英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

salvo [salvo 词源字典]: salvo: [16] When English originally acquired the word salvo, it was in the forms salve or salva, which came respectively from French salve and its source, Italian salva. This originally meant ‘salute, greeting’ (it came from salvē ‘hail’, the imperative form of Latin salvēre ‘be in good health’, which is related to English safe, salubrious, salute, save, etc).

Important personages being greeted with a volley of gunfire, salva soon came to be used for such a discharge of guns (the related English salute has developed along the same lines – as in a ‘21-gun salute’). The form salvo, which emerged in the 17th century, is an alteration of salva.
=> safe, salute, save[salvo etymology, salvo origin, 英语词源]
same: same: [12] Same comes ultimately from Indo- European *somós ‘same’. This also produced Greek homós ‘same’ (source of the English prefix homo-, as in homosexual), and was a variant of the base that gave Latin similis ‘similar’ (source of English similar and simulate), Latin simul ‘at the same time’ (source of English assemble and simultaneous), Latin simplus ‘simple’ (source of English simple).

Latin singulus ‘single’ (source of English single and singular), and English seem and some. The Indo-European adjective passed into prehistoric Germanic as *samaz, which in due course evolved into Old Norse same. The Vikings brought the word with them to England, where it gradually replaced the native terms for ‘same’, ilk and self.
sample: sample: see example
sanatorium: sanatorium: see sane
sanctity: sanctity: [14] Latin sanctus ‘holy’ (source of English saint) originated as the past participle of sancīre ‘consecrate’, a verb derived from the same base that produced sacer ‘sacred’ (source of English sacred, sacrifice, etc). Amongst its derivatives to have reached English are sanctify [14], sanctimonious [17], sanctity, sanctuary [14], and sanctum [16]. And its stem sanctformed the basis of the Latin noun sanctiō ‘ordaining of something as sacred or inviolable’, hence more broadly a ‘decree, sanction’, from which English gets sanction [16].
=> sacred, saint
sand: sand: [OE] Sand is a widespread Germanic word, shared by German, Swedish, and Danish (Dutch has zand). Its prehistoric source was *sandam, which went back to an Indo-European *samdam. This also produced Latin sabulum ‘sand’, which evolved into French sable and Italian sabbia ‘sand’. It probably came ultimately from a base which signified ‘grind, crush’.
sandal: sandal: [14] English acquired sandal from Latin sandalium. This is turn was borrowed from Greek sandálion, a diminutive form of sándalon ‘wooden shoe’, which probably came from a western Asian language. It has no connection with the sandal- of sandalwood [16], which came via medieval Latin sandalum and Greek sántalon or sándanon from Sanskrit candanah.
sandwich: sandwich: [18] John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718–92), is said to have been so addicted to the gambling table that in order to sustain him through an entire 24-hour session uninterrupted, he had a portable meal of cold beef between slices of toast brought to him. The basic idea was nothing new, of course, but the Earl’s patronage ensured it a vogue, and by the early 1760s we have the first evidence of his name being attached to it: the historian Edward Gibbon in 1762 recorded in his diary how he dined at the Cocoa Tree and saw ‘twenty or thirty of the best men in the kingdom … supping at little tables … upon a bit of cold meat, or a Sandwich’.
sane: sane: [17] Latin sānus, a word of uncertain origin, meant ‘healthy’ – a connotation perpetuated in its derivative sanatorium ‘sickroom’ [19]. Its use with reference to mental rather than physical health (as in the Latin tag mēns sāna in corpore sāno ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’) led to its adoption in English for ‘of sound mind, not mad’.
=> sanatorium, sanitary
sap: sap: English has three distinct words sap. The oldest, ‘plant-juice’ [OE], goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *sappam, which also produced German saft ‘juice’. This in turn was a descendant of Indo-European *sapon-, from which came Latin sapa ‘new wine’. Sap ‘undermine’ [16] was borrowed via French saper from Italian zappare, which may have been ultimately of Arabic origin.

