英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abacus [abacus 词源字典]: abacus: [17] Abacus comes originally from a Hebrew word for ‘dust’, ’ābāq. This was borrowed into Greek with the sense of ‘drawing board covered with dust or sand’, on which one could draw for, among other purposes, making mathematical calculations. The Greek word, ábax, subsequently developed various other meanings, including ‘table’, both in the literal sense and as a mathematical table.

But it was as a ‘dust-covered board’ that its Latin descendant, abacus, was first used in English, in the 14th century. It was not until the 17th century that the more general sense of a counting board or frame came into use, and the more specific ‘counting frame with movable balls’ is later still.
[abacus etymology, abacus origin, 英语词源]
accident: accident: [14] Etymologically, an accident is simply ‘something which happens’ – ‘an event’. That was what the word originally meant in English, and it was only subsequently that the senses ‘something which happens by chance’ and ‘mishap’ developed. It comes from the Latin verb cadere ‘fall’ (also the source of such diverse English words as case, decadent, and deciduous).

The addition of the prefix ad- ‘to’ produced accidere, literally ‘fall to’, hence ‘happen to’. Its present participle was used as an adjective in the Latin phrase rēs accidēns ‘thing happening’, and accidēns soon took on the role of a noun on its own, passing (in its stem form accident-) into Old French and thence into English.
=> case, decadent, deciduous
adventure: adventure: [13] Adventure derives ultimately from a Latin verb meaning ‘arrive’. It originally meant ‘what comes or happens by chance’, hence ‘luck’, but it took a rather pessimistic downturn via ‘risk, danger’ to (in the 14th century) ‘hazardous undertaking’. Its Latin source was advenīre, formed from the prefix adand venīre ‘come’. Its past participle stem, advent-, produced English advent [12] and adventitious [17], but it was its future participle, adventura ‘about to arrive’, which produced adventure.

In the Romance languages in which it subsequently developed (Italian avventura, Spanish aventura, and French aventure, the source of Middle English aventure) the d disappeared, but it was revived in 15th – 16thcentury French in imitation of Latin. The reduced form venture first appears in the 15th century.
=> adventitious, avent, venture
alms: alms: [OE] The word alms has become much reduced in its passage through time from its ultimate Greek source, eleēmosúnē ‘pity, alms’. This was borrowed into post-classical (Christian) Latin as eleēmosyna, which subsequently became simplified in Vulgar Latin to *alimosina (source of the word for ‘alms’ in many Romance languages, such as French aumône and Italian limosina).

At this stage Germanic borrowed it, and in due course dispersed it (German almosen, Dutch aalmoes). It entered Old English as ælmesse, which became reduced in Middle English to almes and finally by the 17th century to alms (which because of its -s had come to be regarded as a plural noun). The original Greek eleēmosúnē is itself a derivative, of the adjective eleémōn ‘compassionate’, which in turn came from the noun éleos ‘pity’.

From medieval Latin eleēmosyna was derived the adjective eleēmosynarius (borrowed into English in the 17th century as the almost unpronounceable eleemosynary ‘giving alms’). Used as a noun, this passed into Old French as a(u)lmonier, and eventually, in the 13th century, became English aumoner ‘giver of alms’. The modern sense of almoner as a hospital social worker did not develop until the end of the 19th century.
=> almoner, eleemosynary
amiable: amiable: [14] Amiable and amicable are the two English descendants of that most familiar of Latin verbs, amo, amas, amat … ‘love’. It had two rather similar adjectives derived from it: amābilis ‘lovable’ and, via amīcus ‘friend’, amīcābilis ‘friendly’ (source of English amicable [15]). Amīcābilis became in French amiable, and this was borrowed into English as amiable, but its meaning was subsequently influenced by that of French aimable ‘likeable, lovable’, which came from Latin amābilis.
=> amicable
ancestor: ancestor: [13] Ultimately, ancestor is the same word as antecedent [14]: both come from the Latin compound verb antecēdere ‘precede’, formed from the prefix ante- ‘before’ and the verb cēdere ‘go’ (source of English cede and a host of related words, such as proceed and access). Derived from this was the agent noun antecessor ‘one who precedes’, which was borrowed into Old French at two distinct times: first as ancessour, and later as ancestre, which subsequently developed to ancêtre. Middle English had examples of all three of these forms. The modern spelling, ancestor, developed in the 16th century.
=> access, antecedent, cede, precede, proceed
ant: ant: [OE] The word ant appears to carry the etymological sense ‘creature that cuts off or bites off’. Its Old English form, æmette, was derived from a hypothetical Germanic compound *aimaitjōn, formed from the prefix *ai- ‘off, away’ and the root *mait- ‘cut’ (modern German has the verb meissen ‘chisel, carve’): thus, ‘the biter’.

