BANDIT: under summons
A bandit is “banned”or outlawed. Our word comes originally from the Germanic root bann, meaning “a summons,” “proclamation.” This entered Late Latin as bannire, which meant “to proclaim,” and then was absorbed into Italian as bandito, or “outlawed”; that is,a proclamation against something. Old English already had the word as bann, ”command,” ”interdict.” So when anyone was put under a ban, he was told he couldn’t do something. Thismeaning is implied in bandit, and also is involved in the word banish. With the banns of marriage we return to the original meaning of “proclamation.”
DANGER: ruled by a master
A word that has strangely changed its meaning. Danger now means “to be exposed to harm or injury,” but in olden days it meant to be in someone else’s power. As a pensioner wrote in 1461 to his patron: “I am gretly yn your danger and dette for my pension.” This subservience to others is explained by the history of the word. It traces back by many changes of spelling to the Latin dominium, “power,” “lordship,” which in turn derives from dominus, “master.” In early England any whim of his master put a serf in danger.
DISASTER: the stars are evil
If you are faced with disaster, the “stars” are “against” you, for the word disaster is from the Latin dis-, “against,” and astrum, “star.” In their investigations of the cycle theory, scholar seem to have proved that our lives are influenced by such things as the climate, the sun spots, and the stars. Apparently the ancient astrologers (astrum, “star,” and logos, “knowledge”) had an idea by the tail. Our fortunes can sometimes be considered “illstarred.” And then again, with the word consider, we are dealing with astrology, for consider is thought to be from the Latin cum, “with,” and sidus, “star.” When the ancients considered a matter in an effort to come to a decision, they consulted “with” the “stars.”
EARL: opposite of churl
If a man is churlish in his manner, he is acting like a surly, illbred boor. In the English of another day a churl, or a ceorl as it was then spelled, was at the bottom of the social ladder in the very lowest rank of the freeman. When titles came to be conferred the word eorl was used to distinguish a man of noble rank from the ceorl. The spelling went to erl and finally to earl. During the Norman period an earl was the equivalent of the French count, and the word count traces to the Latin comes, or “companion,” so a count was a sometime companion to a king. Among the other title that the Normans brought across the channel was duke, which eventually goes back to the Latin dux, “leader.” Next below the duke is the marquis, borrowed from the French and once spelled marchis. This man controlled a march, which was a tract of borderland. Naturally all of these lesser title follow the prince, since he is actually and etymologically “first” in the land, the ruler. And princeps is derived from primus, “first,” and capio, “take.” So whatever it is, the prince “takes” it “first.”
EMANCIPATE: remove the hand
According to Roman law there were prescribed ceremonies for the purchase and liberation of slaves. When they were bought, the new master laid his hand upon them in token of possession. This act was called mancipium, “possession by the hand.” Our word emancipate has the opposite meaning, and is from the Latin emancipatus; e-, “away,” manus, “hand,” and capio, “take.” So when our slaves were emancipated, the owners “took away their hands.”
ETIQUETTE: a ticket
In 16th-century French etiquette meant a ticket or label. As a matter of fact we get our word ticket from this. Also buying things on tick. The first rules of etiquette were tacked up in conspicuous places in the army posts. The list gave the rules of the day. The Old French word was estiquette, from estiquer, “to stick.” The rules were “stuck” up on the walls. Perhaps we could say that etiquette is a “ticket” to polite society.
FAME: what they say
When you are talked about enough you are famous, or infamous, perhaps, for fame is from the Latin fama, “report,” which is related to the Greek phemi, “speak.” Thus fame is what they say about you. Reputation, however, lasts longer, for your reputation is not what they “say” but what they “think” about you. From the Latin reputo, from re-, “again,” and puto, “think”; that is, to think over again, to consider.
FOIBLE: originally a fencing term
One of the rules of the game of fencing is to receive your enemy’s foible with your own forte, two French borrowings. His foible is the weak part of his foil, from the middle to the tip. Your forte is the strong part from the middle to the hilt. So the foibles of a human being are his weak points and his moral frailties, while his forte is his strong point, that in which he excels.
FOOL: tongue-wagger
Let those who talk too much take care, for the Latin word follis, which gave us fool, means “a windbag.” And yet there is a more innocent way than this to get the reputation of being foolish. The ancient Greeks called those who didn’t hold public office idiots, whence our word idiots, and this may be what our politicians think of us today.
FREE: once, beloved
The word free ties into the Old English freo, a close relative lf the German word frei which meant “loving” or “beloved.” In meant “agreeable” or “beloved.” In the ancient Sanskrit language priya-, diatantly related to free,meant “agreeable” or “beloved.”. If you had been a patrician in those olden days, your “loved ones” who would have been free ,and your slaves .Or if your should have been slaves enough, you would probably have bought his liberty and made him free too, so finally our Old English word fero evoluted into the modern word free, that is ,”not slave”; and freond ,”loving one”, grew into “friend”.
HERMAPHRODITE : originally a god’s name
Biologically ,today ,a hermaphrodite is a living being having both male and female organs. This highly technical word, however , has a romantic history .Hermaphroditos was the son of the Greed god Hermes and of Aphrodite, goddess of love ,and was supposed to have not only the names, but the beauty of both his parents. On a certain occasion, a susceptible nymph, Saimacis by name , saw the handsome son bathing in her pool and she immediately fell head over heels in love with him. To her horror he turned her down.. But she was a resourceful girl and prayed to the gods for an indissoluble union with him .The gods answered her prayer and arranged that the body of the nymph and the body of Hermaphroditos should grow together as one. Our biological name hermaphrodite was taken from this story and was applied quite logically to bisexual individuals.
HOTTENTOT: just gibberish
The musical comedy stage has made the savage Hottentots familiar to us. They were a native tribe of the Cape of Good Hope. When the Dutch landed there they couldn’t understand the native dialect at all since it was full of clicks and jerks and sounded like so much stammering .The only syllables that the Dutch sailors could understand were hot and tot, and so the mariners named the people just that : hot-en-tot ,for en is “and” in Dutch.
IMPEDE: putting your foot in it
When you are impeded ,that is ,when there are obstacles in your way that hinder you from doing what you wish ,it means that your “foot “ is “in” something ,from the Latin im-.”in” ,and pes, pedis ,”foot”. That is ,your “foot” is entangled “in” something and your can’t get it out. You have really “put your foot in it,” or more literally ,you have something “in the way of your foot.” That’s why we call heavy baggage impedimenta,it tangles up our feet. But when someone expedites matters for you (ex, “out,” and pes, pedis, foot”) he gets your “foot” “out” of its entanglement so that you can do what you want to without hindrance.
INCUBUS: once an obscene spirits
This word and its sister succubus have morbid and obscene origins. Incubus is from the Latin incubo,”lie upon,” and in the beginning referred to an evil spirit who would lie with the ladies when they were asleep and for no good purpose. A succubus ,Latin succumbo, “lie beneath,” was a female domon who, in turn ,was reputed to have sexual connection with men in their sleep . Both sexes, apparently, were well taken care of .In its later history the word incubus has come to mean a handi-happing burden of some sort,as ”His career was held back by the incubus of poverty.”A succubus,however,never changed and is still a strumpet.
INVESTIGATE:looking for footprints
When detectives investigate a murder,it is likely today that they will first look for fingerprints.And yet if the crime had been committed on a snowy night they would search for foot prints too.And here we have the sealed-in picture of investigate:Latin in,”in,”and vestigo,”follow a footprint,” from vestigium, “footprint.”This latter,of course,gives us our word vestige, as,”There is not a vestige of truth in the statement.”T hat is,not a trace or a footprint of truth.
LUNATIC: moonstruck
There are many people today who would feel uncomfortable if they had to sleep with the moon shining in their faces.They probably wouldn’t believe that this act would turn then into lunatics,but the shadow of that superstition still remains in the race .Down through the centuries there has been a widespread notion that madness is related to the moon,and that the violence of madness changes with the phases of the moon.In Roman mythology luna was the moon goddess,and it was her name that gave us lunatic because she was supposed to create this condition.
MAIM:knocking out a front tooth
An early statute says that you have maimed a man if you knock out his front tooth ,but that he is not maimed if you knock out one of his grinders,because with a front tooth he can bite and tear at the enemy,while with a grinder he can only masticate his food.Another amusing law in 1641 says that “The cutting off of an eare,or nose ,or breaking of the hinder teeth,or such like ,is no maihem.”Now ,of course, the words maim and mayhem apply to any willful mutilation.
MAROON:take to the wilds .
When pirates of old took a dislike to one of their fellow buccaneers,they would set him ashore,or maroon him,on some farlff island and simply sail away.In the beginning though, maroon was a moun, and maroons were the Negroes who lived in Dutch Guiana and the West Indies.The word is from the French term marron, a short form of the Spanish word cimarron,meaning wild and untamed.Later on maroon changed to mean “one left in the wilds .”
MOB:from a Latin phrase
The English have often accused us Americans of being lazy with our language.We won’t bother,they say,to call a man a baseball fanatic.We clip this to “a baseball fan.”But if we turn back the pages of history, we discover that the British had this same habit around the beginning of the 18th century.They,too were coining new words by snipping bits off old ones.The essayist, Joseph Addison,was quite haughty about it all. He refers to the practice as:”This Humour of speading no more than we needs must which has so miserably curtailed some of our Words”，and he cites the new vulgarism mob as an example.Before the reign of Charles II folks never said such a slang word as mob. They used the Latin phrase mobile vulgus,”the fickle crowd.”But to Addison’s horror they soon shortened this to mobile Then to the mob which we still have with us.
MOUNTEBANK:on a bench
The history of mountebank ties in to those barkers who talk you into sideshows at the circus, and to the old-time fakers who stepped up on a soapbox and sold Indian snake oil cures.The derivation of the word proves the point Mounteband comes from the Italian montambanco, a contraction of the phrase monta-in-banco, that reads in translation”mount-on-bench.”In Italian montambanco,a contraction of the phrase monta-in-banco ,that reads in translation “mount-on-bench.”In Italy the montambanco was a quack who customarily perched on a bench to hawk his fraudulent wares,and gathered a crowd around him with his jokes and juggling.
NEIGHBOR:your friend on the next farm
Literally,the farmer who lives near you,from the Old English neshgebur which meant “near-by farmer.”Neah appears in modern German as nahe and in English as nigh ,both of which mean”near”Gebur is related to Bauer ,”farmer ”or “peasant,”in modern German and entered our languang from Dutch as boor ,no longer a farmer or peasant but a city person’s idea of someone with the awkward and clumsy manners of a peasant .This same Dutch word boer gave us the Boer War in which the English fought the Dutch farmers in South Africa.
NICKNAME: an added name
In days long past, a nickname was an ekename, and eke meant “added”, a name ”added” to your given name. At that time an ekename was a surname , and even in surname we have the same meaning in the French sur , which means “over” or ”above” , a name “over” and “above” your first name . the Middle English word ekename finally absorbed the “n” from ‘an” and became a ekename , and later , with us , a nickname . Once again a name “added” to those you already have.
OPPORTUNE: the ship is at the harbor
Each year on August 17th the romans had a feast in honor of Portunus, the general god who protected the ports and harbors. His name is derived from portus, the Latin words for “harbor ”. Our word opportune traces to the Latin words ob-,”before”, and portus , “port ,” or “before the port .” When a ship is at the harbor mouth it is an opportune moment , or a happy , fitting, and suitable time for many things.
PALLIANTE: cover with a garment
The traditional garb of the Greek philosophers was a rectangular woolen cloak draped over the left shoulder and around the body , called by the Romans a pallium . By some strange coincidence , and just as a passing piece of gossip , this was also the popular garment of the hetaerae , those charming and cultural entertainers and courtesans of the day . From the term pallium , “cloak,” the Latins derived the word palliates which meant “covered with a cloak” , and in this circuitous way we get our word palliate with some of the original meaning left . When we palliateour sins , for instance , we attempt to cover them as with a cloak so that they will not be so easily seen and will seem less offensive . When we palliate pain , we reduce its severity and make it less obvious . Again, in a sense , we are “cloaking” it .
PARAGON: a testing stone
In order to test the purity of gold it is often rubbed against a fine-grained , dark stone like jasper in order to see what kind of a mark it leaves . This testing stone is called a “touchstone”. Ourword paragon comes through Old French from the Italian word paragone which originally meant a touchstone, and hence paragon came finally to be a standard of true worth, so that we can now say , “he is a paragon of virtue.”
PECULIAR: related to cattle
The story of the word peculiar has a “peculiar” history. In the beginning of Rome, when there were as yet no minted coins, cattle, called pecus in Latin, took the place of money . From pecus the word peculium was finally formed and it meant “private property”. This grew into the word peculiaris which applied to possessions that were “one’s own”. The term entered Old French as peculiar and English as peculiar , with the meaning of property belonging exclusively to someone and not owned by others, or it often could refer to characteristics that were quite distinct from those of other individuals. As the poet Robert Browning said : “Yes, this in him was the peculiar grace.” Now, more and more, peculiar has taken on the meaning of characteristics that are odd and queer.
PEDIGREE: foot of a crane
Perhaps you take just pride in your family tree. Like a blooded horse, you are proud of you pedigree. But you may not know that, when you boast of your pedigree, you are really speaking of a crane’s foot, for pedigree seems to have been our way of pronouncing the French phrase pied de grue which means “the foot of a crane.” In those very old documents that recorded a family tree, the three-line graph of lineal descent looked for all the world like the imprints of a crane’s foot and suggested the picturesque name. The Latin ancestors of the word pedigree are pes, “foot,” de, “of,” and grus, “crane.”
PERNICIOUS: death-dealing
A pernicious practice is a harmful one that will work evil, but even though the word still implies a threat, it has weakened in power through the centuries. The Latin perniciosus gave it to us, and this splits into per-, “through and through,” and nex, necis, “death.”
PERSON: first was a mask
Actors in Roman and Greek dramas often had to take more than one part in a single performance,and for each chanracter that they portrayed they would wear a different mask.the name of such a mask in latin was
persona,and since,in a fashion,we are all actors,the word persona came to mean the part that anyone plays in the world.and finally it designated an individuality,or,as of today,a person.by a similar figure of speech,if we impersonate another,we put on his mask.
POSTMAN:reminder of romance
when the postman rings our doorbell on his daily rounds,he gives little hint of the romance of his beginnings.the first postman were royal couriers who rode post,and a post was one of a chain of stations that furnished a relay of fresh men and horses to carry the king`s messages to some distant point.later on these postriders carried the mails.the word post itself came up from the latin posita,"placed,"for the original posts were "placed"at intervals,along a communication route.
