- pantry
[pantry 词源字典] - pantry: [13] A pantry is etymologically a ‘bread’ room. The word comes from Old French paneterie ‘cupboard for keeping bread’, a derivative of panetier ‘servant in charge of bread’. This was adopted from medieval Latin pānetārius, an alteration of late Latin pānārius ‘bread-seller’, which in turn was a derivative of Latin pānis ‘bread’ (source also of English pannier). The notion of ‘bread storage’ survived into English, but was gradually lost in the face of the extended ‘food store’.
=> pannier[pantry etymology, pantry origin, 英语词源] - pants
- pants: [19] Pants is short for pantaloons, a term used since the 17th century for men’s nether garments. The word originated in the name of a character in the old Italian commedia dell’arte, Pantalone, a silly old man with thin legs who encased them in tight trousers. English took the word over via French pantalon, and began to use it for ‘tight breeches or trousers’.
In American English it broadened out to ‘trousers’ generally, whence the current American use of pants for ‘trousers’. British English, however, tends to use the abbreviation for undergarments, perhaps influenced by pantalets, a 19th-century diminutive denoting ‘women’s long frilly drawers’.
- papa
- papa: see pope
- papacy
- papacy: see pope
- papal
- papal: see pope
- paparazzi
- paparazzi: [20] In Federico Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita (1959), a press photographer who pesters celebrities is called Paparazzo (the name was supplied by the writer of the film’s scenario, Ennio Flaiano, who in turn got it from Sulle Rive dello Ionio (1957), Margherita Guidacci’s translation of George Gissing’s travel book By the Ionian Sea (1901), in which a restaurantowner is called Coriolano Paparazzo). By the late 1960s the name, usually in the Italian plural form paparazzi, had entered English as a generic term for such intrusive snappers.
- paper
- paper: [14] Paper gets its name from the papyrus, a sort of rush from which in ancient times paper was made. The Greek word for this (presumably borrowed from some Oriental language) was pápūros, and its Latin in descendant papyrus passed into English via Old French papier and Anglo-Norman papir. (English papyrus [14] itself was an independent borrowing direct from Latin.)
=> papyrus, taper - par
- par: see pair
- parable
- parable: [14] The etymological idea underlying parable is of ‘drawing analogies’. It comes via Old French parabole and Latin parabola from Greek parabolé, a derivative of parabállein. This was a compound verb formed from pará ‘beside’ and bállein ‘throw’ (source of English ballistic [18]). It meant ‘put beside’, hence ‘compare’.
Its derived noun parabolé was used for a ‘comparison’ or ‘analogy’, and hence in the Christian tradition for an ‘allegorical or moral narrative’. The geometrical sense of the term, acquired by English directly from Latin as parabola [16], comes from the notion of ‘comparability’ or ‘parallelism’ between the section of a cone that forms the parabola and an element in the cone’s surface.
Etymologically the same word is parole [17], which reached English via Vulgar Latin *paraula and Old French parole ‘word’. Its use for ‘conditional release’ is based on the notion of the prisoner giving his ‘word of honour’ to be of good behaviour.
=> ballistic, palaver, parabola, parliament, parole - paradigm
- paradigm: see teach
- paradise
- paradise: [12] Paradise comes from an ancient Persian word meaning ‘enclosed place’. In Avestan, the Indo-European language in which the Zoroastrian religious texts were written, pairidaēza was a compound formed from pairi ‘around’ (a relative of Greek péri, from which English gets the prefix peri-) and diz ‘make, form’ (which comes from the same Indo- European source as produced English dairy, dough, and the second syllable of lady).
Greek took the word over as parádeisos, and specialized ‘enclosed place’ to an ‘enclosed park’; and in the Greek version of the Bible it was applied to the ‘garden of Eden’. English acquired the word via Latin paradīsus and Old French paradis.
=> dairy, dough, lady - paraffin
- paraffin: [19] The term paraffin was coined in German around 1830 by the chemist Reichenbach. It was formed from Latin parum ‘little’ and affinis ‘related’ (source of English affinity), an allusion to the fact that paraffin is not closely related chemically to any other substance. The word is first recorded in English in 1838.
=> affinity, fine - paragon
- paragon: [16] When we say someone is a ‘paragon of virtue’ – a perfect example of virtue, able to stand comparison with any other – we are unconsciously using the long-dead metaphor of ‘sharpening’ them against others. The word comes via archaic French paragon and Italian paragone from medieval Greek parakónē ‘sharpening stone, whetstone’. Thīs was a derivative of parakonan, a compound verb formed from pará ‘alongside’ and akonan ‘sharpen’ (a descendant of the same base, *ak- ‘be pointed’, as produced English acid, acute, etc), which as well as meaning literally ‘sharpen against’ was also used figuratively for ‘compare’.
=> acid, acute, eager, oxygen - parakeet
- parakeet: [16] Parakeet is an anglicization of Old French paraquet. Like the roughly contemporary parrot, this seems to have begun life as a diminutive form of the name Pierre ‘Peter’ (several species of bird, such as the magpie and robin, have been given human names).
- parallel
- parallel: [16] Etymologically, parallel simply means ‘beside each other’. It comes via French parallèle and Latin parallēlus from Greek parállēlos. This was a compound formed from pará ‘beside’ and allélōn ‘each other’, a derivative of állos ‘other’ (to which English else is distantly related).
=> else - paramount
- paramount: see mountain
- paraphernalia
- paraphernalia: [17] In former times, when a woman married her property was divided into two categories: her dowry, which became the property of her husband, and the rest. The legal term for the latter was paraphernalia, which came via medieval Latin from late Latin parapherna, a borrowing from Greek parápherna. And the Greek word in turn was a compound formed from pará ‘beside’ and pherné ‘dowry’. It is a measure of the light in which these remaining odds and ends were viewed that by the early 18th century the term paraphernalia had come to be used dismissively for ‘equipment’ or ‘impedimenta’.
- parcel
- parcel: [14] Etymologically, parcel is the same word as particle. Both go back to Latin particula, a diminutive form of pars (source of English part). Particle [14] was acquired direct from Latin, whereas parcel was routed via an unrecorded Vulgar Latin variant *particella and Old French parcelle. It originally meant ‘part’ in English (a sense which survives in fossilized form in the phrase part and parcel); the modern meaning ‘package’ emerged in the 17th century via the notions of a ‘number of parts forming a whole’ and a ‘collection of items’.
=> part, particle - parchment
- parchment: [13] Under several layers of disguise lurks the geographical origin of parchment: the ancient town of Pergamum in western Turkey, whose inhabitants used the skin of sheep for writing on rather than papyrus. In Latin, such skin was known as charta Pergamīna ‘paper from Pergamum’, or simply pergamīna. This was later blended with Parthica pellis ‘Parthian leather’ to produce a Vulgar Latin *particamīnum, which passed into English via Old French parchemin (the ending was changed to -ment on the model of other English words, in the 15th century).
The formal distinction between parchment (made from sheepskin) and vellum (made from calfskin) has never been particularly watertight in English.
- pardon
- pardon: see date, forgive
