英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

science [science 词源字典]: science: [14] Etymologically, science simply means ‘knowledge’, for it comes via Old French science from Latin scientia, a noun formed from the present participle of the verb scīre ‘know’. It early on passed via ‘knowledge gained by study’ to a ‘particular branch of study’, but its modern connotations of technical, mathematical, or broadly ‘non-arts’ studies did not begin to emerge until the 18th century. The derivative scientist was coined in 1840 by William Whewell: ‘We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist’, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences 1840.
=> conscious[science etymology, science origin, 英语词源]
scintillate: scintillate: see tinsel
scissors: scissors: [14] Scissors are etymologically a ‘cutting’ implement. The word comes via Old French cisoires from cīsōria, the plural of late Latin cīsōrium ‘cutting implement’, which was derived from Latin caedere ‘cut’ (source of English concise, decide, incision, etc). The original form of the word in English was sisoures; the sc- spelling did not come on the scene until the 16th century, presumably through association with Latin scindere ‘cut’ (source of English rescind [17] and scission ‘cutting’ [15], and related to Greek skhízein ‘split’, from which English gets schism and schizophrenia).
=> concise, decide, incision, rescind, schism, schizophrenia
sclerosis: sclerosis: see skeleton
scofflaw: scofflaw: [20] Aside from proprietary names and some scientific terms, it is rare for words that are pure human inventions (rather than naturally evolved forms) to make a permanent place for themselves in the English language, but scofflaw is a case in point. In the US in the early 1920s, in the middle of the Prohibition years, one Delcevare King of Quincy, Massachusetts offered a prize of $200 for a word to denote someone who defied the law and consumed alcohol.

Over 25,000 suggestions were received from America and around the world. In January 1924 King announced his chosen winner: scofflaw, a simple combination of scoff [14] (probably of Scandinavian origin) and law. Two people had submitted it (Henry Irving Dale and Kate L. Butler), and they shared the prize. Whether because or in spite of its homespun transparency, the word caught on, and survives in America to this day, albeit somewhat broadened out in meaning: specific reference to illicit drinkers is no longer in much demand, but it is now used for someone who flouts any law.
scold: scold: [13] Scold was originally a noun, denoting an argumentative or nagging woman – the sort who had a ‘scold’s bridle’ fitted to keep her tongue quiet. It appears to have been borrowed from Old Norse skáld ‘poet’, the semantic link perhaps being the poet’s role of satirizing or poking fun at people (in Icelandic law in former times the term skáldskapr, literally ‘poetry’, denoted ‘libel in verse’). The origins of skáld itself are not known. Scold began to be used as a verb in the 14th century, at first in the sense ‘argue, nag’. The modern transitive use ‘reprove’ is not recorded until the early 18th century.
sconce: sconce: Effectively, English now only has one word sconce in general use, although others have come and gone in the past. That is the noun meaning ‘candlestick’ or ‘wall bracket for a light’ [14]. It originally denoted a ‘lantern’ or ‘covered candlestick’, and came via Old French esconse from medieval Latin absconsa. This was short for laterna absconsa, literally ‘hidden lantern’; absconsa was the feminine past participle of Latin abscondere ‘hide’ (source of English abscond [16]), a compound verb formed from the prefix ab- ‘away’ and condere ‘put, stow’.

It may be that sconce ‘lantern, lamp’ lay behind the now obsolete slang sconce ‘head’ [16], and there are grounds for believing that this in turn inspired the old university slang term sconce ‘penalty of drinking a large amount of beer for a breach of the rules’ [17] (the underlying notion being of a poll tax or ‘head’ tax). A fourth sconce, now altogether defunct, was a military term for a ‘small fort’ [16].

This was borrowed from Dutch schans, which came via Middle High German schanze from Italian scanso ‘defence’. This in turn was a derivative of the verb scansare ‘turn aside, ward off’, which was descended from Vulgar Latin *excampsāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and campsāre ‘turn round, sail by’. A memory of the word survives in English, however, in the derived verb ensconce [16] (etymologically ‘hide behind a fortification’).
=> abscond; ensconce
scone: scone: [16] The word scone first appeared in Scottish English, and does not seem to have made any significant headway south of the border until the 19th century (helped on its way, no doubt, by that great proselytizer of Scottish vocabulary, Sir Walter Scott). It was borrowed from Dutch schoonbrood ‘fine white bread’, a compound formed from schoon ‘beautiful, bright, white’ (first cousin to German schön ‘beautiful’ and related to English sheen and show) and brood ‘bread’.
=> sheen, show
scoop: scoop: [14] Scoop appears to go back ultimately to a prehistoric Germanic base *skap- which originally denoted ‘chop or dig out’ (it was later extended metaphorically to ‘form’, and in that sense has given English shape). It had a variant form *skōp-, amongst whose derivatives was West Germanic *skōpō. This evolved into Middle Dutch and Middle Low German schōpe, which was used for the bucket of a dredge, water-wheel, etc, and English borrowed it early in the 14th century. The journalistic sense ‘story’ reported in advance of competitors’ emerged in the USA in the 1870s.
=> shape
scope: scope: [16] Greek skopós meant ‘target’. As it passed via Italian scopo into English it evolved metaphorically to ‘aim kept in view, goal, purpose’ (‘the seventh Council of Carthage and the Milevitane Council, which both tend to one end and scope, that there should be no appellations made out of Africa’, Nicholas Harpsfield, The Pretended Divorce between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon 1555), but the further step to ‘range’ seems to be an English development.

