literally "upstream (people), against the flow."
Reims: city in northeastern France, named for the Remi, a Gaulish people whose name is said to mean "dominant ones." The former French spelling was with an Rh-.
Rhemish (adj.): "of or pertaining to Rheims (earlier English Rhemes), city in northeastern France (see Reims), 1580s; specifically in reference to an English translation of the New Testament by Roman Catholics at the English college there, published 1582.
Vinland: name supposedly given by Leif Erikssson to lands he explored in northeastern North America c. 1000; it could mean either "vine-land" or "meadow-land," and either way was perhaps coined to encourage settlement (compare Greenland).

After Columbus' journeys and the European exploration of the New World, evidence in the old sagas of the earlier Norse discovery of America had been noticed from time to time by those who could read them. In early 19c. the notion was seriously debated by Humboldt and other European scholars before winning their general acceptance by the 1830s. The case for the identification of Vinland with North America began to be laid out in English-language publications in 1840. Thoreau knew of it ("Ktaadn," 1864). Physical evidence of the Norse discovery was uncovered by the excavations at L'Anse aux Meadows in 1960.
Washington: U.S. capital, founded 1791, named for President George Washington (1732-1799); the family name is from a town in northeastern England, from Old English, literally "estate of a man named Wassa." The U.S. state was named when it was formed as a territory in 1853 (admitted to the union 1889). Related: Washingtonian.