PRECARIOUS:obtained by prayer
when we are in a precarious positiomn,oursituation is uncertain and often dangerous.the whole thing started out with the idea of prayer,for precarious is based on the latin word prex,precis, "prayer."it looks as though the romans thought when you got anything by prayer or entreaty,it was a pretty uncertain piece of business,for their same word precarious meant "risky".in the begings of the English language precarious meant supplication,and in 1656 the English lexicographer Blount defined precarious as something "granted to one by prayer and entreaty,to use as long as it pleases the party and no longer."Now the word more nearly means "dependent on chance or hazard."
PRECOCIOUS: half-baked?
Latin prae-,"before,"and coquere,"to cook,"were combined to form praecoquere,"to cook beforehand"or"ripen beforehand."in the latter sense the word applied to fruits that ripened early.From this was derived the English word precocious ,originally applied to plants and trees with the meaning "flowwering or fruiting early or before the usual time ,""early or prematurely ripe or edveloped."We speak of a precocious child as one who is unusually forward and mature .He is "cooked ahead"or if he happpens to be a brat you don't like ,you might prefer to say he is "half-baked."
PRESTIGE:meant magic
When we say that a man has gained great prestige we intend it as a compliment ,but the French word prestige that we have borrowed is allied to prestidigitation and originally meant juggling tricks ,or illusion. So the prestige that has been won by some of our political leaders may sometimes have something to do with sleight of hand. As one 17th-century writer put it:"I am not deceived by the prestiges of the impostor."
PUNTY:born later
The word puny has meant many things down through the years, as:"inferior in rank," a puny officer;"more recent in time," a puny date;" a junior,"he left his money to the older children, none to the punies;"a novice or tyro,"I see you are but a puny in your studies.And now puny just means small and feeble.The word is directly trom the 12th-century French puisne,from puis, "later,"and ne,"born,"and its meaning "of small growth" or "weak" simply refers to the fact that babies and younger children "born later" have less strength than the older ones.if you bive the French pronunciation to puisne the sound is almost identical with puny.
ROBOT:a slave
A long familiar word, but brought into wide notice by the play R.U.R.(Rossum's Universal Robots)written by Karel Capek in 1929. In his play these man-made mechanical robots overpower human beings.The term robot is from the Czech word robotnik," slave," which goes back to the term robota, "work."
ROBUST:like an oak
That robust man with the magnificent build is literally "strong as an oak," for our descriptive word comes from the Latin robustus ,"oaken." If you wish to make a statement that is strong and powerful, you coroborate it, or "make it like an oak," from the Latin cor-, an intensive, and robur ,"a very hard oak."
SCAVENGER:FORMERLY A TAX-COLLECTOR
When England was young, scavenger was spelled scavager and meant a "tax-collector " or "inspector." Later on an "n" found its way into the word, and by this time the scavenger had become a supervisor of street cleaning, which comes close to our modern meaning. The word derives from Anglo-French scawager, ultimately from Old French escauver,”inspect.”In the reign of Henry VIII, Leonard Skevington, a lieutenant of the Tower, invented a dreadful instrument of torture that squeezed the body until blood flowed from the ears and nose.This was named”the scavenger’s daughter,”a revolting little tale that shows how the tax-collector has been loved through the ages.Of course, a scavenger now is an animal that feeds on a dead o r decaying carcass.
SCINTILIATE: gives out sparks
Some fifty years ago a lady named Ellen T.Fowler dashed off a relatively deathless line.” My wit,” she wrote,”is all of the P.m.variety and never scintillates in the moring.”As a matter of fact, the only thing that ever scintillates is wit,for the English language seems to have found no other use for the aord.In its special connection,however,scintillate is a highly descriptive word,as it means”to gtive off sparks”;it is based on the Latin scintilla which meant “spark”.And that sparkling tinsel on the Christmas tree comes from the identical Latin source, but in passing into French scintilla became etincelle.We English dropped the initial“e” and turned tincelle into tinsel.
SIMPLICITY: has nothing to hide
Simplicity is single in purpose and has nothing to conceal. It comes from a hypothetical Latin prefix sem-,”one,” and plico,”fold”.That is ,opened up,unfolded,laid out flat. The word duplicity, however, is from the Latin duo, “two”, and plico,”fold”.In this case the paper is “folded overtwice”and can hide something in to. Those who practice duplicity are double-dealing, the opposite of simple, or single dealing. They are trying to fool you. With the word diplomat, we turn to the Greek word diploma, “a paper folded twice, “which diplomats took along as their credentials, and which college students now receive as their reward.
STEWARD: watched the pigs
A steward in one of our exclusive clubs might not be pleased to know that his name used to signify” keeper of the pigs”. The word steward recalls the days when a man’s chief treasure really was his pigsty. To guard the valuable herd from robbers and wild beasts, a special watchman was appointed who was called a steward from stig,“sty” and weard,”warden”or”guardian.”Later on, wealth expanded from herds of swine to herds of cattle and to lands and the job of the steward was now to watch over all of these.In feudal times,the steward rose to great power,becoming a sort of agent for the lord of the manor.He leased lands and collected rents.In some cases he became a magistrate,sttling disputes and such.Thus,in Great Britain,until 1849.the Lord Steward of the Household even had judicial powers and was a minister of the British Cabinet.
THUG: an ancient gangster
From the Hindustani word thag,“cheat,” which in turn derives from the Sanskrit sthaga,”cheat,”from sthag,”conceal.”These East Indian thugs operated until about 100 years ago. Like modern gangsters they had their “finger men” who spotted the victim. When these thugs were in formed by their spies that a man of property was about to take a journey, they followed him until he arrived at some lonely spot and then, like our modern muggers, they strangled and robbed him. It was all presumed to be done in honor of their goddess Kali, but this ancient murder syndicate profited handsomely by this service to their faith. And their brutality gave us our word thug.
TROUBLE: full of commotion
When a person is in trouble, his mind is ill at ease. The Latin parent of the word trouble indicates just that, for turbo meant, “ disturb”. It came to us first with the spelling turble, then truble, finally trouble. This same Latin word turbo has given us turbulent,” full of commotion”; disturb,” throw into complete disorder”; and turbid, that is, a turbid stream which is “all muddied up.”
VIRILITY: for men only
All of the words deriving from the Latin word vir,”man,” are flattering. Virtus, in Latin meant strength, courage, excellence, all of which describe our word virility . And to be virtuous, of course, is to have the traits of a man. And should you be able
2. Sources of the Words of Attitudes and Emotions
AMUCK: murderous frenzy
The famous 18th-century British navigator,Captain Jamer Cook,who was certainly a traveled gentleman,claimed that when a man amuck it was all because of his jealousy of a woman,Whether this be true or not ,our exotix word is borrowed from the Malay.In the Malay language the term amoq,sometimes spelled amok,is the term for a mental disease similar morbid depression into a state of murderous frenzy in which he will attack anyone in his path.This description contains the sense in which we use our word amuck.
ASTONISH:thunderstruck
With changes in spelling from the French estoner,which is derived from the Latin ex,"out,"and tonare,"to thunder."When one is astonished,he is literally"thunderstruck."And a similar picture is behind our word "thunder,"which derives from the same source as thor,the god of Norse mythology called "the Thunderer,"who was supposed to hurl lighting bolts at the earth.In olden days when one was astonished,he was atunned as by a blow and in a trance."I astonysshe with a stroke upon thehead ,"writes a long-ago author.Nowadays astonished doesn not mean much more than surprised.
BEDLAM:is really "Bethlehem"
This is a British corruption of the word Bethlehem.The priory of St.Mary of Bethlehem was founded in 1242.But any londoner of this day would have called it,in his disalect,"St.Mary'of Bedlam."In 1402 the priory was turned into a hospital for the insane,and from the reign of Henry VIII it has been a royal foundation for lunatics.So when the Londoners spoke of the Holy City of Bethlehem they were careful to pronounce it the way we now do to distinguish it from the asylum,bedlam.But when our hourse is a perfect bedlam,it still sounds,with its noise and confusion,like the inside of old lunatic asylum.
BIGWIG:fine feathers
Even tody we occasionally speak of who ranks himself overimportantly as a bigwig.In the England of the 18th centrury a man of distinction was spotted by his large,powdered wig.An august judge bacame more august by this symbol of authority.There were nouns then,now unfamimilar to us,that were once a part of the language,like wiglomeration that meant the pomp
and fuss of legal proceedingd.In our times a bigwig is more apt to be a stuffed shirt.
BUGBEAR:a bogy
TO us a bugbear is a thing of appreciable dread.But in Wales it represented a phantom that was used to scare the naughty children,and the bug part is said to have come from the,to us, unpronounceable Welsh word bwg,"specter,"This word passed into English as bugge,then bug,and gave us bugbear,a goblin-animal of some kind.Our bogyman ,really a "goblin-man," is also to be Welsh .And bugaboo is probably just the same goblin with a frightening boo on the end.
DISMAL:merely bad days
The Egyptians believed in unluckly days,and apparently these so-called "Egyption days"came into Rome and then on into the Europe of the Middle Ages.In France two such days were marked on the calendar each month and were called the dis malfrom the Latin dies mali,"the evil days."Dis mal was transferred into Middle English as the adjective dismale which descriped these unluckly days when it was wise to be very careful,since misfortune lurked at every tune .Now dismal just means gloomy and depressing.
MAWKISH
meant simply “ without appetite,” “inclined to be sickly.” Now it’s something that makes you feel sick,like the actions of an over-sentimental and mawkish lover.
MELANCHOLY: black bile
The Greeks defined melancholia as “the black bile that produces temperament,” and they believed that it was the presence of too much black bile in the system-melas, “ black,” and chole, “bile-” that caused the blues. This notion went down through the centuries. The Elizabethans thought that sullen and gloomy people were suffering from this disease which was very fashionable at that time among the ultra-refined. The favorite dose for depressed and fainting females was melancholy-water.
MISOGAMIST: the hater
Many an old bachelor is a misogamist,a misogynist, and a misanthrope. The inspiration for the word misogamist is the Greek miso-, “hating,” and gamos, “marriage.” A misogynist is a hater of women, again miso-, “hate,” and gyne, “woman.” While the word misanthrope comes from the Greek word for hate plus anthropos which means “mankind,”so this chap hates everybody. Again in Greek, philo means “love,” and so a philanthropist for his part loves all people.
NAUGHTY :good-for-nothing
In the days of Miles Standish they spoke of “the naughty canoes,”and this gives an idea of the original meaning of the word :worthless; of bad quality; or just good-for-naught. This was merely a stronger way of saying naught which is derived from the Old English nawiht; that is, “no whit ” or “nothing”. Later on naughty came to signify evil or corrupt, as a naughty pack; that is, “a woman of bad character.” Not until fairly modern times did naughty come to describe a child’s mischief as it does now.
NICE : formerly meant ignorant
In the Middle Ages nice meant foolish or ignorant , for it comes from the Latin word nescio which is made up of ne, “not”, and scio, “to know.” Then , because ignorant people are often silent, its meaning changed to “shy” or “coy”. Sometimes shy folks get the reputation of being a little uppish because of their offish ways, so the meaning of the word shifted until it meant “hard to please.” “precise,” “ exacting.” We use it today in that sense when we say : “ That is a nice (exacting) problem.” Finally it became general in its meaning and is now applied to many things ,such as people of good taste and disposition.
ORDEAL: first with boiling water
When a girl says that her day of shopping was quite an ordeal, she is using the word in a somewhat softer sense than it originally had. In the England of another day this term, spelled ordal in Old English and meaning “judgment ,” was most often used in the phrase “trial by ordeal,” a phrase that recalls a legal practice of our ancestral British courts. If a degendant in this original ordeal could carry a red-hot iron without being burned, he was innocent. If he flinched at plunging his hand in boiling water, he was guilty. It was as simple as that,though the tests varied from time to time. And now an ordeal can be a severe test of character, or just a trying experience.
OSTRACIZE: reminiscent of Greek democracy
When society ostracizes a person today it is recalling one of the quainter aspects of Greek democracy. From time to time the Athenians would make up their minds that the influnence of a certain public man was dangerous and unwholesome. On such an occasion the citizens would assemble in the market place and vote as to whether fellow should be banished. They simply wrote the name of the undesirable man down on a tile or potsherd called an ostrakon. There was no special accusation before the vote, no redress after the votes were taken. If 6000 ostrakons were cast, the victim just kept out of the state for 5 or 10 year. That was all. From this custom and from the Greek term osirakon came our word ostracize with its present and somewhat less brutal significance.
ROUÉ: once a criminal
From the French word rouer that meant "to break on the wheel or "torture on the rack," this word came to us from the Duke of Orleans who was Regent of France around the turn of the 18th century while Louis XV was still a minor, and after whom our city of New Orleans was named. The Duke liked ribaldry and revelry, and so surrounded himself with dissolute and most disreputable people. And quite as in these days when a man will affectionately call another, "you old bastard, you," the Duke addressed these dissipated companions as his dear roués, there wasn’t one of them who shouldn’t have been jailed or stretched on the rack.
SAVAGE: forest dweller
We move from the Latin silva, “forest,” and silvaticus, also salvaticus, ”(man) of the forest,” through the Old French sauvage to our word savage. The dwellers in towns looked upon the “men of the woods” as wild men and so the word savage gradually took on its present-day meanings of brutality and cruelty.
SILLY: originally meant happy
When silly was spelled sœlig it meant “blessed” or “happy.” Then “innocent,” “plain,” “rustic,” “simple.” By the 17th century silly conveyed the notion that the person so-called was weak, harmless, and deserving pity, as “this silly, aged king.” And about this date we arrived at modern meaning “foolish.”
SKEPTIC: examine carefully
The Greek philosopher, Pyrrho, started a new school of thought some three or four centuries before Christ and he and his followers are regarded as the first skeptics. The epithet skeptic was innocent enough at the beginning. It was taken from the Greek word skeptomai which merely meant to “look at something carefully” and “examine” and “consider” it. Pyrrho felt that our physical senses were admittedly unreliable, and that we could, therefore, never know the true nature of things. With this in mind he taught his pupils to look out upon the world with an unruffled indifference, and to more or less permanently suspend judgment. With the passing of time the name skeptic was applied to anyone who questioned things too much, notably to anyone who had doubts about the Christian religion.
STIGMA: literally a brand
While a stigma with us is an unpleasant mark of disgrace it used to be a lot more painful than that. When the officials stigmatized a petty criminal in 17th –century England, they actually branded him with a red-hot iron. The Newgate Calendar tells of a hangman who was so ignorant that he could only burn the letter “T” for thief on the palm of the culprit, this being the only letter of the alphabet he knew. The word stigma in Greek meant a brand made by a pointed instrument.