The Greek word came from the base *skop- ‘look, observe’, which also produced -skopos ‘looking’ (ultimate source of English bishop, which etymologically denotes ‘overseer’) and -skópion ‘instrument for observing’ (which lies behind English microscope, telescope, etc). Sceptic comes from a variant of the same base.
=> bishop, sceptic
score: score: [11] The etymological notion underlying score is of ‘cutting’ – for it is related to English shear. It was borrowed from Old Norse skor, which went back to the same prehistoric Germanic base – *skur-, *sker- ‘cut’ – that produced shear (not to mention share, shore, and short). It had a range of meanings, from ‘notch’ to ‘record kept by cutting notches’, but it was specifically the ‘number twenty’ (presumably originally ‘twenty recorded by cutting notches’) that English at first took over.

The other senses followed, perhaps as a result of reborrowing, in the 14th century, but the main modern meaning, ‘number of points made in a game’ (originally as recorded by cutting notches), is a purely English development of the 18th century. Roughly contemporary is ‘written music’, which is said to come from the linking together of related staves with a single common bar line or ‘score’ (in the sense ‘mark’).

The verb score ‘mark with lines’ was borrowed in the 14th century from Old Norse skora.
=> share, shear, shirt, short, skirt
scorn: scorn: [12] Scorn reached English via Old French, but it is ultimately of Germanic origin. Its immediate source was Old French escharnir, a descendant of Vulgar Latin *escarnīre. This had been borrowed from a prehistoric Germanic *skarnjan ‘mock, deride, make fun of’. A product of the same base was Middle High German scherz ‘joke, jest’, which was borrowed into Italian as scherzo and subsequently made its way into English as the musical term scherzo ‘lively passage’ [19].
=> scherzo
scot-free: scot-free: see shot
scour: scour: [13] The notion of ‘cleaning’ implicit in scour evolved from an earlier ‘take care of’. For the word goes back ultimately to Latin cūrāre (source of English cure), which originally meant ‘take care of’, and only in medieval times came to mean ‘clean’. Combination with the prefix ex- ‘out’ produced excūrāre ‘clean out’, which reached English via Old French escurer and Middle Dutch scūren. Scour ‘search thoroughly’ [14] (as in ‘scour the countryside’) is a different word, and may come from Old Norse skýra ‘rush in’.
=> cure
scourge: scourge: [13] Scourge comes ultimately from a Latin word for a ‘long strip of leather’, corrigio, which itself was borrowed from Celtic. It had a number of specific applications, including ‘shoelace’, ‘rein’, and ‘whip’, and it was the last that formed the basis of the Vulgar Latin verb *excorrigiāre ‘whip’, which passed into English via Old French escorgier and its derived noun escorge.
scout: scout: [14] Etymologically, a scout is someone who ‘listens’. For the word goes back ultimately to Latin auscultāre ‘listen’, a derivative of the same base that produced Latin auris ‘ear’ (source of English aural [19] and distantly related to English ear). This passed into Old French as escouter ‘listen’ (its modern descendant is écouter), which English adopted as the verb scout, meaning ‘look about, spy’. The noun, from the French derivative escoute, followed in the 15th century.
=> aural, ear
scrape: scrape: [14] Scrape is certainly of Germanic origin, but it is not clear whether it was borrowed from Old Norse skrapa (ancestor of Swedish skrapa and Danish skrabe) or Middle Dutch schrapen. Either way it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base *skrap-, source also of Old English scrapian ‘scratch’, which survived into the 16th century as shrape. Scrap ‘small piece’ [14] was borrowed from Old Norse skrap ‘remnants, trifles’, a derivative of the same base as skrapa; and scrap ‘fight’ [17] may have originated as a variant of scrap.
=> scrap
scratch: scratch: [15] Early Middle English had two words for ‘scratch’ – scrat and cratch; and it seems likely that scratch represents a blend of them. Where exactly they came from is not clear, although cratch is no doubt related to German kratzen ‘scratch’, and both probably had their origins in imitation of the sound of scratching.
screen: screen: [15] Screen goes back ultimately to a Frankish *skrank ‘barrier’, a distant ancestor of German schrank ‘cupboard’. This was taken over into Old Northern French as escran, and it was a variant form of this, escren, that became English screen.
screw: screw: [15] Screw comes ultimately from a Latin word meaning ‘female pig’ – scrōfa (source also of English scrofula [14], a disease to which pigs were once thought to be particularly prone). By the medieval period scrōfa was being used for a ‘screw’, mainly no doubt in allusion to the pig’s curly, corkscrew-like tail, but also perhaps partly prompted by the resemblance to Latin scrobis ‘ditch, trench’, hence ‘cunt’, which was used in Vulgar Latin for the ‘groove in a screw-head’ (the use of the verb screw for ‘copulate’, first recorded in the early 18th century, is purely coincidental).

English got the word from Old French escroue, which came either directly from Latin scrōfa or via prehistoric West Germanic *scrūva (source of German schraube ‘screw’).
=> scrofula