英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

jetty [jetty 词源字典]: jetty: [15] A jetty is a structure that literally projects or is ‘thrown’ out beyond what surrounds it. The word was borrowed from Old French jetee, where it originated as the past participle of the verb jeter ‘throw’ (source also of English jet, as in ‘jet engine’). It was used originally both for a structure jutting out into a body of water, and for a projecting upper storey of a house, of which the latter now survives only as a technical term in architectural history.
=> jet[jetty etymology, jetty origin, 英语词源]
jewel: jewel: [13] Originally, jewel meant ‘costly adornment made from precious stones or metals’ – a sense now largely restricted to the collective form jewellery [14]. The main modern sense ‘gem’ emerged towards the end of the 16th century. The word comes from Anglo-Norman juel, but exactly where that came from is not known for certain. It is generally assumed to be a derivative of jeu ‘game’, which came from Latin jocus (source of English jocular, joke, etc).
=> jeopardy, jocular, joke
jingo: jingo: [17] The exclamation by jingo! has been around since at least the late 17th century, and the element jingo probably originated as a euphemistic alteration of Jesus. But it took on a new lease of life in 1878 when G W Hunt incorporated it into a music-hall song he was writing in support of Disraeli’s hawkish foreign policy towards the Russians. Its refrain went ‘We don’t want to fight, yet by Jingo! if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too’. By jingo! was taken up as a nationalistic rallying call: those who supported Disraeli’s plan to send in the fleet were called jingoes, and their attitude was dubbed jingoism.

But these were terms used by their opponents, not by the jingoes themselves, and they were essentially derogatory, and when jingoism later broadened out in meaning, it denoted a mindless gung-ho patriotism.
job: job: [16] The origins of job are uncertain. Its likeliest source is an earlier and now obsolete noun job which meant ‘piece’. It is quite plausible that job of work, literally ‘piece of work’, could have become shortened to job. But where this earlier job came from is not known, so the mystery remains open.
jocular: jocular: see joke
join: join: [13] Join goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European *jug- (which also produced English adjust, conjugal, jostle, joust, jugular, juxtapose, subjugate, yoga, and yoke). Its Latin descendant was jungere ‘join’, which passed into English via joign-, the present stem of Old French joindre. The Latin past participial stem junct- gave English junction [18] and juncture [14], and also, via Spanish, junta [17] (etymologically a body of people ‘joined’ together for a particular purpose, hence a ‘governing committee’).
=> adjust, conjugal, joust, jugular, junction, junta, juxtapose, subjugate, yoga, yoke
joist: joist: [14] Etymologically, a joist is a wooden beam on which boards ‘lie’ down. The word’s ultimate ancestor is the Latin verb jacēre ‘lie down’ (from which English also gets adjacent). Its neuter past participle jacitum was taken into Old French as a noun, giste, which denoted a ‘beam supporting a bridge’ (its modern French descendant, gîte ‘home’ – that is, ‘place where one lies down’ – is currently infiltrating English). Middle English took over the Old French word, which from the 15th century gradually began to change to joist.
=> adjacent
joke: joke: [17] Latin jocus meant ‘jest, joke’ (a possible link with Old High German gehan ‘say’ and Sanskrit yācati ‘he implores’ suggests that its underlying meaning was ‘word-play’). It passed into Old French as jeu, which lies behind English jeopardy and probably also jewel. But English also went direct to Latin for a set of words connected with ‘fun’ and ‘humour’, among them jocose [17] and jocular [17], both from Latin derivatives of jocus (the superficially similar jocund, incidentally, is etymologically unrelated), and joke itself, which was originally introduced in the form joque or joc (‘coming off with so many dry joques and biting repartees’, Bishop Kennett’s translation of Erasmus’s Encomium Moriae 1683). Juggler belongs to the same word family.
=> jeopardy, jewel, jocular, juggler
jolly: jolly: [14] Old French jolif meant ‘pleasant, merry, festive’ (it has been speculated that it may have been derived from jól, the Old Norse term for the midwinter festival, to which English yule is closely related). English took the adjective over, and whereas in French (the modern form is joli) it has come to mean ‘pretty’, in English it kept closer to the original sense ‘merry’.
=> yule
joss: joss: see deity
jostle: jostle: see joust
journey: journey: [13] Etymologically, a journey is a ‘day’s’ travel. The word comes via Old French jornee from Vulgar Latin *diurnāta. This in turn was derived from Latin diurnum ‘daily allowance or ration’, a noun use of the adjective diurnus ‘daily’, which was based on diēs ‘day’. The specific notion of a ‘day’s’ travel had died out by the mid-16th century, leaving only the more general ‘travel’.

