英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

delusion [delusion 词源字典]: delusion: see illusion
[delusion etymology, delusion origin, 英语词源]
demagogue: demagogue: [17] A demagogue is literally a ‘leader of the people’. The word represents Greek demagōgós, a compound formed from demos ‘common people’ and agōgós ‘leader’. (This was derived from ágein ‘drive, lead’, a verb related to Latin agere ‘do’, and hence to its host of English descendants, from act to prodigal.) In ancient Greece the term was applied particularly to a set of unofficial leaders drawn from the common people who controlled the government of Athens in the 4th century BC, and whose irresponsible rule (as their critics saw it) has given demagogue a bad name ever since.
=> act, agent
demand: demand: [13] Latin dēmandāre meant ‘entrust something to someone’. It was a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dē- and mandāre ‘entrust, commit’ (source of English mandate). As it passed via Old French demander into English, its meaning developed to ‘give someone the responsibility of doing something’, and finally ‘order’.
=> mandate
demarcation: demarcation: [18] As its form and meaning would suggest, demarcation is indeed related to mark, but only in a distinctly roundabout way. The word comes, possibly via French, from Spanish demarcación, a derivative of the verb demarcar ‘mark out the boundaries of’, which in turn is descended ultimately from the same prehistoric Germanic ancestor as English mark ‘sign, trace’.

It originally came into English in very specific application to the boundary line between the Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence in the New World, as laid down by Pope Alexander VI in a bull of 4 May 1493. In Spanish this was the linea de demarcación (in Portuguese, linha de demarcação). By the middle of the 18th century the word was being used in English in much more general contexts.

The familiar modern phrase demarcation dispute, relating to inter-union squabbles, dates from the 1930s.
demeanour: demeanour: [15] A person’s demeanour is how they ‘conduct’ themselves. The word goes back ultimately to the literal notion of driving animals along. It is a derivative of the now virtually obsolete reflexive verb demean ‘behave’, borrowed in the 13th century from Old French demener. This was a compound formed from the intensive prefix de- and mener ‘lead’, a descendant of Latin mināre ‘drive a herd of animals’ (whose original connotation of ‘urging on with threats’ is revealed by its close relationship with minārī ‘threaten’, source of English menace).

This obsolete demean should not, incidentally, be confused with demean ‘degrade’ [17], which was formed from the adjective mean.
=> menace
demerit: demerit: [14] A demerit may be virtually the opposite of a merit, but the word was not formed, as might be supposed, by adding the prefix de-, denoting oppositeness or reversal, to merit. Its distant ancestor was Latin demeritum, from the verb demereri ‘deserve’, where the de- prefix meant not ‘opposite of’ but ‘completely’ (as it does too in, for example, denude and despoil).

Add this de- to mereri ‘deserve’ and you get ‘deserve thoroughly’. However, at some point in the Middle Ages the prefix began to be reinterpreted as ‘opposite’, and medieval Latin demeritum came to mean ‘fault’ – the sense that reached English via French démérite.
demesne: demesne: [14] Ultimately, demesne is the same word as domain. It comes via Old French demeine from Latin dominicus, an adjective meaning ‘of a lord’ (see DOMINION), and hence etymologically means ‘land belonging to a lord’. Under the feudal system it denoted land retained by the lord for his own use, rather than let out to tenants. The -s- was inserted into the word in Anglo-Norman, partly as a graphic device to indicate a long vowel and partly through association with Old French mesnie ‘household’, which came ultimately from Latin mansio ‘place to stay’ (source of English mansion).
=> dame, danger, domain, dominion
demijohn: demijohn: [18] Demijohn ‘large globular bottle’ has no connection with half of the common male forename. It arose through a process known as folk etymology, by which an unfamiliar or slightly outlandish foreign word is deconstructed and then reassembled using similar-sounding elements in the host language. In this case the source was French dame-jeanne, literally ‘Lady Jane’, a term used in French for such a container since the 17th century.
demise: demise: see dismiss
democracy: democracy: [16] Democracy means literally ‘government by the populace at large’. It comes via Old French democratie and medieval Latin dēmocratia from Greek dēmokratíā, a compound formed from demos ‘people’ and -kratíā ‘rule’, a derivative of the noun krátos ‘power, authority’, which has contributed a number of terms for types of government to English.

