英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

dilate [dilate 词源字典]: dilate: [14] Latin lātus meant ‘wide’ (it probably came from an earlier *stlātos, represented in Church Slavonic stilati ‘spread out’, and has given English latitude). It was used with the prefix dis- ‘apart’ to form the verb dīlātāre ‘expand, extend’, which English acquired via Old French dilater. The word has two English nominal derivatives: dilatation [14], from late Latin dīlātātiō, now mainly restricted to medical contexts, and dilation [15], an English formation.
=> latitude[dilate etymology, dilate origin, 英语词源]
dilatory: dilatory: see defer
dilemma: dilemma: [16] Dilemma was originally a technical term in rhetoric, denoting a form of argument in which one’s opponent is faced with a choice of two unfavourable alternatives. It comes via Latin dilemma from Greek dilēmma, a compound formed from di- ‘two’ and lēmma ‘proposition, premise’. (Lēmma itself, which English acquired in the 16th century, came ultimately from *lab-, the base of Greek lambánein ‘talk’.) The ‘looser’ general sense ‘choice between unpleasant alternatives’ developed in the late 16th century.
diligent: diligent: [14] The underlying meaning of diligent is ‘loving’. It comes via Old French diligent from the present participial stem of Latin dīligere ‘esteem highly, love’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘apart’ and legere ‘choose’ (source of English elect, neglect, and select), and so originally meant literally ‘single out’. It gradually passed semantically via ‘love’ to ‘attentiveness’, ‘carefulness’, and finally ‘steady effort’.
=> elect, neglect, select
dilute: dilute: see lavatory
dime: dime: [14] Dime originally meant ‘tenth part’, and often specifically a ‘tax of one tenth, tithe’: ‘From all times it was ordained to pay dimes or tithes unto the Lord’, James Howell, Lexicon tetraglotton 1660. It came via Old French disme from Latin decima ‘tenth part’, a derivative of decem ‘ten’ (to which English ten is related). The application of the word to a coin worth one tenth of a US dollar dates from the 1780s.
=> decimal, ten
dimension: dimension: see measure
diminish: diminish: [15] Diminish is a hybrid verb, the result of a marriage between the now obsolete diminue [14] and the virtually obsolete minish [14], both of which meant ‘make smaller’. Diminue came via Old French diminuer from Latin dīminuere ‘break into small pieces’; it was a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘from’ and minuere ‘lessen’ (source of English minute). Minish came via Old French menuiser from Vulgar Latin *minūtiāre, a derivative of Latin minūtus ‘small’; this, bringing the history of diminish full circle, was an adjectival use of the past participle of minuere.
=> minute
dimity: dimity: see drill
dimple: dimple: [13] Dimple originally meant ‘pothole’, and was not applied to an ‘indentation in the flesh’ until the 14th century. There is no surviving record of the word in Old English, but it probably existed, as *dympel; Old High German had the cognate tumphilo, ancestor of modern German tümpel ‘pool, puddle’. Both go back to a Germanic *dump-, which may be a nasalized version of *d(e)up-, source of English deep and dip.
=> deep, dip
din: din: [OE] Din is an ancient word, traceable back via Old English dyne and Germanic *dunjaz to an Indo-European base *dhun-, signifying ‘loud noise’. This is also represented in Sanskrit dhúnis ‘roaring’ and Lithuanian dundéti ‘sound’.
dine: dine: see dinner
dingy: dingy: [18] Nobody is quite sure where dingy comes from, but the very occasional occurrence of ding or dinge as Middle English forms of dung suggests that it may originally have signified ‘dung-coloured’ (although if it came from such a source it might have been expected to rhyme with springy rather than stingy). Dung [OE] itself appears to go back ultimately to an Indo-European base *dhengh- denoting ‘covering’ (relatives include the Lithuanian verb dengti ‘cover’), so its etymological significance is ‘material spread over the earth (for fertilization)’ rather than ‘excrement’.
=> dung
dinner: dinner: [13] The etymological meaning of dinner is ‘breakfast’. The word comes ultimately from an unrecorded Vulgar Latin verb *disjūnāre, a compound formed from the prefix dis- ‘un-’ and jējūnus ‘fasting, hungry’ (source of English jejune [17]): hence, ‘break one’s fast’. Old French adopted it in two phases: as desiuner, which became modern French déjeuner (originally ‘breakfast’ but later ‘lunch’), borrowed by English in the 18th century; and as disner.