The Old English word later developed along two distinct strands: in one, it became emmet, which survived into the 20th century as a dialectal form; while in the other it progressed through amete and ampte to modern English ant. If the notion of ‘biting’ in the naming of the ant is restricted to the Germanic languages (German has ameise), the observation that it and its nest smell of urine has been brought into play far more widely.

The Indo-European root *meigh-, from which ultimately we get micturate ‘urinate’ [18], was also the source of several words for ‘ant’, including Greek múrmēx (origin of English myrmecology ‘study of ants’, and also perhaps of myrmidon [14] ‘faithful follower’, from the Myrmidons, a legendary Greek people who loyally followed their king Achilles in the Trojan war, and who were said originally to have been created from ants), Latin formīca (hence English formic acid [18], produced by ants, and formaldehyde [19]), and Danish myre.

It also produced Middle English mire ‘ant’, the underlying meaning of which was subsequently reinforced by the addition of piss to give pismire, which again survived dialectally into the 20th century.
antelope: antelope: [15] Antelope comes from medieval Greek antholops. In the Middle Ages it was applied to an outlandish but figmentary beast, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘haunting the banks of the Euphrates, very savage, hard to catch, having long saw-like horns with which they cut in pieces and broke all “engines” and even cut down trees’. The term was subsequently used for a heraldic animal, but it was not until the early 17th century that it was applied, by the naturalist Edward Topsell, to the swift-running deerlike animal for which it is now used.
argue: argue: [14] English acquired argue and its various meanings via rather complex paths, but its ultimate origin is straightforward: the Latin verb arguere derived from a prehistoric Indo- European base *arg- ‘be white, bright, or clear’ (source also of Latin argentum ‘silver’, and thus of French argent ‘money’); it therefore meant primarily ‘make clear’, but this subsequently developed into ‘assert, prove’.

A frequentative form (that is, one denoting repeated action) evolved, argutāre; this signified ‘make repeated assertions or accusations’. This passed into medieval French as arguer ‘accuse, blame’, and also ‘bring forward reasons for an assertion’, and thence into English. The meaning ‘accuse’ died out in English in the late 17th century, leaving ‘reasoning, discussing’ as the main sense of argue.

Meanwhile, original Latin arguere had made its presence felt in establishing the sense ‘prove’ in English, now somewhat weakened to ‘imply, indicate’ (as in ‘Their lack of involvement argues indifference’). The sense ‘quarrel’ seems to have developed from ‘discuss’ in the 17th century.
armour: armour: [13] Armour comes ultimately from Latin armātūra ‘armour, equipment’, a derivative of the verb armāre ‘arm’ (the direct English borrowing armature [15] originally meant ‘armour’ or ‘weapons’, but the ‘protective’ notion of armour led to its application in the 18th century to ‘metal covering the poles of a magnet’). In Old French armātūra became armeure, and subsequently armure, the form in which it was borrowed into English (the -our ending was artificially grafted on in the 14th century on the model of other Latin-based words such as colour and odour). Armoury is French in origin: Old French armoier ‘coat of arms’ was a derivative of arme ‘weapon’; this became armoirie, which was borrowed into English in the 15th century as armory, meaning ‘heraldry’, but also, owing to their formal similarity, came to be used with the same sense as armour – ‘protective metal suit’ or ‘weapons’.