SUPERCILIOUS: lifted eyebrows
Those who wish to be “snooty” and lift their noses in the air are acting out a slang word. Those, however, who prefer to be supercilious and express their disdain by merely raising their eyebrows are portraying a word that is neither touched nor tainted by slang. Our word supercilious is a direct descendant of the Latin supercilium, “haughtiness,” which splits into super, “above,” and cilium, “eyelid.” Raise your eyebrows and there you are, the picture of disdain.
THRILL: to bore a hole in
The words thrill and nostril are close cousins. When you are thrilled about a play, for example, the play has actually “pierced” you with emotion, because the Middle English word thrillen meant, at first, “to pierce.” And, similarly, our word Nostril used to be spelled nosthirl, that is ,a hole drilled in the nose.
TOADY: first a toad-eater
When we use the verb toady, as” He toadied to the wealthy,” we are using a word with a somewhat comic history. You see it was once the custom of charlatans to have attendants who ate, or pretended to eat, toads. The toad was regarded for many years as poisonous, so, after the attendant had apparently swallowed the toad, the charlatan would appear to save his life by getting rid of the poison. The word toady originally stood for toadeater, but in modern usage it is applied to a flatterer who will do distasteful and nauseating things to please his patron. He will toady to people with great names and great wealth.
TORTURE: to twist采集者退散
In the days of the Spanish Inquisition victims were tortured by twisting and stretching them on the rack. The word torture come from the Latin tortus, a derivation of torqueo which means “turn” or “twist”. A tortuous road is a “twisting” and winding one. When a robber or blackmailer extorts (Latin ex, “from”) money from persons, he “twists” or wrests it from them by physical or mental violence. If a face is distorted (Latin dis-, “away”), it is “twisted away” from its normal shape, and a contorted (Latin con-, “with”) body is “twisted with” or upon itself. While a retort (Latin re-, “back”), is a remark “twisted” or turned “back” upon the challenger. And even our word torch seems to have come from a “twisted” wick.
TRIVIAL: three ways
The Romans were human and they knew that where their road crossed would be the spot where the women would meet and gossip on the way back from market. The words for this in Latin would be tri-, “three,” and via, “way,” that is, trivia, which in our language means “trifles.” The word trivial comes straight from the Latin trivialis which means in translation “of the crossroads.” That is , crossroads small talk. Just gossip.
VILLAIN: only a farmer
The villain whom we used to hiss on the stage started as a quite honest son of the soil. The word villa in Latin stood for a farm Or house. This entered Old French as vilein and Middle English as vyleyn, and until that time this villain of ours was just a rustic fellow, half serf, and bound to the country estate or villa of some lord. Of course he was of low birth, and hence, to the aristocrats, was a person of low morals and villainy in general. Shakespeare employed the word villain in both its ancient and modern uses, but after him the bad sense of the term took over.
ZANY: began as a nickname来源：www.examda.com
You have probably seen a group of people acting like fools at a cocktail party, If so , you could properly call them zanies. At its beginning the Italian word Zani was a Venetian dialect from equivalent to Gianni, a shortened form of the proper name Giovanni, which equals our “John.” It was a nickname applied to porters and other servants. Thus in the Commedia dell’ Arte a clowning servant was a Zani. His role was to mimic and make fun of his master. By the time zany reached the English language, it meant any silly person.
3. Romance Behind Business Terms
BUCKET SHOP: originally a bucket of beer
In the 1870’s this was applied to a low-down drinking establishment where patrons could come with a small bucket and carry away an evening’s supply of beer. About ten years later the name was transferred to a brokerage establishment that operates illegally, speculating against its customers, failing to execute their commands, and pocketing profits thus accrued. The Oxford English Dictionary claims that the first application of this term was in Chicago on the grain marker. In 1882, the Chicago Board of Trade refused to allow transactions of less than 5,000 bushels so an “Open” Board began to trade in small lots in an alley. If trade on the legitimate board was slack, members are supposed to have said, ”I’ll send down and get a bucketful pretty soon.”
BUDGET: just a little bag
French merchants of the Middle Ages carried their money around in a bougette, or “little bag”, a word that descended from the Latin bulga, “a leather bag”. The English word bulge comes from the same source. Belly is a very distant relative too, although that’s not so obvious, but they all have the idea of “swelling” in them. When a storekeeper made up his budget in those days he opened his bag to find out his resources and counted the cash..
BUTCHER: slaughtered the goats
The original occupation of the butcher seems to have been the slaying of he-goats. Our word comes from the early French bocher, “butcher”, derived from boc, “goat”, An old French ordinance states that the bocher “shall not cast the blood of goats in public ways, nor slaughter the goats in the streets.” In olden times the butcher was of the very elite of tradesmen, as is evidenced by a 14th-century writer who reports: ”A woman that was queen of Fraunce by eritage wedded a bocher for his fairness.”
CALCULATE: suggests pebbles
When a shopkeeper calculates his accounts, he is apt to use an adding machine. But in Rome 2,000 years ago the merchant figured his profit and loss in a more primitive way. He used what he called calcui, or “little stones” as his counters. So the Latin term calculus, “pebble”, not only gave us our word calculus which we apply to one of most complicated forms of modern mathematics.
CANCEL: a lattice of ink
The word for “lattice” in Latin is cancelli. In a business sense, when a clerk in the Post Office “cancels” a stamp, he makes a lattice of ink marks right across it. Cancel is from the same source as the chancel of a church-originally the lattice division that separated the choir from the nave-now the part of the church so separated. And the word cancellarius, “usher of the law court,” who was so named because he stood ad cancellos, “at the lattice.”
CAPITAL: from the human head
The word capital in the sense of wealth comes ultimately from the Latin caput , “head”. The Latin root of caput appears in scores of English words in various forms depending upon whether it came to us through the French or directly from the Latin. Both of our words capital and cattle, for example, are from caput, for in the earliest days a man’s wealth, or capital, was reckoned in cattle, and we still speak of a herd of a thousand “head”. A chattel mortgage is really a “cattle” mortgage, and up to the 16th century the English spoke of “goods and cattals” instead of “goods and chattels”.
CHARGE: from a Roman chariot
When you charge a customer for a purchase you owe a debt to Rome for the term you are using. The Latin word for the four-wheeled baggage wagon that Julius Caesar used in his campaigns was carrus. In later Latin carrus developed the verb. Carricare which meant“to load on a wagon，”and the French took this over as chargier. A “charge account,” of course, “loads” a person with the obligation of paying. We charge, or burden a man with his crime. You charge or “load” your mind with a responsibility. And in the olden days, they used to charge a musket with powder and sot. They “loaded” it and when they discharged it they “unloaded” it. Beyond this the Roman chariot carrus gave other words. Our car came up through the North French word carre, and the carriage we used to ride in came through the Old Norman French cariage. Cargo is another great-grandchild of carricare, ‘to load.” Cargo is “ loaded” on a cart. But most curiously of all we inherit the word caricature from carricare which sometimes meant to “over-load” and so o exaggerate, as caricaturists are supposed to do.
CHAUFFEUR: stoked the fire
A French word that used merely to mean a fireman or stoker and that eventually goes back to the Latin calificare, “to make hot.” Around the year 1900, in the first days of the automobile when it often was a steam-driven vehicle, the French gave the bantering name of chauffeur of “stoker” to the professional who drove the car. The term chauffeur derives from chauffer, “to heat,” and this contributed another word to English. The Old French form chaufer went into English as chaufen, “to warm,” which finally changed into our present word chafe which used to mean “to make warm by rubbing,” but now is most commonly used by us in the sense of making the skin sore or sensitive by rubbing. The chafing-dish is the only modern use that retains the original meaning of “heat.” And the chauffeur is no longer a “fireman.”
COAL: first a glowing ember
The word coal, spelled col in Old English, meant at one time a piece of carbon glowing without flame. Later coal took on its modern meaning; and confusingly enough, the word charcoal means something that has been “charred” and so reduced to coal. One of the earliest mentions of coal is found in the Saxon Chronicle of the abbey of Petersborough in the England of 852 A.D. The abbot had let some land to a certain Wulfred who was to send to the monastery in return, among other things, 60 loads of wood, 12 loads of coal, and 6 loads of peat. The type of hard coal known as anthracite owes the beginning of its name history to the Greek word anthrax, meaning “coal,” which was described by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus in a script he wrote on Stones aboyt 371 B.C. Bituminous, or soft coal, got its name from he Latin word bitumen, a mineral pitch found in Palestine and Babylon that was used for mortar. In the Douay Bible of 1609 we read: “Thou shalt pitch it (the arke) within and without with bitumen.” The coal called lignite is so imperfectly formed that it still has the brown look of decayed wood. Hence its name from he Latin lignum, “wood.”
COBALT: a devil
A tough, steel-gray metallic element, valuable to certain steel alloys, and useful in some of its compounds as a pigment. Its lustrous sheen often made the miners think they had discovered a more precious meal. Because of this, and also because the arsenic and sulphur it often contains was harmful to those working over it, this meal was regarded as the demon of the mines and was nicknamed from the German Kobalt, a variant of Kobold, meaning a “goblin.” The miners chose a similar name for nickel. In German it used to be Kupfernickel, “copper demon,” because this tricky ore looks copper and isn’t. We took the word nickel from he Swedish kopparnickel, dropping the first half of the name in transit. Nickel, then, is just a bit of he Old Nick.
COMPANY: eats bread with you本文来源:网
The term company corresponds to companion and this in turn derives from he Latin words cum, “with,” and panis, “bread.” A companion, then, is one who eats bread with you, a “messmate,” and when you have company at your house they share your hospitality. In its business use he romantic associations of the word company are drained off.
4. Word Histories of Your Garden
MISTLETOE
It’s too bad to rob the mistletoe of any of its delightful associations, but the beginnings of the word are anything but romantic. When we trace mistletoe back to its origin, we find it spelled mistiltan, and mistily comes, of all things, from a word meaning “dung,” and tan means “twig.” So here we have a “twig of dung.” This all grew out of the popular belief that this plant sprang from bird droppings, In a 17th-century essay we read that mistletoe “come onely by the mewting of birds . . . which feed thereupon and let it passé through their body.” The ancient Druids thought that the mistletoe of the oak was a cure for the various ailments of old age, and William Bullein, writing in 1562 in his Bulwarke of Defence Against All Sickness and Woundes said: “The miseln groweth . . . upon the tree through the dounge of byrdes.” We regard the plant as an invitation to a kiss, but the American Indians, being on the practical side, didn’t trifle with it in this way. They chewed the stuff for toothache.
NARCISUS
The history of this flower-name leads us into an involved love story of the Grecian gods which eventually contrituted three useful words to the English language. Echo, daughter of air and earth, was an attendant on Gera, queen of the heavens. She happened to offend her mistress, however, and for punishment was deprived of all spech save the power to repeat such word echo. In spite of her handicap, she fell hopelessly in love with the beautiful youth Narcissus, son of a river god, but he spurned her love and as a result Echo faded away until only her bone and her voice were left. In order to punish Narcissus for his crime Nemeses, goddess of vengence, made the youth fall in love with his own reflection in the waters of a fountain; and since such love as this could never be consummated, Narcissus pined away and finally changed into a flower.So from this we have our word echo, the Freudian term narcissism, and narcissus itself, with its handsome and usually white or yellow flowers.
NASTURTIUM来源：www.examda.com
The pungent smell of these flowers caused them to be nicknamed “nose-twisters ” by the ancients. You see, the word nasturtium was made up of the Latin words nasus, “nose,” and torqueo, “twist.” It was the Roman naturalist Pliny who said, in the 1st century, that this flower “received its name from tormenting the nose.” And if you chew one of the seeds the bitter taste will make the meaning of the name more obvious.
ORCHID
The lovely and expensive orchid holds in its name the Greek word for “testicle,” orchis. Even Pliny the Elder, Roman author and naturalist, said,these 2,000 years ago, that the orchid was remarkable in that, with its double roots, it resembles the testicles. These are his Latin words:” Mirabilis est orchis herba, sive serapias, gemina radice testiculis simili.” The word orchis now survives in English only as a botanical and medical term. The meaning proper has disappeared along with the study of Greek from the general ken.
PANSY
Some poetic mind fancied that this dainty flower had a thoughtful face, and so named it pensee, French for “thoughtful,” which turned easily into our word pansy.
PASSION FLOWER
So named because its parts resemble the instruments of Christ’s passion. The corona is the crown of thorns; the flower, the nails or wounds. The five sepals and five petals are the ten apostles. Peter and Judas were not counted.
PEONY
These striking, heavy-headed plants so characteristic of early summer wereonce widely used in medicine so they were named after Paion, a personage of Greek mythology who was the physician of the gods.
PETUNIA来源：考试大
The botanists saw a resemblance between this small tropical plant with its white and violet flowers and the tobacco plant so they took the American Indian word petun, “tobacco,” and put a Latin sounding ”ia” on the end.
PHILODENDRON
A tropical Amirican plant that likes to climb trees, among other things, and so takes its name from the Greek philodendros, from philos, “loving,” and dendron, ”tree,” that is, a “tree-loving plant.”
PHLOX
The solid and variegated colors of the phlox glow like flames. Why shouldn’t they, since phlox, in Greek, means “flame”?
POINSETTIA
The Honorable Joel Roberts Poinsett of Charleston, South Carolina, was adistinguished diplomat, Secretary of War in President Martin Van Buren’s cabinet, author, congressman, authority on military science, Union leader in the Civil War, but for all that he would probably gave been forgotten had he not been appointed as a special minister to Mexico. It was while there that he became attracted to the large, flaming flowers that we now know so well. He brought some of the plants back to the States and his name Poinsett gave us poinsettia.
RHODODENDRON
A rose tree,from the Greek rhodon, “rose,” and dendron, ”tree.”
SALVIA来源：考试大
The oldsters knew something of the mystical healing powers of sage tea. This idea is contained in the Latin name salvia, which is from salvus, meaning “sound” or “in good health.” In Old French this same Latin word became sauge which eventually gave us sage. But the scarlet variety of sage is an ornamentai plant, and it retains its stylish Latin name of salvia.
SCABIOSA
A thoroughly unromantic Latin name, a derivation of scabies , “the itch,” from scabo, ”scratch,” which is what you do when you have the itch. The plant was called this because it used to be thought of as a cure for certain skin diseases.
SHAMROCK
From the Irish seamrog, the diminutive of seamar which means “clover.” Therefore the shamrock is a “little clover.” The plant was used by St.Patrick to illustrate the Trinity because of its three leaves, and it became his symbol. It is for this reason that it comes in order on St.Patrick ’s day “to drown the shamrock” by way of a drinking celebration.
SYRINGA
This ornamental shrub with its sweet-scented white flowers got its name from the Greek syrinx, syringes, which meant “reed.” This name is said to have been chosen because the stems of the plant were used a good deal in the manufacture of pipes.
