quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- cohort[cohort 词源字典]
- cohort: [15] Etymologically, cohort is an ‘enclosed yard’. It comes via Old French cohorte from Latin cohors, a compound noun formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and an element hortwhich also appears in Latin hortus ‘garden’ (source of English horticulture) and is related to English garden, yard, and the second element of orchard.
From the underlying sense of ‘enclosed place’ it came to be applied to a crowd of people in such a place, and then more specifically to an infantry company in the Roman army. Its meaning has spread figuratively in English to ‘band of associates or accomplices’, whose frequent use in the plural led to the misapprehension that a single cohort was an ‘associate’ or ‘accomplice’ – a usage which emerged in American English in the mid 20th century.
The original form of the Latin word is well preserved in cohort, but it has also reached us, more thickly disguised, as court.
=> court, garden, horticulture, orchard, yard[cohort etymology, cohort origin, 英语词源] - caked (adj.)
- "thickly encrusted," 1922, past participle adjective from cake (v.).
- impasto (n.)
- laying on of colors thickly," 1784, from Italian impasto, noun of action from impastare "to raise paste; to put in paste," from assimilated form of in- "into, in" (see in- (2)) + pasta "paste" (see pasta).
- Madeira (n.)
- white wine, 1540s, from island of Madeira in the Atlantic, from Portuguese madeira "wood," because the island formerly was thickly wooded, from Latin materia "wood, matter" (see matter).
- smother (v.)
- c. 1200, "to suffocate with smoke," from smother (n.), earlier smorthre "dense, suffocating smoke" (late 12c.), from stem of Old English smorian "to suffocate, choke, strangle, stifle," cognate with Middle Dutch smoren, German schmoren; possibly connected to smolder. Meaning "to kill by suffocation in any manner" is from 1540s; sense of "to extinguish a fire" is from 1590s. Sense of "stifle, repress" is first recorded 1570s; meaning "to cover thickly (with some substance)" is from 1590s. Related: Smothered; smothering.
- thick (adj.)
- Old English þicce "dense, viscous, solid, stiff; numerous, abundant; deep," also as an adverb, "thickly, closely, often, frequently," from Proto-Germanic *thiku- (cognates: Old Saxon thikki, Old High German dicchi, German dick, Old Norse þykkr, Old Frisian thikke), from PIE *tegu- "thick" (cognates: Gaelic tiugh). Secondary Old English sense of "close together" is preserved in thickset and proverbial phrase thick as thieves (1833). Meaning "stupid" is first recorded 1590s. Related: Thickly.
As a noun, "the thick part" (of anything), from mid-13c. Phrase through thick and thin, indicating rough or smooth going, hence "unwaveringly," is in Chaucer (late 14c.); thick-skinned is attested from 1540s; in figurative sense from c. 1600. To be in the thick of some action, etc., "to be at the most intense moment" is from 1680s, from a Middle English noun sense.