The original meaning of Greek demos was ‘district, land’, but eventually it came to denote the people living in such a district, particularly the ordinary people considered as a social class participating in government – hence democracy. The derivative democrat [18] was coined in French at the time of the Revolution.
=> epidemic
demolish: demolish: [16] To demolish something is etymologically to ‘deconstruct’ it. The word comes from demoliss-, the stem of Old French demolir, which in turn came from Latin dēmōlīrī ‘throw down, demolish’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dē-, denoting reversal of a previous condition, and mōlīrī, which among other things meant ‘build, construct’. This was a derivative of mōles ‘mass, huge mass, massive structure’ (source of English mole ‘harbour wall’ and molecule).
=> mole, molecule
demon: demon: [14] English acquired this word from Latin in two forms, classical Latin daemōn and medieval Latin dēmōn, which were once used fairly interchangeably for ‘evil spirit’ but have now split apart. Demon retains the sense ‘evil spirit’, but this was in fact a relatively late semantic development. Greek daímōn (source of Latin daemōn) meant ‘divine power, fate, god’ (it is probably related to Greek daíomai ‘distribute, allot’, which comes from an Indo- European base whose descendants include English tide and time).

It was used in Greek myths as a term for a minor deity, and it was also applied to a ‘guiding spirit’ (senses now usually denoted by daemon in English). It seems to be from this latter usage that the sense ‘evil spirit’ (found in the Greek Septuagint and New Testament and in the Latin Vulgate) arose.
=> pandemonium, time, tide
demonstrate: demonstrate: see monster
demur: demur: [13] Like its French cousin demeurer, demur originally meant ‘stay, linger’. It was not until the 17th century that the current sense, ‘raise objections’, developed, via earlier ‘delay’ and ‘hesitate in uncertainty’. The word comes via Old French demorer and Vulgar Latin *dēmorāre from Latin dēmorārī, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dē- and morārī ‘delay’ (source also of English moratorium [19]).
=> demure, moratorium
demure: demure: [14] Etymologically, someone who is demure is quiet and settled, not agitated. The word comes from demore, the past participle of Old French demorer ‘stay’ (source of English demur), and so semantically is a parallel formation to staid. One of its earliest recorded uses in English was actually to describe the sea as ‘calm’, and it was not until the late 17th century that its modern slightly pejorative connotations of coyness began to emerge.
=> demur
den: den: [OE] Related forms such as German tenne ‘threshing floor’ and possibly Greek thenar ‘palm of the hand’ suggest that the underlying meaning of den may be ‘flat area’. Old English denn denoted ‘wild animal’s lair’, perhaps with reference to animals’ flattening an area of vegetation to form a sleeping place. Dean [OE], a word for ‘valley’ now surviving only in placenames, comes from the same source.
denigrate: denigrate: [16] To denigrate people is literally to ‘blacken’ them. The word comes from Latin dēnigrāre ‘blacken’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dē- and niger ‘black’. This adjective, which is of unknown origin, also produced French noir ‘black’ and Italian nero ‘black’, and is the source (via Spanish negro) of English negro [16] and the now taboo nigger [18]. Denigrate originally meant ‘physically turn something black’ as well as the metaphorical ‘defame, belittle’: ‘This lotion will denigrate the hairs of hoary heads’, Richard Tomlinson, Renodaeus’ Medicinal dispensatory 1657.
=> negro, nigger
denim: denim: [17] The name of the fabric from which jeans are made had its origins in a sort of serge produced in the southern French town of Nîmes. The French naturally enough called it serge de Nîmes, but the original meaning of this soon became lost when English borrowed it as serge de Nim, and the last two words came to be run together as denim.
denizen: denizen: [15] Etymologically, denizen means ‘someone who is inside’, and it is related to French dans ‘in’. It comes from Anglo-Norman deinzein, a derivative of Old French deinz ‘inside’. This had grown out of the Latin phrase dē intus, literally ‘from inside’. Hence denizen’s original meaning of someone who lives ‘in’ a country, as opposed to a foreigner. In the 16th and 17th centuries the verb denize existed, coined by back-formation from denizen; it meant roughly the same as modern English naturalize.
denouement: denouement: [18] A denouement is literally an ‘untying of a knot’. It was borrowed from French (its first recorded use in English is by Lord Chesterfield in one of his famous letters to his son (1752)), where it was a derivative of dénouer ‘undo’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dé- ‘un-’ and nouer ‘tie’, which came ultimately from Latin nōdus ‘knot’ (source of English newel, node, nodule, and noose).
=> newel, node, nodule, noose