TRILLIUM来源：考试大的美女编辑们
This flower of many colors with its whorl of three green leaves derives its name from the Latin tri-, which means “three.”
TULIP
Again among the descriptive names is the tulip which, with its showy colors and velvet texture, has somewhat the appearance of a turban. The word comes to us through the obsolete French word tulipan, from tulbend, the Turkish way of saying”turban.”
VERBENA
To us the verbena is a fragrant perennial with spikes of broad flat clusters of white, red, and lilac flowers, but to the Romans the word verbena meant “sacred bough” and applied to the sacred boughs of myrtle, cypress, and what-not carried by the heralds who declared war, demanded redress for wrongs, grievances, and all.
WISTERIA
A high-climbing shrub with flowers that run the gamut of white, pink, and violet, a plant that is especially popular in Japan and in the southern United States. It also grows in the northern states, but southerners usually refuse to recognize this fact. These flowers were named wisteria in 1818 for Caspar Wistar who was one-time professor of “anatomy, midwifery, and surgery” at what was then the College of Pennsylvania.
ZINNIA来源：考试大的美女编辑们
A plant, with striking, highly colored, but rather coarse blooms. Native toMexico and the Southwest, but for some reason adopted as the state flower of Indiana. The name zinnia comes from that of J.G.Zinn, an obscure 18th-century German botanist who seems to have no other claim to fame than this.
5. Word Stories About Your Dining Table
BREAD: merely a fragment
If you had gone into an English bakery around 700 A.D. and had asked for a loaf then meant bread, and their word bread meant “a little piece,” “a fragment.” So when you spoke of a loaf of bread, the clerk would have understood you to have said “a bread of fragments,” than which nothing could have sounded sillier. Finally, however, bread came to mean “a piece of bread;” later “broken bread;” and in the end bread and loaf took on their present meanings.
CANDY: broken bits
Until quite recent times we said, not just candy but sugar candy, and the derivation of these words indicates that our confection must have always been on the hard side for candy is ultimately from the Sanskrit khanda which meant a piece of something, or lump sugar. These two words sarkara khanda are represented in Italian to form zucchero candi, our familiar sugar candy.
CAROUSE: bottoms up
Sometimes a party that starts innocently and pleasantly will end in a wild carouse. When we pronounce this word carouse, we are coming as near as we can to saying gar aus which is the German word for “completely finished.” When a celebrant is drinking in a tavern and his glass is gar aus, or “completely finished,” it is empty, and if it is gar aus too often he is starting to carouse. And when we drink we are usually hob-nobbing with other people, that is, we are chatting socially and being convivial. But in the 12th century when the English cried habban-nabban they were saying “have”-- “have not,” which was a sort of take or leave it invitation to a drink.
CEREAL: named for a goddess本文来源:网
When you are eating your morning cereal, you are paying a small tribute to an ancient goddess. In 496 B.C. the Roman countryside was cursed by a terrible drouth. The priests of the day turned to the Sibylline oracle for help. As a result of this divine consultation. The priests reported that a new goddess, Ceres, must be adopted, and they recommended that immediate sacrifices be made to her so that she would bring rain to the land. In the end, Ceres became the protector of the crops. The caretakers of her temple were the overseers of the grain market, which, however, the goddess controlled since it was her influence that determined the harvest, and to insure a good harvest the first cuttings of the corn were always sacrificed to her. The Latin adjective cerealis, which meant “of Ceres,” gave us our word cereal.
CHARTREUSE: from a monastery’s name
The name derives from La Grande Chartreuse, an old Carthusian monastery, where this cordial was originally made. In the early 17th century the Marechal d’Estréss gave the monks a recipe for the liqueur which consisted of fine herbs and brandy. But in 1880 the Order was expelled from France and they set up their distillery in Spain at Terragona. Connoisseurs claim that the cordial is not right now because the herbs are gathered in an alien spot. It is reported that the monks are using legal action to get back to their original spot so that the cognoscenti can have their chartreuse with the right flavor.
CHOWDER: named after a pot论坛
In the little villages of Brittany, on the north coast of France, it has long been the custom for each fisherman to toss a bit of his catch into a common mess of fish and biscuit that cooks in a community pot or chaudière. This dish was so good that its fame spread to Newfoundland and so to the east coast of the United States, and the name of the pot was soon applied to the contents, and the spelling chaudière was restyled as chowder.
COFFEE: decoction of berries
It is said that back somewhere in the year 850, a goatherd named Kaldi became puzzled at the strange way his flock was acting. He noticed that they were nibbling on certain berries, so he decided to try the berries himself. He did, and was so excited at the feeling of exhilaration he got that he rushed off to tell the other goatherds about the bush. The Arabs soon learned how to dry and boil the berries, and they called the brew qahwe. Its use immediately stirred up a great ruction among the orthodox Mohammedans.Some of the faithful drank their qahwe to keep
awake during the interminable religious services,but for that reason others thought that qahwe should be barred as an intoxicant.Turkey took up the brew qahwe,and this gave France her cafe,hence our word coffee.
COGNAC:named for a town
When guess sip their after dinner cognac,they are tasting a liquor that has been in the world for more than 400 years.The name cognac is short for Eau de Vie de Cognac,“water of life of Cognac,”a town in southwest France where brandy-marking is the main industry.It was a Dutchman who discovered brandy they say,a sharp businessman who was worried because more grape-wine was being produced in Cognac than they could ship out.Sohe thought if he distilled the water from the wine there would be less bulk and more of the product could be transported. The idea was that the customer could pour the water back in when he received the stuff.It was a good idea at that,but for some reason it didn't work.Brandy as we know it seems to havebeen introduced into France from Italy at the time HenryⅡ,then Duke of Orleans,married Catherine de Medici.This was in 1533,and soon after cognac became one of the most famous Frence brandies.
COLLATION:began with the monks论坛
In the Benedictine monasteries the monks used to gather in the evening and read aloud from the Collations,or lives of the saints.Then they would talk about these things and eat a light meal the while .Later this came to be called a collation,or a light meal that was eaten on fast days in place of supper.Finally in later days,and with the laity,it was used to mean a meal,and sometimes an elaborate one.
COOK:just means cook
The word cook itself holds little inerest for us.It traces back to the Latin word cocus or coquus,from coquo,“cook.”But the derivatives from it may be worth our attention.A biscuit,for instance,is “twice-cooked”or“baked”out of the French bis, “twice,”andcuit,“cooked,”which is similar to “zwieback,”from the German zwie,“twice,”and backen,“bake.”If you should concoct a story or a soup,you cook the ingredients together(Latin con-,“together”)until you've made up a good one.Both of the words kitchen and cake come by different routes from coquo.
CORDIAL:close to the heart
Should you ever in your life have sipped a cordial,it warmed your heart,didn't it? And it properly should,for the word cordial comes from the Latin term cor,cordis,“heart.”Likewise a cordialhandshake is a “hearty”handshake.When we are in accord(Latin ac-,“to”)with a neighbor,our “hearts”and minds are in harmony.But should there be discord(dis-,“awayuote ),our hears and minds are apart.A man of courage is a man of “heart,”for courage comes to us though French from the Latin cor.Again,the record that is kept divides into re-,“again,”and cor,cordis,“heart,”because in former times,when writing was not such a simple art,the records were often passed on by word of mouth and had to be leaned by“heart.”
DATE:like a finger
The fruit of the date palm was once thought toresemble the human finger,and hence our word date comes ultimately from dactylus,the Latin term for“finger.”As all Bible readers know, the date palm was common in the Mediterranean region long ago.Its introduction into America was due to the efforts of Spanish missionaries in the 18th century who started seedlings in Mexico and elsewhere.
DISTILL:drop at a time
When a substance is distilled it is vaporized in a retort,passed into a receiver,and condensed drop by drop.The Latin term distillo suggests this process when we split the word up into de,“down,”and stilla,a“drop.”And when we instill the young with wisdom,that,too, is poured“into”their minds“drop bydrop.”
EGGS BENEDICT:resulted from a hangover
In the year1894 a certain Samuel Benedict,man-about-town and member of New York's cafe society,came into the old Wal-dorf-Astoria on 34th Street with a wicked hangover.He knew precisely what he wanted for his breakfast.He ordered bacon butter toast,twopoached eggs,and a hooker of hollandaise.Oscar,famous maitre d'hotel ofthe Waldorf was impressed with the dish,and put ham and a toasted English muffin in place of the bacon and toast,and christened the whole affair Eggs Benedict in honor of the genial rake.
EPICURE:should be moderate本文来源:网
If you are a lover of good food and wine and if you take a fastidious and sensuous delight in your pleasures,it would be correct to call you an epicure,although the use of the word in this sense is a gross slander on the hight in your pleasure,it would be correct to call you an epicure,although the use of the word in this sense is a gross slander on the original Epicureans.TheGreek philosopher,Epicrueans, taught moderation in all things.Pleasure,he advised,is acertain quota of pain,and so he instructed his pupils in temperance.When the English-speaking people took over the word,however,they seized upon the single idea of“pleasureand”and now the words epicure and epicurus and his followers so deplored.
GOUT:just a drop
This disease,down through the years,has been the honored ailment of oldgentlemen who lived high and drank large quantities of port after dinner.There may now be a medical doubt about the cause,as today gout is ranked under the vague and general term of rheumatism.But,be that as it may,gout goes back thourgh Frech to the Latin gutta,"drop." The notion was that morid matter"dropped"from the blood and settled about the joints,and so caused them to swell and become painful.In the 19th century folks had gout stools that were made to hold one foot.
GRAPE: a hook for gathering fruit
The original Old English word for this was winberige form the Germanic win,"vine,"and berige,"berry";literally,"berry of the vine." But in the 11th century William of Normandy conquered England and with his victory the fancier Frech words came in at a great pace.It is true that the humble farmer went on saying winberige,but his lords were now saying grappe,which really meant a cluster of fruit growing together,and this latter word ultimately comes form grape,the vine hook with which they gathered the grapes.By this route the word grape came to us,and also the lusty word grapple that you use when you grapple with a problem.
HERMETICALLY: a god-given name采集者退散
When a housewife hermetically seals her jars of preserves,she would hardly guess that she was dealing with the magic of a Greek God. Hermes,an Olympian god, was a messenger like the Roman god Mercury,a god of magic,alchemy,and the occult.Our word hermetically is formed form the name of Hermes,possibly because the process of sealing wounds or jars hermetically seems to have to do with the mystic and magical powers of the gods.
INTOXICATE:poisoned arrows
The modern meaning of this word came about in a simple and logical fashion.The Greek word toxon meant"bow."The poison with which the soldiers tipped their arrows was calld toxikon(pharmakon) which led to the Latin toxikum,a more general word covering any poison.We then turn to the late Latin intoxicatus from the verb intoxico,"poison,"the base of our word intoxicale.And so we have taken a trip down through the centuries from the Greek warrior who poisoned his arrows to the intoxicated chap who says,"Name your poison!" Of course in our medical word toxic we have retained the ancient meaning.
JULEP:merely rose-water来源：考试大的美女编辑们
Here is a name poetic as a Kentucky colonel. The origin lies in the Arabic word julab which meant"rose-water."This innocent potion became alcoholic in the good old U.S.A.As early as 1787 records show that the landlords of Virginia started the day at six in the morning with a julep as an eyeopener.
JUNKET:originally a basket
We have here a strange tie-up between a rush basket and the pleasure junket that a group of congressmen take,we'll say, to the Philippines, and the junket that we feed to children.In old France the custard that was made there of"cream,rose water,and sugar"was taken to market in the jonquette,or basket of rushes,and this custard soon took on the name of the basket in which it was carried and was respelled junket.These baskets suggested a picnic and the junkets the congressmen go on certainly have the character of a picnic,and received their name because of this.So there we are,except that this all stems from the juncus of the Romans which was their word for "rush."
LUNCHEON:a lump of food－全国最大教育类网站()
The origin of this common word is so old that it has become somewhat clouded.Lunch first meant"a lump"and lunshin,an English dialect word,meant"a lump of food."But there also existed the dialect word nonschench which splits into anon,"noon,"and schench,"a drink."High authorities claim that these two words nonschench and lunshin blended to form the word luncheon which could then roughly mean"a lump of food with a noon drink." Of course,when you have breakfast,you merely"break the fast."Dinner is from the French diner,"to dine,"and supper is"to sup,"which is really to "sip"either food or drink.And a morsel is a"little bite"since it comes from the Latin term morsum,"bitten."
MANHATTAN:origin unknown
Of course the name Manhattan,whether applied to the drink or the city,belonged to the tribe of Indians who originally inhabited Manhattan Island.The Manhattan cocktail came into vogue toward the end of the last century,and the year 1894 is the earliest recorded use of the name,but as yet there is no further explanation of the origin.The history of the martini is equally obscure.
NAPKIN: first a little tablecloch
The tiny paper napkins that we use at times would never have done in the old days when knives,and spoons were limited,or nonexixtent.Then you needed a tremendous linen square to mop up with.These enormous napkins were a sign of elegance long after flat sliver came in,and even in the 1890's large napkins were an important part of any top-drawer dinner.We have the word napery now for table linen,and in this term is buried another word,nape,which once meant tablecloth.In our language when we say napkin we mean a little nape,which is an Old French word,and so "a little tablecloth."In Old French the derivative of nape was naperon.This was borrowed into Middle English as naperon and an apron was first called a napron,but by error the initial n became joined to the a and an apron took the place of a napron.In similar fashion the snake,an adder,used to be called"a nadder."And all of this finally derives from the Latin word mappa which also meant napkin or"cloth."
OMELETTE:originally a thin blade
The history of this word is just as mixed up as a modern omelette.The term came to us by a series of absurd blunders.The Latin word lamella,"a thin plate,"entered French as la melle,and later the word was reinterpreted as l'alemelle.But the French already had a word alemette which meant the thin blade of a sword,and before we know it l'alemelle is being spelled l'alemette,and later on,omelette.So,if you have followed through this labyrinth,you will see that an omelette is really a thin blade and has practically nothing to do with eggs.And while on the subject of omelette the word yolk comes quite understandably form its color.It is a derivative of the Middle English word yolke through Old English geolca,from geolu,"yellow."论坛
ONION:related to a pearl
In Latin there is a word union which is translated as "oneness"or"union".The word onion is derived form this Latin term.It rates its name because it consists of a number of united layers.There is also another interesting analogy between union and onion.The rustics about Rome not only used the word unio to mean onion,but they also thought it a suitable desigation for a pearl.And even today a cook will speak of "pearl onions"when she means the small,slivery-white variety.
