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career [career 词源字典]: career: [16] Originally, a career was a ‘road or racetrack for vehicles’. Its ultimate source was Latin carrus ‘wheeled vehicle’ (from which we get car), which produced the Vulgar Latin derivative *carāria ‘track for wheeled vehicles’. This passed into English via Provençal carreira, Italian carriera, and French carrière. Its earliest meaning was ‘racecourse’, and hence, by extension, ‘swift course’; the main present-day sense ‘course of someone’s working life’ did not develop until the 19th century, probably owing to renewed influence of French carrière.
=> car[career etymology, career origin, 英语词源]
career (n.): 1530s, "a running (usually at full speed), a course" (especially of the sun, etc., across the sky), from Middle French carriere "road, racecourse" (16c.), from Old Provençal or Italian carriera, from Vulgar Latin *(via) cararia "carriage (road), track for wheeled vehicles," from Latin carrus "chariot" (see car). Sense of "course of a working life" first attested 1803.
wire (n.): Old English wir "metal drawn out into a fine thread," from Proto-Germanic *wira- (cognates: Old Norse viravirka "filigree work," Swedish vira "to twist," Old High German wiara "fine gold work"), from PIE *wei- (1) "to turn, twist, plait" (cognates: Old Irish fiar, Welsh gwyr "bent, crooked;" Latin viere "to bend, twist," viriæ "bracelets," of Celtic origin). A wire as marking the finish line of a racecourse is attested from 1883; hence the figurative down to the wire. Wire-puller in the political sense is 1848, American English, on the image of pulling the wires that work a puppet.