This was what armoury meant when it came into English in the 14th century (and the sense survived long enough to be used by Wordsworth in a sonnet to ‘Liberty’ 1802: ‘In our halls is hung armoury of invincible knights of old’). The meaning ‘place for keeping weapons’ developed in the 16th century.
=> armature
attend: attend: [13] Etymologically, attend means ‘stretch to’. It comes originally from Latin attendere, a compound verb formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and tendere ‘stretch’ (a descendant of an Indo-European base *ten-, *ton- ‘stretch’ which also produced, among others, Latin tenēre ‘hold’ – source of English contain, maintain, obtain, etc – and English tendon, thin, and tone).

By metaphorical extension ‘stretch to’ became ‘direct one’s attention to’, which was the original meaning of the verb in Old French atendre and subsequently in English. The sense ‘take care of’ developed in the 15th century, ‘be present’ much later, in the 17th century. The noun derivative attention [14] comes from Latin attentiō. Tend meaning ‘look after’ comes mainly from attend, but also partly from intend, in both cases with loss of the first syllable.
=> contain, maintain, obtain, tendon, thin, tone
bird: bird: [OE] Bird is something of a mystery word. It was not the ordinary Old English word for ‘feathered flying animal’; that was fowl. In Old English, bird meant specifically ‘young bird, nestling’. It did not begin to replace fowl as the general term until the 14th century, and the process took many hundreds of years to complete. Its source is quite unknown; it has no obvious relatives in the Germanic languages, or in any other Indo-European language.

The connotations of its original meaning have led to speculation that it is connected with breed and brood (the usual Old English form was brid, but the r and i subsequently became transposed in a process known as metathesis), but no convincing evidence for this has ever been advanced. As early as 1300, bird was used for ‘girl’, but this was probably owing to confusion with another similar Middle English word, burde, which also meant ‘young woman’.

The usage crops up from time to time in later centuries, clearly as an independent metaphorical application, but there does not really seem to be an unbroken chain of occurrences leading up to the sudden explosion in the use of bird for ‘young woman’ in the 20th century. Of other figurative applications of the word, ‘audience disapproval’ (as in ‘get the bird’) comes from the hissing of geese, and in ‘prison sentence’ bird is short for bird lime, rhyming slang for time.
blank: blank: [15] Although English got blank from French blanc ‘white’, its ultimate source is Germanic. Forms such as Old High German blanc ‘white’ suggest a prehistoric Germanic *blangkaz, which could have been borrowed into Romanic, the undifferentiated precursor of the Romance languages, as *blancus – hence French blanc, Italian bianco, Spanish blanco, and Portuguese branco.

The word originally meant simply ‘white’ in English, but this sense had all but died out by the early 18th century, by which time the present-day ‘unmarked’ was well established. Other derivatives of French blanc include the verb blanch [14], from French blanchier, and blanket [13], from Old French blancquet. Blanco is a trade name (based on blanc) coined in the 1890s for a whitening preparation for military webbing (subsequently applied to the khakicoloured version as well).
=> blanch, blanket
buffalo: buffalo: [16] English probably acquired buffalo from Portuguese bufalo, originally naming the ‘water buffalo’, Bubalis bubalis, a large oxlike animal of Asia and Africa, and subsequently extended to the ‘Cape buffalo’ of South Africa, Syncerus caffer. The Portuguese word came from late Latin bufalus, an alteration of Latin bubalus, which was borrowed from Greek boúbalos. The Greek word, which seems to have named a type of African gazelle, may have been formed from bous ‘ox’. The application of the word to the North American bison, which is still regarded as ‘incorrect’, dates from the late 18th century.
=> buff
campaign: campaign: [17] Ultimately, campaign and champagne are the same word. Both go back to late Latin campānia, a derivative of Latin campus ‘open field’ (source of English camp). This passed into Old French as champagne and into Italian as campagna ‘open country’, and both words have subsequently come to be used as the designation of regions in France and Italy (whence English champagne [17], wine made in the Champagne area of eastern France).