Its original literal sense ‘dig a trench or tunnel underneath in order to attack’ has now been largely superseded by the metaphorical ‘weaken’, which has been heavily influenced by sap ‘plant-juice’ (from the notion of ‘draining sap from a plant’). The colloquial sap ‘fool’ [19] may be short for an earlier sapskull, a compound formed from sap in the now seldom heard sense ‘sapwood’ – hence ‘wooden head’.
sapient: sapient: [15] Like English taste, Latin sapere combined the notions of ‘appreciating flavour’ and ‘fine discrimination’, and hence meant both ‘taste’ and ‘be wise’. In the former sense it has given English savour and savoury, while the latter has fed through into English in its present participial form as sapient. It is also the source of Spanish saber ‘know’, which via a West African pidgin has given English the slang term savvy ‘understand’ [18], and French savoir ‘know’, as in English savoir-faire [19].
=> savour, savoury
sapphire: sapphire: [13] Sapphire can be traced back through Old French safir and Latin sapphīrus to Greek sáppheiros (which seems to have denoted ‘lapis lazuli’, another blue stone), but beyond that its origins are uncertain. It may have been acquired via a Semitic language (Hebrew has sappir), but it has been suggested that its ultimate source could be Sanskrit sanipriya, which stood for a type of dark-coloured precious stone. It meant literally ‘precious to the planet Saturn’, and was a compound of Sani ‘Saturn’ and priya ‘precious’.
Saracen: Saracen: [13] The Saracens were etymologically ‘people of the sunrise’ – hence ‘easterners’. The word comes via Old French Saracin and late Latin saracēnus from Greek Sarakēnós, which was probably adapted from Arabic sharqī ‘eastern’. This was a derivative of sharq ‘sunrise’. Sarsen [17] stones, large isolated boulders found in southern England, were probably named from some fanciful association with Saracens.
sarcasm: sarcasm: [16] A sarcastic remark is etymologically one which involves the ‘rending of flesh’. Greek sárx meant ‘flesh’ (it has given English sarcoma [17] and sarcophagus), and it formed the basis of a verb sarkázein ‘tear the flesh’, hence ‘bite one’s lip, gnash one’s teeth’, and by further extension ‘make a cutting remark’. This gave rise to the late Greek derivative sarkasmós, which passed into English via late Latin sarcasmos and French sarcasme.
=> sarcoma, sarcophagus
sarcophagus: sarcophagus: [17] A sarcophagus is etymologically a ‘flesh-eater’: the word comes via Latin sarcophagus from Greek sarkophágos, a compound formed from sárx ‘flesh’ (source of English sarcasm) and -phágos ‘eating’. This originated as the term for a particular type of limestone that in the ancient world was used for making coffins, since bodies buried in them quickly decomposed. By extension it came to be used for the coffins themselves.
=> sarcasm
sardonic: sardonic: [17] The Greek word for ‘scornful, mocking’ was sardánios, but this came to be changed to sardónios, which literally meant ‘Sardinian’, through association with the Latin term herba Sardonia ‘Sardinian plant’, the name of a sort of plant which when eaten caused facial contortions that resembled a scornful grin. English acquired the word via Latin sardonius and French sardonique. The sardine [15] probably gets its name from Sardinia too.
=> sardine
sarsen: sarsen: see saracen
sash: sash: The sash you wear [16] and the sash that goes in a window [17] are distinct words. The former comes from Arabic shāsh ‘turban’, and that is exactly how English first acquired it: ‘All of them wear on their heads white shashes and turbans, the badge of their religion’, George Sandys, Travels 1615. But the Arabic word also denoted a strip of muslin or other material from which such turbans were constructed, and it is that application that led towards the end of the 17th century to the current sense of the English word.

The altered form sash appeared around the same time. Sash ‘window-frame’ was originally chassis, an early borrowing of French chassis ‘frame’ (it was acquired again in the sense ‘frame of a carriage’ in the 19th century). This evolved to shashes, and in due course came to be regarded as a plural form, so a new singular sash emerged. French chassis itself goes back ultimately to Latin capsa ‘box’, source of English capsule, case, etc.
=> capsule, case, chassis
sassenach: sassenach: [18] Sassenach, the Gaelic name for the English, etymologically means ‘Saxon’. Its ultimate source is probably Saxonēs, the Latin version of Seaxe, which was the Old English term for the Saxon people. The Celts of Scotland took this over as Sasunnoch, the Irish as Sasanach, and the Welsh as Seisnig. The English form of the word appears to have been established by Sir Walter Scott in the early 19th century.
=> saxon
satchel: satchel: [14] A satchel is etymologically a ‘small sack’ or bag. The word comes via Old French sachel from Latin saccellus, a diminutive form of saccus ‘bag’ (source of English sack). Its specific application to a ‘bag for carrying school books’ emerged in the mid 16th century, and is reflected by Shakespeare in Jaques’s ‘Seven ages of man’ speech in As You Like It 1600: ‘And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school’.
=> sachet, sack