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walrus[walrus 词源字典]

walrus: [17] Etymologically, a walrus is probably a ‘whale-horse’. The word seems to have been borrowed from Dutch walrus, which was an inversion of a presumed prehistoric Germanic compound represented by Old English horschwæl and Old Norse hrosshvalr. (The inversion may have been due to the influence of Dutch walvisch ‘whale’ – literally ‘whale-fish’ – but it could also owe something to French influence, since French noun compounds of this sort are often in the reverse order to corresponding Germanic ones.) The element wal- is clearly the same word as whale, and -rus is generally assumed to be horse.

It has, however, been suggested that the horsc- of the Old English term was an alteration of morsa, a name for the walrus of Lappish origin which is also the source of French morse ‘walrus’.
=> horse, whale[walrus etymology, walrus origin, 英语词源]