The French word was also borrowed into English much earlier, as the now archaic champaign ‘open country’ [14]. Meanwhile, in Italian a particular military application of campagna had arisen: armies disliked fighting in winter because of the bad weather, so they stayed in camp, not emerging to do battle in the open countryside (the campagna) until summer. Hence campagna came to mean ‘military operations’; it was borrowed in to French as campagne, and thence into English.
=> camp, champagne
caraway: caraway: [14] The ultimate source of caraway is probably Greek káron ‘cumin’ (caraway and cumin seeds are very similar). Arabic borrowed the word as alkarāwiyā ‘the cumin’, and it subsequently diverged along different branches. Borrowed into medieval Latin it became carvi, which was the source of carvy, the Scottish word for ‘caraway’ since the 17th century. The source of English caraway, however, was most likely Old Spanish alcarahueya.
cave: cave: There are two English words cave which, despite their apparent similarity, are probably unrelated. The earlier, ‘underground chamber’ [13], comes via Old French cave from Latin cavea, a nominal use of the adjective cavus ‘hollow’ (source also of cavern [14], via Old French caverne or Latin caverna, and of cavity [16], from the late Latin derivative cavitās).

The verb cave [18], however, as in ‘cave in’, seems to come from an earlier dialectal calve ‘collapse, fall in’, once widespread in the eastern counties of England; it has been speculated that this was borrowed from a Low German source, such as Flemish inkalven. It has subsequently, of course, been much influenced by the noun cave.
=> cavern, cavity, decoy
chagrin: chagrin: [17] The word chagrin first appeared in French in the 14th century as an adjective, meaning ‘sad, vexed’, a usage at first adopted into English: ‘My wife in a chagrin humour, she not being pleased with my kindness to either of them’, Samuel Pepys’s Diary 6 August 1666. It died out in English in the early 18th century, but the subsequently developed noun and verb have persisted. Etymologists now discount any connection with French chagrin ‘untanned leather’ (source of English shagreen [17]), which came from Turkish sagri.
chapel: chapel: [13] Chapel has a very specific source: it was originally applied to the shrine built to preserve the cloak (late Latin cappa) of St Martin of Tours as a holy relic. The diminutive form of cappa was cappella, and this came to be applied to the building itself, gradually being broadened out subsequently to any moderately sized place of worship. The word reached English via Old French chapele. The church functionary who guarded St Martin’s cloak was known by the derivative term cappellānus, source of English chaplain [12].
=> chaplain
coast: coast: [13] Latin costa meant ‘rib’ (hence the English medical term intercostal ‘between the ribs’), but also more generally ‘flank, side’. It was in this sense that it passed into Old French as coste, and subsequently into English. The modern meaning ‘seashore’ (which had already developed in Old French) arises from the shore being thought of as the ‘side’ or ‘edge’ of the land (compare seaside).

Amongst the senses of the French word little represented in English is ‘hillside, slope’; it was however adopted in North America for a ‘slope down which one slides on a sledge’, and came to be used in the mid 19th century as a verb meaning ‘sledge down such a slope’. That was the source of the modern verbal sense ‘freewheel’. The coster of costermonger [16] was originally costard, a variety of apple named from its prominent ‘ribs’.

And another hidden relative is cutlet [18], borrowed from French côtelette, literally ‘little rib’.
=> costermonger, cutlet, intercostal
cockle: cockle: [14] The cockle is related etymologically to another mollusc, the conch: they both began life in Greek kónkhē – which meant ‘mussel’ as well as ‘conch’. From this was formed the diminutive konkhúlion ‘small variety of conch’ – hence ‘cockle’. The Greek word subsequently became reduced to kokhúlion, whose plural passed into medieval Latin as *cochilia.