ORGY:meant secret rites
Dionysius was a god and giver of the grape and the wine.The grateful Greek held night festivals in his honor,and these often turned into drunken parties where the boys and girls danced and sang and violated all the sex laws.The Greek called
6. Political Terms and Their Origins
BALLOT: why we “cast” a ballot
The ballot we cast and the bullet we shoot were both balls at the beginning, but are descended from widely different parents. Bullet comes down to us through the French boulette, “a small ball,” from the Latin bulla, a “bubble,” “boss,” or “stud,” while ballot traces to the Italian ballota. “a little ball,” a word of Germanic origin. With us a ballot is sheet of paper we put a cross on and drop in a box on election day, unless we are dealing with voting machines. But the ancient Greek dropped a white ball of stone or metal or shell in a container when he favored a candidate, a black ball when he was against-which explains why the undesirable are still “blackballed” in our clubs. The ball we throw and bat around in our games has a closely related parentage as it comes from the same Germanic source as the Italian ballotta.
BALLYHOO: from county cork, Ireland
When you raise a lot of ballyhoo you are making a general fuss and pother. This all is thought to have grown out of a village called Ballyhooly, that lies east of Mallow in Cork County, Ireland. As the congressional Record of March, 1934, says: “The residents engage in most strenuous debate, a debate that is without equal in the annals of parliamentary, or ordinary discussion, and from the violence of these debates has sprung forth a word known in the English language as ballyhoo.”
BRIBE: a piece of bread来源：考试大的美女编辑们
Many of the words that concern themselves with the idea of companionship or conciliation (including these two words themselves) have to do with the sharing of food. Bribe is such a word. In modern French, and in the plural, bribes means bits, odds, ends, and leavings, but in Old French it meant a lump of bread, or, as an olden-time author said: “A peece, lumpe or cantill of bread given unto a beggar.” The development of bribe seems to have been along the following lines: first a piece of bread, then begging, then living by beggary, then theft, and finally blackmail and bribery in the modern sense.
BUNK: a speech for Buncombe County
Around the year 1820 a debate was in progress in the House of Representatives on the complicated question of the Missouri Compromise. In the middle of the discussion a member from Buncombe County, North Carolina, arose and started a long, dull, and completely irrelevant talk. Many members walked out. Others called for the question. Finally the speaker apologized with the now famous statement: “I’m talking for buncombe,” which meant, of course, for his constituents in Buncombe which was a county in his district. According to the Niles’ Weekly Register, published in Philadelphia from 1811 to 1849, the phrase “talking to (or for) Bunkum” was well-known in 1828. We clipped the word to bunk, which now means inflated and empty speech or pretentious humbuggery. A colorful and expressive derivative of this word is debunk which came into use in the early 1920’s. The debunkers were first a school of historians in the years between Wars I and II who were popular for the straightforward and outspoken ways in which they stripped some of our heroic figures.
CANDIDATE: clad in white
When a Roman politician went campaigning he took care that his toga was immaculately white so that he could make the best impression possible. The Latin word candidates first simply meant “a person dressed in white” but later it took on the meaning that our word candidate has, a seeker after office. The root of candidates can be recognized in our word incandescent which means “white and glowing” and in candid, for a candid person, in the figurative sense is white and pure, and therefore frank and honest.
CARTEL: originally a chart
Here is a word that has gone through dramatic changes of meaning. It originated in the Latin term charta which meant “paper” and gave us our English word chart. A cartel was originally a written challenge to a fight. Then later it meant a libelous statement in writing. By the 17th century it was an agreement concerning the exchange of prisoners in a war. And now it has the dignified meaning of “an agreement in restraint of trade,” or one of those international combines that makes such an agreement about the fixing of prices and output.
FASCISM: based on a bundle
If you will look on the back of the American dime, you will see the mark of the Fascist. The term Fascism comes from the Italian Fascismo and this in turn is built on the Latin fascis which meant a bundle, usually a bundle of sticks or rods. This bundle, with the ax protruding, was the symbol of official power that was carried before all Roman magistrates. Benito Mussolini resurrected it ofr his own use.
FILIBUSTER: once a freebooter来源：考试大
The buccaneers who infested the West Indies and the SpanishAmerican Coast in the 17th century were called filibusters and freebooters. The word freebooter come from the Danish vrijbuiter, vrij, “free,” and buit, “booty,” but vrijbuiter gave us another word by another route. It passed into French as filibuster, then into Spanish as filibustero, and so into English as filibuster. The word came to mean anyone who waged an irregular sort of warfare for his own gain. And now a filibuster is conducted by a sometimes irregular sort of congressman who speaks interminably to delay legislation.
GERRYMANDER: child of a salamander
Coined around 1812 and infrequently used except in politics. At that time the Massachusetts legislature ingeniously contrived to rearrange the shape of Essex County so as the better to control elections. When they got through with their redistribution it was noticed that this county resembled a salamander. The governor of the state at that time was Elbridge Gerry and a smart newspaper editor used his surname and the last half of salamander to create gerrymander. Such a redistribution of boundaries today for the purposes of political advantages is still called gerrymandering.
GOVERNOR: he directed a ship考试就到
When we speak of the “ship of state” we are more accurate than we know, for to the Greeks their word kybernao meant to “direct a ship” and, also, even in those days it had the figurative meaning to “direct the ship of state.” Kybernao isn’t too far in sound from governor. The Romans borrowed the word as guberno, passed it on to the French; then it crossed the channel to England as governor. The president of the United States, however, is actually a presiding officer, for the word president comes from the Latin praesideo, “sit in front of” or “protect”; and the Premier of England should really be the first and topmost citizen of his country because Premier is from the Latin word primaries which means “belonging to the first rank.” The Czar is another story, for it traces back to the old Slavic word cesare which obviously owes its beginning to Caesar, the name of the Roman emperors. The title Tsar was first used in Russia in the 15th century and was adopted as his official title by Ivan the Terrible in 1547.
INAUGURATE: they studied the birds first
In modern days when we inaugurate a president, we induct him into office with solemn and suitable ceremonies. But in olden times such important affairs were not left to chance. The Latin Word inauguratus splits up into in-, “in”, and augur, “diviner.” The augurs and prophets of those days studied the flights and habits of birds, and from their findings told the emperors and governors what the future held in store. And the advice of the soothsayers was usually followed. The Emperor Claudius, however, became impatient during the Punic Wars. When the sacred birds refused to come out of their cage, he tossed them into the sea, declaring: “If they won’t eat, they must drink.” In modern days our presidents and governors receive no help from the diviners when they are inaugurated and are forced to take their own chances.
LOBBY: began as an arbor－全国最大教育类网站()
The word lobby that describes the operations of the political pressure groups in Washington shows us that some words have moved from German to Latin to English. We are wont to believe that Latin is always original in its contributions. In Old High German lauba meant a shelter of foliage. This term entered the Latin of the Middle Ages as lobia and in the 16th century was adopted by English as lobby, “a cover ed walk,” which meaning was modified to a “passage” or “anteroom.” In 1640 it was first applied to the anteroom of the House of Commons, and here the lobby began and the lobbyist went to work.
MACHIAVELLIAN: from a stateman’s name
In the days of the wicked Lucrezia Borgia, there lived a famous statesman and diplomat by the name of Niccola Machiavelli. Even the characteristics of his face and manner suggested his practices. He was thin-lipped, with an aquiline nose; his was vulgar in his humor, feverishly active in his ways, and acidly sarcastic. Machiavelli had a mind that was startling in its brilliance and keen in its analytical powers, and he was thought of as “the idea man” for the politicians of early 16th-century Florence. In time he lost favor with the ruling Medici family. For this reason he was forced to stop his active practice of politics, and started to write down his theories about them instead. Through his book Il principe he has become known as the founder of political science. Unfair critics have maligned him, claiming that he believed a ruler to be justified in using any means, no matter how unscrupulous., to maintain his power. For this reason a machiavellian policy now means a policy of craft, cunning, and bad faith.
MUGWUMP: great man论坛
In 1884 there was a split in the Republican party, and a large number of members refused to support James G. Blaine for president. They were accused by the regulars of assuming a superior attitude and such epithets as “Pharisees” and mugwumps were hurled at them. Apparently mugwump, or mugquomp as it was spelled in one of the Massachusetts dialects, was an Algonquian Indian word meaning “great man” or even “chief.” Today the word is applied to anyone who takes a position independent of “the party line.” Albert J. Engel is reported to have said in the House of Representatives in April, 1936, that a mugwump has “his mug on one side of the political fence and his wump on the other,” although this joke is thought to be older than Engel.
PLATFORM: it’s flat
In French plat means “flat,” so a platform is really a “flat-form.” Since the 1800’s the word platform, in the political argot of the United States, has signified the basis of a party’s appeal to the public. The party leaders carry on endless arguments about the “planks” that are to be put in the platform, and these “planks” take us right back to the broad pieces of sawed lumber that make up the familiar speaker’s platform.考试就到
POLL: first a human head
Poll is a term that has a meaning quite different from the one it began with. In Middle English the word was spelled polle and meant “head,” or more particularly, the “top of the head,” for that was the part of a person that could be seen above the crowd when a count of “heads” was being taken. In this way the word came to mean the registering of votes. A poll tax, of course, is a “head” tax.
PROTOCOL: first concerned glue
We are familiar with the sharp protocol of diplomacy that determines what official shall call on whom first, and where the ambassador’s wife shall sit at a formal dinner party. The word protocol itself travels back finally to the Greek term protokollon. Which was the first leaf glued to the front of a manuscript with an index of the contents written on it. The elements of the word are protos, “first,” and kolla, “glue.” Our word protocol from which an official treaty or document was eventually drawn. Then the meaning was extended to the rules of etiquette of the diplomatic corps and others.
RADICAL: to the root of things
This word now is not much more than a general term of abuse, although it started off innocently enough. It comes directly from the Latin radicalis from radix, “root.” This same word radix gave us the name of our homely vegetable the radish which is nothing more than an edible “root.” Therefore a radical, essentially, is merely a person who likes to go to the “root” of a matter. In its original sense, radical meant “fundamental” or “primary.” But around the end of the 18th century, a group of English politicos came to be known as radical reformers because they wanted to go right to the root of things and revamp the existing political set-up. No one called them “reds,” however, because their special badge happened to be a white hat. They were soon a hated crew, for folks don’t like change, and the word radical eventually became a name of low reproach.
SENATE: a group of old men来源：考试大
Our sometime comment about the “nine old men” of the Supreme Court indicates that our young nation doesn’t look upon old age with as much respect as the Romans did. For their word senatus, “senate,” derived from the Latin senex, “an old man,” and their senate, thus, was a revered council of elders. We Americans are more apt to look upon old age as senile, which also is a derivative of senex.
TAMMANY: an Indian saint
Tammany Hall was founded in New York City as a private social club in 1789. It was said to have been sharpened into a political weapon by Aaron Burr, and with its new power practically swung the political election to Thomas Jefferson. People were indignant and complained about a private club playing politics. So Tammany split up. One half took out a charter as a social and benevolent outfit, bought a meeting-place called “The Hall,” and rented the space to the other and political half. They borrowed the name for their association from a Delaware Indian chief of the 17th to 18th centuries called Tammany or Taminy. Chief Tammany was described as a friend of George Washington, and may have been the Indian with whom William Penn had his famous negotiations for the land which became Penn’s woods, or Pennsylvania. Later on the Delaware chief was facetiously canonized as the patron saint of the republic, and so for more than 160 years New York City has often been ruled by the loyal Sons of Saint Tammany.
7. War Words and Their Histories
ADMIRAL:a Saracen chief
Originally an admiral was an amir, or a Saracen chief. The amir-al-bahr was commander of the sea.Amir,"commander," al,"the ,"bahr,"sea."This was his official title in the early days of Spain and Sicily.The first tow parts of the Arabic word were taken into French as amiral which was later reinterpreted as admiral due to the equivalence of Old French a-and Latin ad-.This word passed into English and was associated with the navy as early as the 13th century.Later,a flagship was called the Admiral which led to the word's application in modern English to a sea commander.
ALARM: to arms'
If we are alarmed at any time, we should spring to arms for that is what the Italian cry all'arme meant.In later years the Italians combined the two word s into allarme and the meaning was extended from the military command itself to the emotion was fright that had been felt on hearing it shouted.Now,very often, alarm has only to do with the warning of the morning alarm clock.The word had even reached this low point at the time of Samuel Pepys who noted in his Diary on July 15,1665, after a hard day at the Exchequer:"And so to bed,to be up betimes by the helpe of a larum watch,which by chance I borrowed of my watchmaker today which my owne is mending."
AMNESTY:loss of memory论坛
When a lawyer begs amnesty for his client, he is actually asking the judge to have and attack of amnesia.The first person in history to grant amnesty was reported to have been a Greek general who said that he would forgive his enemies and " not remember"(Greek a-,"not,"mnasthai,"to remember")their misdeeds.And from this we inherited our two English words, amnesia,"loss of memory ,"and amnesty ,"a pardon for offenses."
ANNOY:once a military term
In the 16th century the English had a Jury of Annoyances to deal with such public nuisances as the "slaughter of bestes within the cyte."The word annoy was much stronger then.An attacking enemy would "annoy a town."This term ternm traces back by changes of spelling to the Latin phrase in odio which meant "in hatred."The French took the Latin word over in the derived form enuier,"displease,"and from this term we inherited in English the tow words annoy and ennui,the fist meaning "to displease"and the second,"the act of being bored by unpleasantness,"or just boredom in general.Another useful English word comes from the same Latin parentage.The word could have been annoy-some but we reduced this to the less awkward word noisome,meaning"disgusting," "offensive,"which is the extremity of annoyance.
BASIN:a soldier's helmet
You dont't have to tell a soldier that his helmet is often his only wsbasin or soup bowl. This word basin started in Roman days with the Late Latin term bachinus,"an eating lowl."In the Middle Ages, the knights of Charlemagne, king of the Franks wore cone-shaped metal caps or helmets.This word for this helmet was bacin, actually ,"a bowl for the head." Bacin slipped into English,then became basin. These words of ours proiferate, and before long we had bassinet or"little basin," that beriboned crib in which we put babies.
BESIEGE:sitting by a towm来源：考试大的美女编辑们
This word traces through the Old French sieger,"to sit,"ultimately from the Latin sedeo,plus the English prefix be-, "by."When the enemy besieges a town,it sits by"it until somebody sives up.Or it used to ,at least,in the days before atomic fission.The Lation roots sed,sid ,and sess,form sedeo, came to us directly,without the changes incurred by passing through the French language.Therefore we have the session of Congress during which our legislators "sit";and those sedate paople who "sit"gravely in their chairs. Then there is the sediment that "sits" on the bottom and the sedentary jobs of the clerks.Or a nice, fat subsidy that lets you "sit" for the test of your life.
