- anatomy
[anatomy 词源字典] - anatomy: [14] Etymologically, anatomy means ‘cutting up’ (the Greek noun anatomíā was compounded from the prefix ana- ‘up’ and the base *tom-, which figures in several English surgical terms, such as tonsillectomy [19], as well as in atom and tome), and when it first came into English it meant literally ‘dissection’ as well as ‘science of bodily structure’.
From the 16th century to the early 19th century it was also used for ‘skeleton’, and in this sense it was often misanalysed as an atomy, as if the initial anwere the indefinite article: ‘My bones … will be taken up smooth, and white, and bare as an atomy’, Tobias Smollett, Don Quixote 1755.
=> atom, tome[anatomy etymology, anatomy origin, 英语词源] - quixotic
- quixotic: [18] Quixotic commemorates Don Quixote, the hero of Cervantes’s novel of the same name (published in two parts in 1605 and 1615). He was a slightly dotty Spanish gentleman whose head became turned by tales of chivalric derring-do, which he sought to emulate in real life. His most famous exploit was to charge with his lance at windmills, under the mistaken impression that they were giants.
- Dulcinea
- "sweetheart," 1748, from the name of Don Quixote's mistress in Cervantes' romance, the name a Spanish fem. derivative of Latin dulce "sweet."
- have-not (n.)
- "poor person," 1742, from have + not. Have in the sense of "one who 'has,' one of the wealthier class of persons" is from the same source. Earliest in translation of "Don Quixote:
'There are but two families in the world, as my grandmother used to say; "the Have's and the Have-not's," and she stuck to the former; and now-a-days, master Don Quixote, people are more inclined to feel the pulse of Have than of Know.' ["Don Quixote de la Mancha," transl. Charles Jarvis, London, 1742]
- quixotic (adj.)
- "extravagantly chivalrous," 1791, from Don Quixote, romantic, impractical hero of Cervantes' satirical novel "Don Quixote de la Mancha" (1605; English translation by 1620). His name literally means "thigh," also "a cuisse" (a piece of armor for the thigh), in Modern Spanish quijote, from Latin coxa "hip." Related: Quixotical; quixotically.
- Rosinante (n.)
- Don Quixote's horse, from Spanish Rocinante, from rocin "worn-out horse" + antes "before," "so called in allusion to the circumstance that Don Quixote's charger was formerly a wretched hack" [Klein]. Rocin is cognate with Old French rancin "draft horse, hack," but the word is of unknown origin.
- tilt (v.2)
- "to joust," 1590s, from tilt (n.1). Related: Tilted; tilting. The figurative sense of tilting at windmills is suggested in English by 1798; the image is from Don Quixote, who mistook them for giants.
So saying, and heartily recommending himself to his lady Dulcinea, whom he implored to succour him in this emergency, bracing on his target, and setting his lance in the rest, he put his Rozinante to full speed, and assaulting the nearest windmill, thrust it into one of the sails, which was drove about by the wind with so much fury, that the lance was shivered to pieces, and both knight and steed whirled aloft, and overthrown in very bad plight upon the plain. [Smollett translation, 1755]