Next in the chain was Old French coquille, source of the English word. The origin of the phrase cockles of one’s heart (first recorded in the mid 17th century) are not clear: some have claimed that the heart resembles a cockle shell, or more specifically that the fibres of the heart muscle spiral like the lines on a cockle shell, while others note a supposed resemblance of cockle to corculum, a Latin diminutive of cor ‘heart’, and others again point out that the scientific name for the cockle is Cardium, from Greek kardíā ‘heart’, but none of these explanations really carries conviction.
=> conch
crabbed: crabbed: [13] Because of their tendency to deploy their pincers at the slightest provocation, and also perhaps because of their sidelong method of locomotion, crabs seem always to have had a reputation for being short-tempered and perverse. Hence the creation of the adjective crabbed, which literally means ‘like a crab’. Its meaning has subsequently been influenced by crab the apple, famous for its sourness. (The semantically similar crabby is a 16th-century formation.)
cretin: cretin: [18] In the Swiss-French dialect of the high Alps the term creitin or crestin (their version of christian) was applied to people suffering from mental handicap and stunted growth – the notion being to emphasize that despite their abnormalities, such people were nevertheless as much human beings as any other ‘Christian’. The word was adopted (via French crétin) as a clinical term for someone suffering from dwarfism and mental retardation as a result of a congenital thyroid deficiency, and was subsequently broadened out, towards the end of the 19th century, as a general disparaging term for a ‘fool’.
=> christian
Dalek: Dalek: [20] The name of these pathologically destructive robots, which first appeared on BBC TV’s Dr Who in 1963, was coined by their creator, Terry Nation. The story went about that he had come up with it one day while staring in a library at the spine of an encyclopedia volume covering entries from DA to LEK, but he has subsequently denied this.
dam: dam: [12] Dam, appropriately enough for a word related to the human control of water-courses, seems to have been borrowed from Middle Dutch dam. It appears to have been a fairly widespread West and East Germanic word, subsequently borrowed into North Germanic, but its ultimate source is not known.
dame: dame: [13] Latin domina was the feminine form of dominus ‘lord’ (see DOMINION). English acquired it via Old French dame, but it has also spread through the other Romance languages, including Spanish dueña (source of English duenna [17]) and Italian donna (whence English prima donna, literally ‘first lady’ [18]). The Vulgar Latin diminutive form of domina was *dominicella, literally ‘little lady’.

This passed into Old French as donsele, was modified by association with dame to damisele, and acquired in the 13th century by English, in which it subsequently became damsel (the archaic variant damosel came from the 16th-century French form damoiselle).
=> damsel, danger, dominate, dominion, duenna, prima donna
derive: derive: [14] Like rival, derive comes ultimately from Latin rīvus ‘stream’. This was used as the basis of a verb dērīvāre, formed with the prefix dē- ‘away’, which originally designated literally the ‘drawing off of water from a source’. This sense was subsequently generalized to ‘divert’, and extended figuratively to ‘derive’ (a metaphor reminiscent of spring from). English acquired the word via Old French deriver.
=> rival
derrick: derrick: [16] Around the end of the 16th century there was a famous Tyburn hangman called Derick. His name came to be used as a personification of hangmen in general, and subsequently as a metaphor for the ‘gallows’. Gradually, however, these macabre associations were lost, and by the 18th century derrick had progressed in meaning to ‘hoisting apparatus’.
diaper: diaper: [14] The notion underlying diaper is of extreme whiteness. It comes ultimately from Byzantine Greek díaspros, which was a compound formed from the intensive prefix diaand áspros ‘white’. (Aspros itself has an involved history: it started life as Latin asper ‘rough’ – source of English asperity – which was applied particularly to bas-relief on carvings and coins; it was borrowed into Byzantine Greek and used as a noun to designate silver coins, and their brightness and shininess led to its reconversion into an adjective, meaning ‘white’.) Díaspros appears originally to have been applied to ecclesiastical vestments, and subsequently to any shiny fabric.

When the word first entered English, via medieval Latin diasprum and Old French diapre, it referred to a rather rich silk fabric embellished with gold thread, but by the 16th century it was being used for less glamorous textiles, of white linen, with a small diamond-shaped pattern. The specific application to a piece of such cloth used as a baby’s nappy (still current in American English) seems to have developed in the 16th century.
=> asperity
diarrhoea: diarrhoea: [16] Diarrhoea means literally ‘through-flow’ (and hence semantically is a parallel formation to diabetes). It comes via late Latin diarrhoea from Greek diárrhoia, a term coined by the physician Hippocrates for ‘abnormally frequent defecation’. It was formed from the prefix dia- ‘through’ and rhein ‘flow’ (a relative of English rheumatism and stream).