BOOTY:your share
The modern word booty comes from the Middke Low German word bute which meant a distribution or a sharing .When bute entered our language it began to mean booty as we understand it,something takenillegally and then sharedin the fashion of the pirates and freebooters of those days.Its spelling was influenced by the English word boot which meant profit or advantage. This we now use in such an expression as:"He sold him his camera and then gave him a couple of films to bot";that is , something besides, or in addition to,the article bough.But the word boot that applies to the covring that yu wear on your foot is merely a corruption of the Hindustani word lut,meaning "something plundered."
8. Terms of Science and the Professions
ACADEMY: named for a Greek farmer?
This is a pleasant story about a Greek farmer. It seems that a Spartan maiden, named Helen, was kidnapped by the legendary hero Theseus. Her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, who are now in our heavens as two bright stars, searched for their sister without success until they met the farmer, Akademos, who seems to have given them some hint as to the whereabouts of the kidnapper and his victim. As a reward for his alertness the grove of Akademos was eternally watched over by the gods. It was in this grove that the great philosopher Plato held his classes. The grove was called Academeia, and for many years after his death his pupils and followers met in this same spot for their discussions. Plato never did verify the story of the farmer, but he gave us the word academy that now means a place of learning.
ALGEBRA: bone-setting
The ancients had to borrow a medical term to christen this branch of mathematics. They took the Arabic words al jebr, with the meanings al, “the,” and jebr, “reuniting what is broken.” Sometimes these words were used to mean “bone-setting.” Out of this they built a really impressive phrase for the new science, ilm al-jebr wa’l-mup-abalah, which meant “reduction and comparison by equations.” The Italians mercifully took the second and third words of this phrase and combined them to form algebra. Even as late as the 17th century the word algebra kept its original Arabic meaning and still referred to surgical treatment. For instance we read in the historian Halle: “This Araby worde Algebra sygnifyeth as well fractures of bones as sometime the restauration of the same.” But to the school-child today, it’s just a mathematical headache.来源：www.examda.com
ANESTHESIA: no feeling
Sir Humphry Davy first accomplished artificial anesthesia in 1800 and in that period medical men would have had enough Greek to know that Plato used the word anaisthesia to mean “insensibility” from an-, “not,” and aesthesis, “feeling.”
CHEMISTRY: a search for gold
The early alchemists spent most lf their time trying to find a way to turn baser metals into gold; and atomic fission is showing Us that they weren’t as stupid as we thought . When the Arabs invaded Europe , they brought with them the idea for their type of research and also introduced the name of it , al-kimia , which eventually became alchemy . The word chemist was coined by shortening alchemist , and the term chemistry followed .
DEAN: he led ten
The dean of your university is a descendant of the Roman decanus who was a commander of a division of ten . Late on this became a church term and was the title of the ecclesiastic who was at the head of ten monks in a monastery . By the time the colleges borrowed the title decanus , it was spelled dean , and now he can be the head of as many as he wants . Decanus is derived from decem , the Latin word for ‘ten’ .
DISSECT: cut it apart－全国最大教育类网站()
When a biologist dissects a frog he dis-, ‘apart,’ and seco , ‘cut,’ or ‘cuts’ it ‘apart .’ In geometry we bisect a circle ,or ‘cut’ it in ‘two .’ A road that intersects another ‘cuts’ ‘in between .’ And a section is something ‘cut off .’
ELECTRICITY: the beaming sun
The Greeks knew that when you rubbed amber, it would become magnetic and begin to draw feathers and strings and other light objects to it. Little more than this was known about electricity until comparatively recent times. The ancients used to make love amulets out of amber, and guaranteed that the wearing of one would attract a lover . Since friction can make amber give off sparks , the Greeks named it electron , from elektor, ‘the beaming sun.’ This word into Latin as electrum, was turned into the adjective electritcus, whence our electric and electricity.
ELIXIR: of magic powers
With us an elixir is usually a panacea or life-giving potion, as: ‘The book is full of a veritable elixir of spiritual vitality.’ In the earliest days, Eastern alchemists continually tried to turn base metals into gold.There was an imaginary substance that they thought would do the trick, and they called it al-iksir, literally ‘the dry power.’ This entered Medieval Latin as elixir,still a word of magic, for in medieval times the boys were looking for an elixir vitae or ‘elixir of life’ that would bring eternal youth . Ponce de Leon sought the elixir in Florida , and Faust searched for this imaginary cordial in his laboratory . Even today elixir retains a magic meaning .
ENTOMOLOGY: cut up来源：www.examda.com
This is the branch of zoology that treats of insects. The word is based on the Greek entomos which means ‘cut up.’ If we examine an ant or a similar insect, we will see that their bodies are indented and appear to be ‘cut up’ in to sections. The word ‘insect’ from the Latin insectum, ‘cut up,’ is simply a Roman rendering of the Greek idea.
INOCULATE: a gardening term
When the doctor inoculates you, he ‘plants’ in your body a small seedling of the virus or germ that causes the disease in order to make your immune to attack. But at first the word inoculate was a purely horticultural term and meant to insert an eye or bud in a plant for propagation. It came form the Latin in, ‘into,’ and oculus, ‘eye.’ Its present use dates form the time of the first inoculate against smallpox.
LAW: something laid down
When we lay down the law to someone, we are almost saying the same thing twice over. In the early days of our language law was spelled lagu in the pural and lagu is so closelyrelated to the word ‘lay’ we can safely say the law was something ‘laid down.’ A statute, on the other hand ,is quite the opposite. The grandparent of this word is the Latin statutes which simply means something ‘set up.’ We ‘set up’ laws on the books.
NAUSEA: derived from a ship来源：考试大
In the dim and distant days folks weren’t any better sailors than we are . They , too, got that type of nausea that we call seasickness and that the French speak of as mal de mer , or ‘sickness of the sea .’The Greeks were the ones who invented the world nausia , and they took it straight from their word naus , ’ship ,’ the vehicle that produced the condition . The Roman satirist , Juvenal ,points out with some bitterness in his Legend of Bad Women , that wives are always seasick , but that a mistress remains healthy and good-tempered during the whole voyage .
This word nausea, that in those days meant seasickness, has taken on a broader meaning in English.
PANACEA: named from a goddness
A panacea is a cure for all ills, and comes by its meaning in all honesty. If you look at the front of a modern physician’s car, you will usually see a metal piece representing a serpent twined medicine . The serpent was taken to represent medicine because he is the symbol of the renewing of youth and eternal life from the fact that he gets a new skin every year. The mythical Asclepius had a daughter with the happy name of Panakecia, “the all-healing,” and from her name was derive our word panacea.
PEDAGOGUE: he led the children考试就到
An instructor of young people is a schoolmaster ,and the history of the word demands that he should be , for this term comes from the identical Greek word pedagogue, which divides into pais , paidos, “child ,” and ago, “lead.” Originally , and quite literally ,the slave who “led” the “child” to school and home again by the hand.. Little attention was paid to the education of girls in ancient Greek days , but the sons were taught by the pedagogues who were slaves in the families of the rich. A demagogue ,by the way ,leads the “people”(demos) in other directions.
PUPIL: just a doll
When we see a group of young pupils sitting in a classroom, they look a bit like little dolls , and that’s why the word pupil came from the Latin term pupilla ,” a little doll.” And then we have the other English word pupil , the pupil of your eye . When we look another person in the eye, we often see a minute image of ourself reflected there , and this miniature picture also reminded the Romans of a pupilla or “little doll.” And so pupilla contributed the word pupil to us with a second meaning , the pupil of your eye . And it is interesting to know that the Jews were drawn to this same figure of speech. The Hebrew word for the pupil of the eye were eshon ayin, or “little man of the eye.”
QUARANTINE: forty days
The length of time that a ship is now held in quarantine varies with the nature of the contagious disease that is suspected of being aboard ,but years ago the quarantine was for a flat forty days .The word quarantine comes eventually from the Latin quadraginta, “forty,” and this magic number forty has several uses in our language . Quarentena, for instance , was the Medieval Latin name giben to the desert where Christ fasted for forty days ,and in the early Rome Catholic Church a quarantine was a penance or fast lasting for the same period of time. Now it is an indulgence corresponding to such a penance. In common law, we have the “window’s quarantine” which permits the bereaved woman to live in her deceased husband’s house for a period of forty days after his death . It would seem that there is a bit of religious significance in this mystic number “forty”.
QUINSY: choked a dog
The Greeks called a sore throat kynanche, from kyon, “dog,” and ancho,”choke.” This word illustrates,in its career, the dramatic shifts in spelling that can occur. In Medieval Latin kynanche became quinancia , which entered Middle English as quinesye, later quinsy, the quinsy sore throat that we have today.
SCHOLAR: leisure to study本文来源:网
To be a true scholar one must have leisure for reading , research, meditation , and intelligent discussions. So it isn’t strange to find that our word scholar is from the Greek word schole which means “leisure.” Later , when philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato taught groups of young men, the early classes were termed schole. This passed into Latin as schola, “school,” and so gave us school, scholar, and all the related words. But the word school as used in the phrase “ a school of fish “ is from an entirely different source. It comes down to us from the Dutch word school which is related to the Old English term scolu which meant “a band of people.”
SCOTLAND YARD: palace of the kings
This place ,made famous by detective story writers, was so called because it stands on the site of a palace where the Scottish kings once lived when they visited England . The last of the Scottish Royal Family to stay there was Margaret ,Queen of James VI.
ZODIAC:meant animal
The zodiac is that imaginary belt of animals that supposed by the ancients to encircle the heavens.The twelve parts were named for taurus,"the bull,"pisces,"the fish,"and such .Each division is important to astrology for reading the character of those born under these signs.If we follow this word zodiac back far enough ,we will find its ancestor in the Greek word zoion,"animal."
9. Romantic Stories of Words about Women
ALIMONY: eating money来源：考试大
We have in English the word aliment that menas foof. This traces to the Latin alo, “norish.” So the way the most of our divorce laws are written now, if a wife sues for release from her bonds, she expects alimony, which, etymologically, is really“eating money.”
ALLURING: from falconry
When falconry was at its height in Englang and on the continent, allure was a device used by hunters to call back their hawks. It consisted of a bunch of feathers with a long cord attached. It was from this contraption that the hawk wasd fed during his training period, hence the attraction. So when a girl purposely allures a man, she is using the deceptive methods of a hunter. We have inherited the word from Old French allure; a, “to,”and lure, “bait.”
AMAZONS: they had only one breast
The Amazons were a race of female warriors who were alleged by the Greek historian Herodotus to live in Scythia. These manlike women fought many battles with the Greeks and the famous hero Achilles was presumed to have slain their queen penthesilea when the Amazons were trying to heop the besieged Trojans. These mythical women were said to have cut off their right breasts so that they could draw their bows more easily. The Greeks invented this fable to connect the word Amazon with a “without,”and mazos,”breast.”These Scythian women were responsible for the name of our south American river, the amazon. This river was called by its discoverer Rio Santa Maria de la Mar Dulce. But when the Spanish explorer Orellana made the first descent of the river from the Andes to the sea, he was engaged in battle by a savage tribe in which he believed that women fought beside the men and it is the accepted story that he then techristened the mighty river Amazonas. So when we call a modern woman an amazon, we mean that she is masculine, powerful, and inclined to give battle.
AUBURN: blong to red－全国最大教育类网站()
Lots of mistakes have occurred in the making of our language.For example, the Latin word alburnus meant fair-haired,literally”like shite,”for alba meant”white.”Albunus passed over into Old French and Middle English as auburne, and then ,of all things, got confused with the native word vroune which meant brown. So the alburnus or fair –haired girls of ancient rome –and the Roman club-men loved their blondes –became The auburn-or reddish-brown-haired girls of today.
AVOIRDUPOIS: sold by weight
In our weight-conscious country, the United States, avoirdupois is a polite way of speaking of wxcess fat ,but its Old French ancestor aveir de peis meant”goods sold by weight,”such as wool.Lter on ,in English-speaking countries, avoidupois became the standard system of weights for goods other than gems, metals, and drugs.Adiose is another polite and pet word of the overweight, but its derivation is more blunt. The Latin adeps, adipis, is the source, and this just means “grease:or “fat”and nothing nicer.
BEVY: merely a drinking copany来源：考试大
The Latin word bibere, meant”to drink.” This became beivre in Old French. One of its derivatives came into our language as beverage,”that which is drunk.” By the same path bevee seems to have entered Old English with the meaning”a group of drinkers,”and then changed to signify a small group of birds, animals, or people,the people usually being women . In the late Middle Ages a bevy was a company of “roes, larks, quails,or ladies. The Latin term bibere perhaps also contributed the baby’s bib to our langyage, for ,after all, a bib does have to “imbibe”the moisture that the baby spills.
BLUESTOCKING: affectedly literary
this is a word that was more familiar to Washington Irving than it is to us ,but there are parts of the countru where an affectedly studious and literary woman is still called a bluestocking. It all began with Elizabeth Montagu, a famous leader of London society in the 1700’s, who introduced”literary evenings” in her home as a substitute for the frivolous card-playing parties of the day . She is said to have adopted blue stockingsdeliberately as a badge of her ideas. The ladies who had a taste for such gatherings were dubbed Bluestockings by a certain Admiral Buscawen and his epithet still lives.
BOUDOIR: at one time, a pouting-room
With us , of course ,an elegantly furnished room to which a lady can retire to alone or to receive her intimate friends. But in the middle Ages a young lady was sent to her boudoir to get over the sulks. Our word comes from the French verb bouder,”to pout.”So a lady ‘s boudoir is really her pouting-room.论坛
BRIDAL: the toast that was drunk
At modern wedding receptions of the well-to-do the bride is usually toasted in champagne. This is not at all in tune with the history of word. Tht drink should really be a tankard of that homely brew, ale for the word bridal is formed of two old English words, bruyd, “bride” and ealu,”ale,” and our bridal ceremony takes its name from the traditional “bride’s ale ” that was always drunk at the time. Brydealu changed to bridale, then bridal. The bridegroom, is another story. He should be called a bridegoom,literally a “brideman.”But somebody down the line got confused and substituted groom for goom, so now a bride has married a man who takes care of horses.
BUXOM: once meant obedient
When we call a girl buxom we mean that she is fat .But when a bitish bride of early times promised to be “buxom and bonnyh”to her husband,she didn’t mean that she was going to put on a few extra pounds.The word buxom, or buhsum, as it was then spelled, seems to have come from bugan meaning “bend,”and therefore pliant, pleasant, and kindlyl.It was customary,in that era,to talk of being buxom,that is,”obedient,”to the judges, or even buxom to the pope.Then, later ,the meaning
turned to “blithe and gay”;still later to “full of health and vigor.”But now the original “bend “has gone into the curves of her figure, and a buxom girl is just pleasingly plump.
