- urge
[urge 词源字典] - urge: [16] Urge was borrowed from Latin urgēre ‘push, press, compel’. Its present participle gave English urgent [15], which thus means etymologically ‘pressing’.
=> urgent[urge etymology, urge origin, 英语词源] - urine
- urine: [14] Urine comes via Old French urine from Latin ūrīna, which may be related to Greek oúron ‘urine’ (source of English urea [19], ureter [16], urethra [17], and uric [18]) and Sanskrit varsa- ‘rain’. Urinal [13] comes from the late Latin derivative ūrīnālis.
- us
- us: [OE] Us can be traced back ultimately to Indo- European *ns. This passed into prehistoric Germanic as uns, which has evolved into German uns, Dutch ons, Swedish and Danish os, and English us. Latin nōs ‘we’ (source of French nous) is distantly related.
=> our, we - use
- use: [13] The verb use comes via Old French user from Vulgar Latin *ūsāre. This was derived from ūsus, the past participle of Latin ūtī ‘use’ (source also of English utensil, utility [14], utilize [19], etc). Latin ūsus was also used as a noun, meaning ‘use, usage’, and this has given English the noun use [13] and the derivatives usage [13] (an Old French formation), usual, usurp, and usury. Abuse [14] and peruse [15] (etymologically ‘use up’) go back to the same Latin roots.
=> abuse, peruse, usual, usurp, usury, utensil, utilize - usher
- usher: [14] An usher is etymologically a ‘doorkeeper’. The word comes via Anglo-Norman usser from medieval Latin ūstārius, an alteration of classical Latin ōstārius ‘door-keeper’. This was derived from ōstium ‘door’, which in turn was based on ōs ‘mouth’ (source of English oral). The usher’s job-description gradually broadened out from standing at the door to accompanying visitors inside and showing them to their places, which led in the 16th century to the emergence of the verb usher.
=> oral - usual
- usual: [14] That which is usual is etymologically that which is commonly ‘used’ or employed, or which commonly obtains. The word was acquired, probably via Old French usual, from late Latin ūsuālis, a derivative of Latin ūsus (source of the English noun use).
=> use - usurp
- usurp: [14] Etymologically, to usurp something is probably to ‘seize it for one’s own use’. The word comes via Old French usurper from Latin ūsūrpāre, which may have been formed from the noun ūsus ‘use’ (source of English use) and rapere ‘seize’ (source of English rape, rapture, ravish, etc).
=> rape, rapture, ravish, use - usury
- usury: [14] Usury is etymologically ‘use’ of money lent. The term comes via Anglo-Norman *usurie from medieval Latin ūsūria, an alteration of classical Latin ūsūra ‘use of money lent’, hence ‘interest’. This in turn was derived from ūsus ‘use’, source also of English use and usage.
=> use - utensil
- utensil: [14] Latin ūtēnsilis meant ‘usable, useful’. It was derived from the verb ūtī ‘use’ (source also of English use, utility, utilize, etc). In the Middle Ages it was adapted into a noun, ūtēnsilia, meaning ‘things for use, implements’. This passed into English via Old French utensile as utensil, still a collective noun, but by the 15th century it was being used for an individual ‘implement’.
=> use - uterus
- uterus: [17] Latin uterus ‘belly, womb’ goes back ultimately to an Indo-European *udero- or *wedero-, which also produced Sanskrit udáram ‘belly’, Latvian vēders ‘belly’, and possibly Greek hustérā ‘womb’ (source of English hysteria). It was first used in English by Helkiah Crooke in his Description of the Body of Man 1615.
=> hysteria - utility
- utility: see use
- utopia
- utopia: [16] Utopia means etymologically ‘noplace’. It was coined by the English statesman and scholar Sir Thomas More from Greek ou ‘not’ and tópos ‘place’ (source of English topic). He used it as the name of an imaginary island whose inhabitants had organized their society along the lines of what he regarded as a theoretically ideal commonwealth, which he described in his book Utopia 1516. The word was first used as a more general term for an ‘ideal place’ in the early 17th century.
=> topic - utter
- utter: English has two distinct words utter, but they come from the same ultimate source – out. The older, ‘complete, thorough-going’ [OE] originated as a comparative form of out (or ūt, as it was in the Old English period), and so morphologically is the same word as outer. It did not begin to be used as an intensive adjective until the 15th century. Utter ‘express openly, say’ [14] was borrowed from Middle Dutch ūteren ‘drive out, announce, speak’, a derivative of Old Low German ūt ‘out’.
=> out - uvula
- uvula: [14] The uvula, a small globular mass of tissue suspended from the rear of the roof of the mouth, reminded the Romans of a small grape. They therefore called it uva, which meant literally ‘grape’ (it is not known where this ultimately came from, but it may be distantly related to Russian jagoda ‘berry’). In postclassical times the diminutive form uvula took over in this sense.
- U
- for historical evolution, see V. Used punningly for you by 1588 ["Love's Labour's Lost," V.i.60], not long after the pronunciation shift that made the vowel a homonym of the pronoun. As a simple shorthand (without intentional word-play), it is recorded from 1862. Common in business abbreviations since 1923 (such as U-Haul, attested from 1951).
- U-bahn (n.)
- German or Austrian subway system, 1938 (originally in reference to Berlin), from German U-bahn, short for Untergrund-bahn, literally "underground railway."
- U-boat (n.)
- 1916 (said to have been in use from 1913), partial translation of German U-Boot, short for Unterseeboot, literally "undersea boat."
- U-turn (n.)
- 1934, from U + turn (n.). So called in reference to the shape of the path described.
- U.K.
- abbreviation of United Kingdom, attested from 1883.
- U.N.
- abbreviation of United Nations, attested from 1946.