Of other -rrhoea formations (or -rrhea, as it is generally spelled in American English), pyorrhoea ‘inflammation of the tooth sockets’ was coined in the early 19th century, and logorrhoea at around the turn of the 20th, originally as a clinical term in psychology (although subsequently hijacked as a facetious synonym for ‘talkativeness’).
=> rheumatism, stream
diary: diary: [16] Like its semantic cousin journal, a diary is literally a ‘daily’ record. It comes from Latin diarium, a derivative of diēs ‘day’. Originally in classical Latin the word meant ‘daily allowance of food or pay’, and only subsequently came to be applied to a ‘record of daily events’. From the 17th to the 19th century English also had an adjective diary, from Latin diarius, meaning ‘lasting for one day’.
diphtheria: diphtheria: [19] The disease diphtheria is characterized by the formation of a false membrane in the throat which obstructs breathing, and when the French physician Pierre Bretonneau described it in the 1820s, he coined a name for it based on Greek diphthéra, which means ‘piece of leather’. Using the suffix -itis, denoting inflammation, he formed the modern Latin term diphtheritis (used in English until the 1850s) and its French equivalent diphthérit.

He subsequently substituted diphthérie, and this was borrowed into and established in English in the late 1850s when an epidemic of the disease (then also termed Boulogne sore throat, from its first having been observed in Boulogne) struck Britain.
discipline: discipline: [13] The Latin word for ‘learner’ was discipulus, a derivative of the verb discere ‘learn’ (which was related to docēre ‘teach’, source of English doctor, doctrine, and document). English acquired the word in Anglo- Saxon times, as discipul, and it was subsequently reformulated as disciple on the model of Old French deciple. Derived from discipulus was the noun disciplīna ‘instruction, knowledge’. Its meaning developed gradually into ‘maintenance of order (necessary for giving instruction)’, the sense in which the word first entered English (via Old French discipline).
=> disciple, doctor, doctrine, document
dream: dream: [13] Old English had a word drēam, which meant ‘joy, merrymaking, music’, but it is not at all clear that this is the same word as modern English dream (the recorded Old English words for ‘dream’ were swefn and mǣting). Semantically, the two are quite a long way apart, and on balance it seems more likely that Old English had a homonym *drēam ‘dream’, which has not survived in the written records, and which was perhaps subsequently reinforced by Old Norse draumr.

Both these and the related German traum and Dutch droom have been traced back to an Indo-European base denoting ‘deception’, represented also in Sanskrit druh- ‘seek to harm’ and Avestan (a dialect of Old Iranian) druz- ‘lie, deceive’.
dwell: dwell: [OE] Dwell has changed its meaning remarkably over the centuries. In Old English it meant ‘confuse, lead astray’. It goes back to a Germanic base *dwel-, *dwal-, *dwul-, which also produced Old English dwola ‘error’, Gothic dwals ‘foolish’, and Old High German gitwelan ‘be stunned’, and beyond that to Indo-European *dhwel-, source of Greek tholós ‘dirt’ and Irish dall ‘blind’.

Already by the end of the Old English period, ‘lead astray’ had progressed to ‘hinder, delay’, probably under the influence of the related Old Norse dvelja ‘delay’, and this subsequently developed through ‘linger’ to (in the 13th century) ‘make one’s home in a place’.
east: east: [OE] Etymologically, east is the point of the compass at which the sun rises (and hence is a parallel formation to orient, which comes from a Latin word originally meaning ‘rising’). It goes back to an Indo-European base *aus-, source of a range of terms meaning not only ‘east’ but also ‘dawn’; Latin aurora, for instance, and Greek aúōs, had both senses.

Its Germanic descendant, *austo-, produced German ost, Dutch oosten, Swedish öster, and English east (which was subsequently borrowed by French as est). It was also the source of *Austron, the name of a goddess of the prehistoric Germanic peoples, originally the dawn-goddess, whose festival occurred in spring. In Old English her name was Ēastre, which is generally taken to be the ultimate source of English Easter (German Ostern ‘Easter’ has a parallel origin).
=> easter
effrontery: effrontery: [18] The notion of ‘audacity’ or ‘impudence’ is often expressed in terms of ‘exposing or pushing forward the face’: a ‘barefaced lie’ or ‘putting on a bold front’, for instance. And effrontery is no exception. It comes ultimately from late Latin effrōns ‘barefaced, shameless’, a compound adjective formed from the prefix ex- ‘out of’ and frōns ‘forehead’ (source of English front).