CAPRICE: liKe a goat
One hundred years ago the British author, Thomas De Quincey wrote somewhat superciliously:”Eerywhere I observe in the feminine mind something of a beautiful caprice, a floral esuberande of that charming willfulness which characterizes our dear human sisters, Ifear, through all the world.” This lefthanded compliment makes women seem attractively feminine, and yet ,when a girl is capricious, her actions are reminiscent of the lowly billy goat. The word caprice comes through the Itaian capriccio from the Latin caper, “goat.”So when a girl is capricious and cuts up capers,she is imitating the frixsky, playful antics of the male cousin of a sheep.
CHARM: formerly a danger word
If a girl were called charming 14th-century England, you could be pretty sure that she was headed for the torture chamber or to a horrifying trial by ordeal. The charm that is now courted by every woman would be sure, at that timem to bring complete social ostracism.we inherited this word from the French charme which found its source in the Latin Carmen, “song,” usually a wicked chant or incantation of magic power lide that of the notorious Lorelei. And there was also the charm that was worn to ward off evil, the progenitor of the innocent charm bracelet that has been worn by women since the 1860’s.Even as late as the 16th century we uncover the quotation:”The serpent stoppeth his eares with hir taile, to the end that she may not heare the charmes and sorceries of the inchanter.”But by shakespeare’s time the word carried a good deal less weight and now it is a high compliment to tell a girl that she has charm.
COQUETTE: once applied to men
Men used to habe a share in this word, but the girls finally took over. Coquette comes from the French coq,”cock,” and first referred to someone who behaved like a barnyard cock with his strutting gait and amorous habits. Later the word went completely feminine and we discover the coquette defined in 17th century dictionary as “a frisking and fliperous minx” The nearest male counterpart for this word is “cocky.”
COURTESAN: formerly a perfect lady来源：www.examda.com
In the beginning this lady ,as her name implies, was merely a perfectly proper member of the court circle, but since her morals were often no better than they should be ,she turned into a court mistress. The term courtesan is rarely used of a prostitute .There is a nice distinction here that was aptly pointed out by a 17th-century writer named sharpham. “Your whore”,he says,”is for euery rascall,but your curtizan is for your courtier.And it is entertaining to know in this connection that court plaster was sonamed because the xourtesans and other ladies of the court cut bits of plaster into fancy shapes and wore these black patches on the face or shoulders.
DAMASK: soft as a rose
This fine patterned fabric was named for the city of Damascus. and the damask cheeks of the English ladies to which the romantic poets paid such high tribute were so called because they resembled the fine pink rose,known as damask rose, which was also named for thsyrian city of Damascus.
ENCHANT:began as sorcery
An enchantress can be a bewitching and fascinating woman,or, in history, she could be a sorceress who practiced magic and the Eeil arts.In the earliest days of England enchant had only the sinister meaning of witchcraft, but by the 14th-century it had taken on the sense of “win over,” as illustrated by the phrase “enchant to charity.”This meaning was inherited from its ancestral grandparent,the Latin incantare,built upon in ,”over,”and cantare, “to sing”;that is, to “sing”someone “over”to your side.
FAINT:once meant pretend
When a fencer feints, he makes a false motion with intent to deceibe. This is just what the Victorian lady did when she would faint for these wesk sisters could always solve any dilemma by swooning away . The French words faint and feint both meant “pretended” or “feigned,” and they came from feindri, which meant “be cowardly,” “avoid one’s duty,” “pretend.” So when a girl faints, she may be feintging.
GLAMOUR:made by word magic
It’s strange to find that the glamour girl of today was named after the full Latin grammar that we thumbed our way through in school .Yor see, all through the ages there has been a mystery attached to words. The ancient Egyptian priests, for the sake of power , kept the art of reading and writing as a secret of the templem, and the people looked upon these skills with superstitious awe. Even in 16th-century Englang the ability to read and write was regarded with a fishy eye, and this special knowledge was associated with black magic.In that day latin was the language of the cultured few. Books were written in this dead speech, and the intellectuals conversed in Latin .A famous German professor was actually unfrocked because he dared to deliver a lecture in English.But the illiterate masses accredited occult and devilish powers to those who were fluent in Latinand in Latin grammar. As the years went by, the letter “r”in the mysterious word grammar changed to “I,” as “r” often does in the mutations of language. Other modifications ctept in ,and a new word glamour was born that first carried with it the same cabalistic overtones that had attached to Latin grammar, for the word glamour originally meant “magic,””a spell or charm.”Now the meaning has been modified, and the Hollywood starlet who has glamour casts a spell over men instead of over Latin grammar.
10. Your Favorite Sports and Their Word Histories
BACKGAMMON: back game
The beautifully inlaid 5,000-yeat-old backgammon board of Queen Shub-ad was found in her tomb during the excavation of the ancient capital of Babylonia, Ur of the Chaldees. Backgammon and its blood cousin, checkers, were known throughout the East thousands of years ago. From a date far back before the time of Christ comes a representation of a lion and an antelope at play over a draughts board. As a point of information, the lion is in the act of grabbing the stakes. Roughly speaking, the game of backgammon as we know it is usually dated form the 10th century, since the board was more or less standardized at that time. The word gamen in early English meant “game.” Hence backgammon really means “back game” because the pieces are often “sent back” to reenter the board.
BADMINTON: named for an estate
The Duke of Beaufort had a tidy bit of property ten miles in circumference in Gloucestershire, England. This estate of his, called Badminton, was apparently the scene of several innovations in English living in the late 19th century. A claret and soda drink was named badminton after it, but that has long since been forgotten. Everyone, however, knows of the game badminton, which was first played in England in 1873. The game itself was imported from India by the British.
BLINDFOLD: meant a blow
In the children’s game of blindman’s buff, one of the players is blindfolded, and this sounds as though a handerchief were folded around the victim’s eyes, but the word blindfold means nothing of the kind. The Middle English word blindfellen meant “strike blind,” and fellen meant “strike” but blindfelled the form of the past tense, was eventually altered to blindfold. And, by the way, the buff in blindman’s buff means a “blow” that was struck during the game.
BOWLING: kings forbade it
This game has a romantic history although the derivation of the word bowling is simple. It is originally from the Latin bulla, “bubble.” Bulla finally became “bowl” which, at first, meant either the ball itself or the active cast or delivery of the ball. Modern keglers may be interested to know that the complete equipment for playing their game was discovered by Sir Flinders Petrie, the British archaeologist, in an Egyptian tomb dating back to 5,200 B.C. And these same keglers may be surprised to learn that bowling was forbidden in England by Edward | | |, Richard||，and other monarchs because it was thought to be too harmless a sport and one that provided no training for war such as archery did. Henry V| | | also forbade bowling, but he had a fine alley laid out at Whitehall so that he might amuse himself between executions. But in spite of all this, the Dutch brought a variety of this game over and taught it to us on Bowling Green, those acres that lie in New York’s financial district.
]BRIDGE: first a man’s game来源：www.examda.com
The earlier name for this was biritch. The game was enthusiastically taken up by the British in the lush 1880’s. Women were at first excluded and it was as much of a man’s game as poker, but the turn of the century changed that, and women’s clubs became more common than men’s. The story that card were invented to amuse a feeble-minded king seem not to be quite accurate. It is true, however, that the first record of playing cards in Europe appears in the household accounts of Charles VI in 1392 or 1393. But, since his mental illness didn’t appear until 1393, it would seem doubtful that the game of cards could suddenly be invented for his sake. Little is known of their actual beginning, although some writers say that a Chinese by the name of Seun-ho, who lived around 1120 A.D., devised the game for the amusement of his concubines. In Egypt, cards were connected with religious ideas. At the least, we know that by 1483 Europe took to playing cards with such a passion that the first sermon was preached against them by Saint Bernardion of Siena at Bologna, Italy. His congregation was so stirred that they rushed home and made a bonfire of every pack that they had. Germany was an early center of card manufacturing. These cards had images of bell, hearts, leaves, and acorns, representing the nobility, clergy, landowners, and laborers. The Spanish went in for swords, batons, cups, and money. Our own symbols came directly from the French, but the names are a mixture. The club is a translation of the Spanish basto, “baton,” but the figure is the French trefoil, that is, “three-leaved,” really a clover. Spade is from the Spanish espada, or “sward,” which comes ultimately from the Greek spathe which meant “wooden sword.” The French word carreau really means a pane of glass or a tile, but when they use it in cards it identifies what we call a diamond. The heart is simply a conventional drawing of the human heart. In card games the word discard is often used. An earlier spelling of this term was decard, from de, “away,” and card, “card,” which first meant to reject a card from your hand. Now discard is used in other ways than card playing.
CHESS: the king is dead
When chess plays call “check” as a warning to an opponent, they are really saying: “Mind your king, he’s in danger.” Both the words check and chess originated in the Far East back somewhere in the dim ages and both come from the Persian word shah, or “king.” The term shah worked down through Arabic into Old French as eschec, into Middle English as chek, finally to check, which first only signified check as it is used in a chess game, but later logically came to mean a stop, loss, or hindrance, as it does in modern English. The companion word chess entered Middle English as ches from the Old French word eschecs, which is merely the plural form of eschec that gave us the word check. That is, chess is simply a series of check. When a Persian in ancient days had his opponent’s king hopelessly cornered, he announced shah-mat that is, “the king is dead.” If you pronounce those Persian words you will not be very far away from the modern chess player’s phrase, “check-mate.”
CUE: first a tail来源：考试大
The long, tapering stick that we use in billiards takes its name from the Latin cauda, “tail.” The spelling form is greatly changed, but this is natural, for the game of billiards was popular and played by all classes, and the name of the stick that is used in the game passed through dozens of dialects before it emerged as coe, then cue. Our word queue is exactly the same term, but its form was adopted from the modern French spelling. Its common meaning, of course, is “pigtail.” But other thing can be long and tapering too, like the queue that waits for the second show at the movies.
FORFEIT: originally a crime
With us a forfeit is not much more than a penalty in games. As Augustin Daly said in one of his plays back in the 8o’s: “I wish to gracious we could have one of those old-fashion forfeit games where kissing comes in.” But in Old English days a forfaite was a crime, as was a forfait in Old French. If you were discovered committing a forfait, you were arrested. This French word is a compound of the Old French words fors, “outside,” and fait, “done,” hence it literally meant “done outside” or “beyond,” and thus beyond the bounds of the law. This led to the original meaning of transgression, and transgress, itself, simply means “to step across,” that is, across the legal line. A sister word of forfeit is counterfeit from the French word contrefaire, “imitate” or “make parallel with.”
GOLF: named from a club
It is unfortunate that the origin of the name of such a popular game cannot be traced with absolute surety. The majority of the scholars claim that it came from the Dutch word kolf, the term for a club that was used in such games as hockey and croquet. This might indicate that golf began in Holland. It is true that most of the early accounts of the game are out of Scotland, but the records show, nevertheless, that the Scotch imported their best golf balls from the Dutch. The game grew to such popularity in Scotland that the government became disturbed. Golf was crowding out archery as a sport, and practice in archery was important to war. So in March,1457, the Scottish Parliament decreed that golf be “utterly cryit doun and nochtusit.” A few years later James I forbade it entirely, as he had done with bowling, yet the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer for 1503-1506 still show that the Crown’s money was going for golf balls. As s side light, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was a golf fiend and played a few rounds several days after the murder of her husband. However, as students of history will recall, the girl came to no good end.
GYMNASTICS: in the nude
It is easy to see the resemblance between our word gymnastics and its Greek parent gymnazo, which means “train naked” and comes from gymnos, meaning just plain “naked.” In ancient Greece, exercises were often performed in the nude by both boys and men, and, at one period, the famous Olympic track meets were run off in the nude. The Greeks of the time believed that nudity was conducive to health, just as our passionate sunbathers do today. The great Greek physician Hippocrates claimed that the sun was health and soothing to the nerves of the back. As an amusing side note, our mineral “gymnite” is so called because it is found at Bare Hills, Maryland! With us modern gymnastics are usually performed in a gymnasium while the term athletics generally applies to outdoor contests. The word athletics descends to us from the Greek athlon, the “prize” that the winning athlete received.
HAZARD: the die is cast
At one time hazard simply meant a dice game, as is indicated by the Arabic origin of the word, al, “the,” and zahr, “die.” But since the cast of the dice is uncertain, the Arabic word al-zahr came into Spanish as azar, meaning “an unexpected accident.” This entered French as hasard, English as hazard. Hazard is still a gambling game, but the word now also means exposure to the chance of loss or injury.
MARATHON: recalls an ancient battle
Nearly two and one-half millenniums ago a little band of 10,000 Athenians defeated 100,000 Persians at the battle of Marathon. A courageous runner brought the news of the thrilling victory to the city of Athens that lay some 26miles away. When the Olympic Games were revived for the first time in 1869, a long distance race was planned to cover the same ground that the earlier runner had traversed almost 2,400 years before. Quite properly, a Greek won this event. Now the word marathon can
11.Terms of Place,Time, Shape, and Size, and their Origins
FATHOM
Fathom is now six feet.And since sailors are primarily interested in depth,we finally devised the abstract verb fathom which meant “to get to the bottom of ”as of a problem or mystery.考试就到
FURLONG:as long as a furrow
The modern fancier of race horses calls this measure of distance a furlong,but there was a period in England when the word was spelled furlang,furh for the “furrow”that the farmer turns with his plow,and lang for “long.”That is,a furlong was just as long as a furrow,and in those days a furrow was reasonably constant in length because a furrow was thought of as existing in a field of ten acres.But this measure was still a little elastic for accuracy and by the 9th century the wise men decided to call a furlong an eighth of a mile and let it go at that.Today a furlong is 220 yards.
GEYSER: a gusher
In Iceland in an area of about two square miles there are approximately a hundred hot springs that have been a source of wonder to men for centuries .The Icelandic name for such a spring is hver.The largest of the group,however ,has been named the geysir,and from this came our word geyser. The literal meaning of geysir in Iceland is gusher.
HALCYON:started as a kingfisher来源：www.examda.com
Halcyon days are days of peace and calm when the skies are clear and the winds are still.These days had an actual place on the ancient calendar and were the fourteen days at about the time of the winter solstice .It was during this period that the halcyon,or kingfisher,was supposed to sit on her nest as it floated in the sea.She was believed,you see,to have a magic power to calm the winds and waves so that her nest would be secure .Halcyon is a Latin word that came from the Grddk term,alcyon,or “kingfisher.”
JOURNEY: a day’s mileage
This word is based,with several shifts of sound and derivation ,on the Latin word diurnum,”day.”A journey used to mean the distance covered in a “day”;and that journal of yours is what you have written in a “day.”So is a diary (from dies ,another Latin word for day).When we sojourn we spend the “day”and when we adjourn we have finished those things,”belonging to the day.”Or should we adjourn sine die,Latin for “without a day,”our meeting is adjourned indefinitely.And you could guess that a journeyman plumber is really a “day laborer.”