In later Old French this developed into diner (source of English dine [13]), which came to be used as a noun – from which English acquired dinner. In English it has always denoted the main meal of the day, although the timing of this has varied over the centuries, and continues to do so, according to region, social class, etc.
=> jejune
dinosaur: dinosaur: [19] Dinosaur means literally ‘terrible lizard’ (something of a misnomer, since dinosaurs are not particularly closely related to modern lizards). The word was coined around 1840 from Greek deinós ‘terrible’ (which goes back to the same Indo-European base, *dwei-, as produced English dire [16]) and sauros ‘lizard’ (which occurs in its Latin form saurus in the names of specific dinosaurs, such as brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus).
=> dire
dint: dint: [OE] Dint originally signified a ‘blow’ or ‘hit’, particularly one inflicted by a sword or similar weapon. Its meaning broadened out in the 14th century to ‘force of attack or impact’, and this is the source of the modern English phrase by dint of, which to begin with denoted ‘by force of’. In the 13th century a variant form dent arose, which by the 16th century had moved on metaphorically to the sense ‘depression made by a blow’.
diocese: diocese: [14] Etymologically, diocese means ‘administration’, and only gradually did the word become more concrete and specific, via ‘area administered, province’ to ‘ecclesiastical province’. It comes ultimately from Greek dioíkēsis, a derivative of dioikein ‘keep house’, hence ‘administer’; this was a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dia- and oikein ‘inhabit’, which in turn was a derivative of oikos ‘house’ (a distant relative of the -wich, -wick ending in some British place-names).

Its ecclesiastical meaning developed in Greek, and came to the fore as the word passed via Latin dioecēsis and late Latin diocēsis into Old French diocise (source of English diocese). In English that has always been the only living sense of the word, although it has been used in historical contexts to refer to provinces of the Roman empire.
dip: dip: [OE] Like deep, dip comes ultimately from a Germanic base *d(e)up- ‘deep, hollow’. The derived verb, *dupjan, produced Old English dyppan, ancestor of modern English dip. It originally meant quite specifically ‘immerse’ in Old English, sometimes with reference to baptism; the sense ‘incline downwards’ is a 17th-century development.
=> deep, dimple
diphtheria: diphtheria: [19] The disease diphtheria is characterized by the formation of a false membrane in the throat which obstructs breathing, and when the French physician Pierre Bretonneau described it in the 1820s, he coined a name for it based on Greek diphthéra, which means ‘piece of leather’. Using the suffix -itis, denoting inflammation, he formed the modern Latin term diphtheritis (used in English until the 1850s) and its French equivalent diphthérit.

He subsequently substituted diphthérie, and this was borrowed into and established in English in the late 1850s when an epidemic of the disease (then also termed Boulogne sore throat, from its first having been observed in Boulogne) struck Britain.
diploma: diploma: [17] Etymologically, a diploma is a ‘folded paper’. It comes via Latin diplōma from Greek díplōma; this was a derivative of the verb diploun ‘fold’, which in turn came from diplous ‘double’ (a distant cousin of English double). Since official letters tended to be folded over, díplōma eventually came to mean ‘document, especially one issued by the government’ – the sense in which the word was acquired by English.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the use of the derived Latin adjective diplōmaticus ‘relating to official documents’ with specific reference to the field of international relations led eventually to its French descendant, diplomatique, coming to mean ‘relating to international relations’. English acquired the word as diplomatic in the 18th century.
=> double