This seems subsequently to have been reformulated along the lines of its original components, giving Vulgar Latin *exfrontātus, source of Old French esfronte. This in turn developed to French effronté, whose derived noun effronterie was acquired by English as effrontery.
=> front
either: either: [OE] Either is the modern descendant of an ancient Germanic phrase which meant literally ‘always each of two’. Its constituents were *aiwō, source of English aye ‘ever, always’, (which was also one of the building blocks of which each was made) and *gikhwatharaz, ancestor of English whether. In Old English this became lexicalized as the compound ǣgehwæther, subsequently contracted to ǣgther, from which developed modern English either. Despite its similarity, neither is more than just either with a negative prefix tacked on: its history is parallel but slightly different.
=> aye, whether
euphemism: euphemism: [17] Etymologically, euphemism means ‘speaking with good words’. Greek euphēmismós, a compound formed ultimately from the prefix eu- ‘good, well’ and phémē ‘speech, saying’ (a relative of English fable, fame, and fate), originally denoted the avoidance of words of ill omen at religious ceremonies, but it was subsequently taken up by grammarians to signify the substitution of a less for a more offensive word. Its opposite, dysphemism ‘use of a more offensive word’, is a modern coinage, formed in the late 19th century using the Greek prefix dus- ‘bad, difficult’.
=> fable, fame, fate
evolution: evolution: [17] Evolution originally meant simply ‘unfolding’, or metaphorically ‘development’; it was not used in its main current sense, ‘gradual change in form of a species over the centuries’, until the early 19th century. The Scottish geologist Charles Lyell appears to have been the first to do so, in his Principles of Geology 1832, and it was subsequently taken up by Charles Darwin.

The word comes from Latin ēvolūtiō, which denoted specifically the unrolling of a papyrus or parchment roll. It was a derivative of ēvolvere, a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and volvere ‘roll’ (source also of English convolution, involve, and revolve and related to vault, voluble, volume, vulva, and wallow).
=> convolution, involve, revolve, volume, wallow
except: except: [14] If you except something, you literally ‘take it out’. The verb comes from exceptus, the past participle of Latin excipere, a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and capere ‘take’ (source of English capture). The use of the word as a preposition, and subsequently as a conjunction, arose from the adjectival use of the Latin past participle exceptus for ‘excepted, excluded’ (as in modern English ‘present company excepted’).
=> captive, capture, chase, heave
exile: exile: [13] Latin exul meant ‘banished person’. This was formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and a prehistoric Indo-European base *ul- ‘go’ (represented also in Latin ambulāre ‘walk’, source of English amble and ambulance). From it was created the noun exilium ‘banishment’, which in Old French became essil. This was subsequently remodelled to exil, on the basis of its Latin source, and passed on to English.
=> amble, ambulance
express: express: [14] Something that is expressed is literally ‘pressed out’. The word comes via Old French from Vulgar Latin *expressāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and pressāre ‘press’. Its meaning developed metaphorically from ‘press out’ to ‘form by pressure’ (presumably applied originally to modelling in clay or some similar substance, and subsequently to sculpture and then painting), and finally to ‘make known in words’.

The Vulgar Latin verb was in fact moving in on territory already occupied by its classical Latin forerunner exprimere (source of French exprimer ‘express’ and perhaps of English sprain [17]). The past participle of this was expressus, used adjectivally for ‘prominent, distinct, explicit’. Old French took it over as expres and passed it on to English in the 14th century.

By now its meaning was moving towards ‘intended for a particular purpose’, and in the 19th century it was applied to ‘special’ trains (as in ‘football specials’). It did not take long, however, for this to slip via ‘train for people wanting to go to a particular place, and therefore not stopping anywhere else’ to ‘fast train’. Hence the modern sense of express, ‘fast’, was born.
=> espresso, press, sprain
feeble: feeble: [12] Semantically, feeble was originally a close relative of deplorable and lamentable, but over the centuries it has diverged markedly from them. Its ultimate source was Latin flēbilis, a derivative of the verb flēre ‘weep’. In classical times this meant literally ‘worthy of being cried over, lamentable’, but later it came to signify ‘weak’. It passed in this sense into Old French as fleible, which subsequently became feible or feble (source of English feeble), and later still foible (whence English foible [17]) and faible (the modern French form).
=> foible
fetish: fetish: [17] Fetish is a doublet of factitious: that is to say, the two words have a common origin, but have subsequently diverged widely. Both come ultimately from Latin factītius ‘made by art’, an adjective derived from the past participle of facere ‘do, make’ (whence English effect, fact, fashion, among a host of other related words).