But before going altogether, ‘day’ left its mark on another manifestation of the word journey: the word journeyman ‘qualified worker’ [15]. This has no connection with ‘travelling’; it originally denoted one who was qualified to do a ‘day’s’ work. Another Latin derivative of diurnus was the adjective diurnātis, which has given English diurnal [15], journal [14] (first cousin to diary), and journalism [19]. Sojourn belongs to the same language family.
=> diary, diurnal, journal, sojourn
joust: joust: [13] The underlying meaning of joust is simply an ‘encounter’. The word came from Old French juster, which originally meant ‘bring together’, and hence by extension ‘join battle’ and ‘fight on horse-back’. The Old French verb goes back to Vulgar Latin *juxtāre ‘come together’, a derivative of Latin juxtā ‘close’ (source of English juxtaposition [17]). And juxtā itself comes from the same ultimate source as English join and yoke. Jostle [14] originated as a derivative of joust.
=> join, jostle, juxtapose
jovial: jovial: [16] Etymologically, jovial simply means ‘born under the influence of the planet Jupiter’. It comes via French from Italian gioviale, a derivative of Giove ‘Jupiter’, which itself goes back to the Latin stem Jov- (from which English also gets Jove [14], as in by Jove!). Jupiter was thought of as endowing those born under its sign with happiness, and so by extension jovial came to mean ‘jolly, good-humoured’. The word Jupiter [13] itself represents a Latin compound of Jov- and pater ‘father’.
jowl: jowl: English has two words jowl, which are quite close together in meaning but are etymologically unrelated. The older, which means ‘jaw’, goes back ultimately to Old English ceafl. It is now encountered virtually only in the expression ‘cheek by jowl’. Jowl ‘flesh around the throat’ (now usually used in the plural) first appears in the 16th century. It may well be a development of Middle English cholle, which in turn probably goes back to Old English ceole ‘throat’ (a relative of German kehle ‘throat’).
joy: joy: [13] Latin gaudēre meant ‘rejoice’ (it came from a prehistoric base *gāu-, which also produced Greek gēthein ‘rejoice’). From it was derived the noun gaudium ‘joy’, which passed into English via Old French joye. From the same source come English enjoy and rejoice. The use of joystick for the ‘control stick of an aircraft’ (perhaps inspired by an earlier slang sense ‘penis’) dates from around 1910.
=> enjoy, rejoice
jubilee: jubilee: [14] Despite their similarity, jubilee has no etymological connection with jubilation [14] and jubilant [17]; but they have exerted a considerable influence on it over the centuries. It was originally a Hebrew word: Hebrew yōbhēl meant ‘leading animal, ram’, and by extension ‘ram’s horn’, and since a ram’s horn was blown to announce the start of a special year (set aside once every fifty years according to ancient Hebrew law) in which slaves were freed, land left untilled, etc, the term yōbēl came to be used for the year itself.

Greek took it over as ióbēlos and formed an adjective from it, iōbēlaios. This was passed on to Latin, and it was here that jubilation took a hand. Latin jūbilāre (source of English jubilation) originally meant simply ‘call out’, but early Christian writers used it for ‘shout for joy’. Under its influence Greek iōbēlaios became Latin jūbilaeus, which was used in the expression annus jūbilaeus to denote this special Jewish year.

It soon came to be used as a noun in its own right, and in this role passed via Old French jubile into English. By this time the ideas of ‘fifty years’ and ‘joy, celebration’ had mingled to such an extent that the word was being used for a ‘fiftieth anniversary’ or its celebration, a sense which remained current until the early 20th century (in present-day English it means simply ‘anniversary’, usually of a monarch’s accession, and the period involved has to be defined by golden, silver, etc).
judge: judge: [13] Etymologically, a judge is someone who ‘speaks the law’. The word comes via Old French juge from Latin jūdex, which was originally a compound noun made up of jūs ‘law’ and the element -dicus ‘speaking’ (related to English diction, dictionary, etc). Parallel formations to have reached English are juridical [16] and jurisdiction [13], while derivatives of jūdex itself include judicature [16], judicial [14], judiciary [16], and judicious [16].
=> diction, dictionary, judicious, jury, just
juggernaut: juggernaut: [17] Hindi Jagganath is a title of Krishna, one of the avatars, or incarnations, of the god Vishnu, the Preserver. It comes from Sanskrit Jagganātha, a compound of jagat- ‘world’ and nāthás ‘lord’. It is applied also to a large wagon on which an image of the god is carried in procession (notably in an annual festival in Puri, a town in the northeastern Indian state of Orissa).

It used to be said, apocryphally, that worshippers of Krishna threw themselves under the wheels of the wagon in an access of religious ecstasy, and so juggernaut came to be used metaphorically in English for an ‘irresistible crushing force’: ‘A neighbouring people were crushed beneath the worse than Jaggernaut car of wild and fierce democracy’, J W Warter, Last of the Old Squires 1854.

The current application to large heavy lorries is prefigured as long ago as 1841 in William Thackeray’s Second Funeral of Napoleon (‘Fancy, then, the body landed at day-break and transferred to the car; and fancy the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine’); but it did not become firmly established until the late 1960s.
juggler: juggler: [12] A juggler was originally a ‘jester’, and the word is related to English joke. Its ultimate source was Latin joculātor, a derivative of jocus ‘jest’ (from which English gets joke). This passed into Old French as jogleor, and was borrowed into English at the beginning of the 12th century. It denoted a general entertainer or buffoon, but it was also used for a magician or conjurer, and it was presumably an underlying notion of dexterity or sleight of hand that led by the 17th century to its being used for someone who keeps several objects in the air at the same time.

Old French jogleor became modern French jougleur, and this spawned the variant form jongleur, which was borrowed into English in the 18th century.
=> jocular, joke