MILESTONE: a thousand paces
It seems that Augustus,first of the Roman emperors,set up a central stone in the Forum called a milliarium from which all distances were reckoned. The mane of this key stone was derived from the Latin word mille which meant a “thousand,”for the Roman mile was calculated as a thousand paces with each pace equalling five feet. Under the imperial regime,the roads were systematically marked off every mille passuum,or thousand paces.and a stone,or milliarium,was set up with the mane of the emperor carved on it,the date ,the place from which the distance was measured,and usually the name of the roadmaker.In forming our word milestone,we took the first half from the Latin word ,mille,but for the second half we adopted the simple native word stan,now stone.
ORIENT: towards the sunrise
We speak of Japan as “the land of the rising sun,”and we correctly call all of the far eastern countries the Orient,for the word Orient comes from th Latin term oriens,orientis,which means “rising.”To the Europe of the early days ,the Orient was where the sun rose.The East signified luck to the ancient soothsayers;the sunrise represented life and the beginning of things .These old time prophets judged the future by the flight of birds.If the sacred birds flew east when the priests released them from their cages,it meant good fortune.This superstition was taken over by the Christians ,and it was the traditional plan of the architecture of the early churches to place the chief altar at the eastern end of the edifice .In these ancient Roman augurs,however,if the sacred birds happened to fly west it presaged disaster,for the early fathers associated the setting sun with death and destruction.In the Latin language the verb occido meant “set ,”as the sun,but it also meant “die.”Of course, it was Latin occidens,occidentis,”falling,” “setting,” that gave to the Europeans and to us the name Occidentals in contradistinction to the Orientals, for we live in the land of the setting sun.
PLUMB: began with lead来源：www.examda.com
When you try to plumb the depths of a philosopher, you are, in a poetic sense, letting down a piece of lead on a line in an attempt to fathom his meaning. This verb plumb, of course, comes from the Latin word plumbum which means “lead”, and a plummet is a lead on the end of the line Since a weighted string hangs straight, the term plumb itself took on the meaning of “straight”, as, “He is going plumb to Hell.” Therefore, anything “out of plumb” is off the perpendicular. Also when you plumment down, you are going down in the most direct fashion possible. With all of this, there is no mystery about where the name plumber come from. This is the handyman who fixed your bathroom pipes when they were only made of plumbum, or “lead”.
SHAPE: it came through many spellings
This simple word has appeared in many forms, the Old Norse skap, Old English gesceap, Middle English schap, and a host of other spellings in between up to just plain shape as we use it. All of these words have the idea of creation in them, of “shaping” with the hands. And from shape, in the form of ship, we have such words as friendship, penmanship,horsemanship. And worship, which simply means “worthy shape”.
TAPER: grow thinner
Tapering fingers are like a taper candle which is shaped so that it diminishes in diameter at one end. In similar fashion if we taper off in eating or drinking, our consumption gradually grows less and less like the narrowing cylinder of a candle. The word taper itself seems to come by many intermediate shifts in spelling from the Latin word papyrus which meant taper or wick, for the wicks in those days were made from the pith of the papyrus plant a plant native to Egypt.
TIDE AND TIME: first meant the same thing
There is the old familiar phrase: “Time and tide wait for no man”. The history of tidy will be easier to trace if we first take a glance at tide and time. Originally these two words had almost identical meanings. We still preserve the first sense of tide in such an expression as Christmastide, which really means Christmas time, and it wasn’t until the 14th century that tide applied to the ebb and flow of the ocean, which is , of course, connected with time. Once upon a time our word tidy meant timely, too. They would speak of a tidie happening, meaning “opportune” or timely. Finally tidy came to mean “neat”, “clean”, and “in good order”.
TRAVEL: was once suffering来源：www.examda.com
If you don’t like to travel, you have a historical reason for your feeling. Travel, in the old days, could be bitterly uncomfortable and highly dangerous what with bandits, beasts, and barbarians, and the memories of its perils are still held in many terms. The word travel itself, for example, is from precisely the same source as travail which means extreme agony. They are both derived from the French term travailler which means “to work hard” and this word has as its remote ancestor, the Late Latin trepalium which was a device for torturing. When we say farewell, we are actually saying “travel well”. And even our word peril comes from the Latin periculum which meant “the danger of going forth to travel”.
ZENITH: over your head
We call the zenith that point in the sky directly overhead. The word zenith derives from the term samt in the Arabic phrase samt arras, “way over the head”, which is just what we mean by the word a millennium or two later. It would seem impossible that the spelling samt would ever end up as zenith, but here’s the story that will show how these spellings can wander around. The word samt had a variant form semt, and then in Medieval Latin days some fellow must have mistaken the form and he miscopied it as cenit. This version popped into the French of that day as cenith, and into English as senyth. The stretch from senyth to zenith is easy for an imagination to cover. This may help us to understand the wide variation in form that often exists between the original word and its modern version. The point in the celestial sphere right under your two feet is called the nadir, and this comes directly from the Arabic nazir, “opposite”, for in this case its spelling wasn’t monkeyed with much.
Probably the most important units of time that govern our lives are the months of the year and the days of the week. Here are their stories.
Months of the Year本文来源:网
JANUARY
When the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve and December
Passes into January, we say farewell to the year just gone and we hail the New Year ahead. It is fitting that first month should be called January, for the Roman god Janus who gave this month its name was always represented with two faces, one that gazed at the past and one that looked to the future. However, before the name January was adopted in English, this month was called Wulf-Monath, or “wolf-month”, because at this time of the year the bitter cold brought wolves into the villages to forage for food.
FEBRUARY
The middle of the month of February was marked in ancient Rome for a religious ceremony in which women were beaten for barrenness. This was called the festival of Lupercalia and was held in a cave by the river Tiber. Two youths were selected to play the leading role in the celebration. After the goats were sacrificed, thongs were cut from their hides and given to the youths.these thongs were called februa, or “instruments of purification”, and should they strike a women, she would no longer be barren. The two young men in question would run around the city with the sacred thongs and give smart and “curative” slaps to any barren girls they saw. No one knows just how they knew whom to hit although the barrenness of a women would probably be common knowledge in any village. However this may be, the magic power of the thongs came from Juno, whose epithet as the goddess of fertility was Februaria, and from this word we took the name of our month. February had 29 days, but the Roman Senate took one away and gave it to August, so that August would not be inferior to July. It’s a long step down from all this romance to the original native name for February. The factual English simply called it SProte-kalemonath because the cabbages were sprouting.
MARCH
Before the time of Julius Caesar, the Roman New Year began with the month of Marth. This was not only the beginning of the year but was the open spring season for the waging of war, so the month was dedicated to mars, the god of war, and was named sfter him. Its Old English name was Hlyd-Monath, that is, “boisterous-month”, because of the winds. And, by the way , the expression “mad as a March hare “ comes from the fact that March is the mating season for hares, and are supposedly full of whimsy all month.
APRIL
This was the month of the first flowers in ancient Italy, as it is with us, and the opening spring buds gave the month its name. The Rome name was Aprilis, based on the Latin word aperio with means “open”. The early Britons, on the other hand, lacked the poetry of the Mediterrancen. They rather flat-footedly called April Easter-Monath, or “Easter-month”, Of course, April brings in April Fool’s Day, and this recalls the festivities held by all ancient peoples at the vernal equinox, beginning on their New Year’s Day, March 25th, and ending on April 1st . It was not until the 18th century in Great Britain that April Fool’s Day, as we know it, was created. The theory about this day traces the tradition back to the medieval miracle plays that used to represent the sending of Christ from Pilate to Herod.
MAY
This is when “the time of the singing birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land”. Sir Thomas Malory called it “the lusty moneth of May”. It is strange that the romantic time of May has always been considered unlucky for marriage. The Romans objected to it for the quite understandable reason that it contained the feast in honor of Bona Dea who was the goddess of chastity. Also the festival of the unhappy dead fell in the month of May. The name May, in Latin, Maius, is believed by many to have come from Maia who was the mother of the god Hermes. The native English had a less romantic but much more practical name for the month . They called it Thrimilce because , in the long , spring days , the cows could be milked three time between sunrise and evening .
JUNE来源：考试大
This name is probably form Junius , the name of Latin family to which the murderers of Julius Caesar belonged . Some scholars believe , however , that the name June came form the goddess Juno who was the protectress of women since June has been the favorite month for marriages all the way down form earliest Rome . It can be that the ancient taboos against May marriages are responsible for our modern June rush to the altar . The English name for June was Sere-Monath . or “dry-month .”
JULY
The name of this month was proposed by Mark Antony , the Roman general and famous lover of Cleopatra . Antony suggested that this birthday month of Caius Julius Casesar be named Julius in his honor , and the name came into use the year of Caesar’s assassination . In English , the spelling became first Julie , then July . But before the English adopted the Latin name , they had called the month Mad-Monath , or “meadow-month ,” since the meadows were in bloom and the cattle were in pasture .
AUGUST
Octavian ,the first Roman emperor ,was the nephew of Julius Caesar , and longed to gain the fame and power of his uncle . He wanted , among other things , to have a month named after him . His birthday was in September , but he selected what is now known as August , for this particular month had been a fortunate one in his career . The Senate had given Octavian the official title of Augustus in honor of his distinguished sercices to the state , so the month he had chosen became Augistus , which we have shortened to August . The prosy and downright English had called this the Weod-Monath , or “weed-month ,” although , in fairness , the word “weed” yhen applied to greenery in general .
SEPTEMBER
Inasmush as the Roman year originally started in March ,September was their seventh month , and the name is taken from the Latin word septem which meant “seven .”When the calendar was changed and September became the ninth month , the name was not altered . Charlemagne , who was Emperor of the West at the beginning of the 9th century , refused to accept the Roman name and called September the “harvest-month .”England followed suit , and for a long time September was konwen as Harfest-Monath .The harvest then was largely barley , which the thirsty English promptly converted into ale .
OCTOBER
This is the season when the smoke of burning leaves is apt to be in the air . Even the Roman poet Martial called October “fumosus ,” or “smoky ,” because the time for lighting fires was at hand . Officially though , the name remained October from the Latin octo , “eight ,” for this month was the eighth on the list before the calendar was altered . The Roman general Germanicus Caesar wanted the month named after him , but he never got very far with his wish . The English first gave the name Win-Monath , or “wine-month ,” to October , and probably a little elderberry wine and such were concocted , but the real preoccupation was the “Brown October Ale “ that we still sing about today .
NOVEMBER
Since the Emperor Augustus had his month and Julius Caesar his , the polite and politic Romans thought it only proper to propose that November be renamed for the Emperor Tiberius . But Tiberius objected and said rather wittily , “What will you do if you have eleven Caesars?” So the name remained Novernber , from the Latin novem ,”nine .” To the forthright English November was the Blot-Monath , or “sacrifice-month” as it was the time when the heathen Anglo-Saxons sacrificed cattle to their gods . Sometimes they also called it the Wind-Monath , for obvious reasons .－全国最大教育类网站()
DECEMBER
Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus , Emperor of Rome toward the end of the 2nd century , once asked his mistress how she would like to see her name on the calendar . “Amazonius ,” was the name the emperor had in mind ,since the lady had once been painted as an Amazon , but the Senate was not sympathetic and apparently told him to gao watch the gladiators and lions instead . So December went on being called by its old name from decem , “ten,” since December was originally the tenth month . The common name among the English for December was Mid-Winter-Monath , although the Christians of the day called it Haligh-Monath , or “Holy-Month ,”because of birth of Christ .
MONDAY
In mythology ,, the moon was the wife of the sun , and so had to have her day in the week , which in Old English was Monandag , or “moon day ,” a translation of the Latin lunae dies ,”day of the moon .” In the superstitious England of theose times people believed that the phases of the moon affected crops and disthe potency medicine , and they were sure too that bacon killed on the old of the moon would shrivel in the pan .
TUESDAY
In Norse mythology there was a god named Tyr . A wolf spirit called Fenrir was troubling the world and Tyr volunteered to bind him . He used a chain made of strange substances , the footstep of a cat , the beards of women , the roots of stones , the breath of fishes . Tyr put his hand in Fenrir’s mouth and bound him , but his hand , in the , was bitten off . In Old English the god’s name Tyr appears as Tiw . He was really a Germanic deity , one very much like Mars , the Roman god of war , and his name gave us the Old English word Tiwesdag ,”the day of Tiw ,” OUR Tuesday , which is a rendering of the Latin dies martis , “day of Mars .”
WEDNESDAY
In Old English Wednesday was spelled Wodnesdag , which was the day of the great Germanic god Woden , who corresponded to the Roman divinity Mercury . Both were swift in movement and noted for their eloquence . Woden was the father of Tyr ,who gave us the name Tuesday , and was the god of storms . He welcomed brave warriors to the heaven of Valhalla and treated them to the pleasures that they most loved on earth . He also slew Chaos and created earth from his body , his flesh making the dry land , his bones the mountains , his blood the sea , his Mercurii dies , the “day of Mercury ,” and the French took this over as Mercredi , their name for Wednesday .
THURSDAY
Thor was the strongest and bravest of the Norse deities , and corresponded in the heavenly hierarchy to the Roman god Jupiter , who also handled the lightning bolts . Thor , you see , was the god of thunder which he made with a chariot drawn by he-goats across the sky .Thor owned a massive hammer which the giant Thrym once stole from him and refused to give up unless Freya , the goddess of love , would marry him . Thor dressed up in her clothes wheedled the hammer from Thrym , and then slugged his host . It was the name of this same Thor that formed the Old English word thuresdag , or Thursday , “the day of Thor ,” which equals the Roman dies jives , or “day of Jupiter .”
FRIDAY
In Old English , Friday was frigedag , the day of the Norse goddess Frigg , wife of Woden and the goddess Venus , and her day , Friday , was like the Latin dies Veneris , or “day of Venus .”Wednesday and Thursday had been named for her husband Woden and her son Thor , so Friday was assigned to her as appeasement . The Norsemen regarded Friday as their luxky day , but not so the Christians since the Crucifixion took place on Friday .
SATURDAY考试就到
In Old English saternesdag , merely “Saturn’s day ,” is half-translation and half-adoption of the Latin Saturni dies , or “day of Saturn ,” the Roman god of sowing .
SUNDAY
Sunday replaced Saturday as the Sabbath because the Resurrection took place on a Sunday .It was around the 4th century that the church made it a holiday and forebade anyone to work . In old English it was spelled sunnandag , literally the “sun’s day ,” a translation of the Latin dies solis , or “day of the sun .”
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