Its Portuguese descendant, feitiço, was used as a noun meaning ‘charm, sorcery’. French took this over as fétiche and passed it on to English, where it was used in the concrete sense ‘charm, amulet’, particularly as worshipped by various West African peoples. ‘Object irrationally or obsessively venerated’ is a 19th-century semantic development.
=> effect, fact, factory, fashion
field: field: [OE] Like plain, field seems originally to have meant ‘area of flat, open land’. It comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *plth-, which also produced Greek platús ‘broad’, English place and plaice, and possibly also English flan and flat. A noun derived from it, *peltus, entered prehistoric West Germanic as *felthuz, which subsequently disseminated as German feld, Dutch veld (English acquired veld or veldt [19] via its Afrikaans offshoot), and English field.
=> flan, flat, place, plaice, veld
fierce: fierce: [13] Fierce has not always had exclusively negative connotations of ‘aggression’, although admittedly they do go back a long way. Its source, Latin ferus (which also gave English feral) meant originally ‘wild, untamed’, but it subsequently developed the metaphorical sense ‘uncultivated, savage, cruel’. However, when English acquired the word, via Anglo-Norman fers and Old French fiers, it was used for ‘brave’ and ‘proud’ as well as ‘wildly hostile or menacing’. ‘Brave’ died out in the 16th century, although across the Channel ‘proud’ has survived to become the only sense of modern French fiers.
=> feral
filibuster: filibuster: [16] Filibuster and freebooter [16] are doublets: that is to say, they come from the same ultimate source, but have subsequently diverged. Freebooter ‘pirate’ was borrowed from Dutch vrijbuiter, a compound formed from vrij ‘free’ and buiter ‘plunderer’ (this was a derivative of buit ‘loot’, to which English booty is related).

But English was not the only language to adopt it; French wanted it too, but mangled it somewhat in the borrowing, to flibustier. It was then handed on to Spanish, as filibustero. It is not clear where the 16th-century English use of the word with an l spelling rather than an r spelling (which is recorded in only one text) comes from. The French form flibustier was borrowed towards the end of the 18th century, and presentday filibuster came from the Spanish form in the mid-19th century.

The use of the term for ‘obstructing a legislature with an overlong speech’ (which has now virtually obliterated its former semantic equivalence to freebooter) originated in the USA in the 1880s.
=> booty, free, freebooter
fort: fort: [15] Etymologically, a fort is a ‘strong place’. The word comes either from Old French fort or from Italian forte, both noun uses of an adjective descended from Latin fortis ‘strong’. A similar semantic result, but achieved by derivation rather than conversion, can be seen in fortress [13], a borrowing from Old French forteresse, which goes back to Vulgar Latin *fortaritia, a derivative of Latin fortis. (The nearest native English equivalent of both words is stronghold.) Other words inherited by English from fortis include fortify [15], fortitude [15], the noun forte ‘strong point’ [17] (it was borrowed, despite its modern Italianate pronunciation, from French fort, and was subsequently remodelled on the French feminine form forte), and the musical direction forte ‘loud’ [18] (from Italian), which appears also in pianoforte.
=> force, fortify, fortress
frantic: frantic: [14] Frantic comes via Old French frenetique and Latin phreneticus from late Greek phrenētikús, a derivative of phrenítis ‘delirium’. This in turn was based on Greek phrén ‘mind’ (source also of English phrenology ‘study of cranial bumps to determine intelligence, character, etc’ [19]). The Old French form split into two virtually distinct words once English got hold of it: in one, the French three-syllable form was preserved, and even partially remodelled on its Latin ancestor, to give what has become modern English phrenetic, while in the other it was reduced to frentik which, for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, subsequently became frantic.

The related noun frenzy [14] retains the original vowel.
=> frenzy, phrenology