- haggis
[haggis 词源字典] - haggis: [15] Improbable as it may seem, the leading candidate for the source of the word haggis is Old French agace ‘magpie’. Corroborative evidence for this, circumstantial but powerful, is the word pie, which also originally meant ‘magpie’ (modern English magpie comes from it) but was apparently applied to a ‘baked pastry case with a filling’ from the notion that the collection of edible odds and ends a pie contained was similar to the collection of trinkets assembled by the acquisitive magpie.
On this view, the miscellaneous assortment of sheep’s entrails and other ingredients in a haggis represents the magpie’s hoard. An alternative possibility, however, is that the word comes from the northern Middle English verb haggen ‘chop’, a borrowing from Old Norse related ultimately to English hew.
[haggis etymology, haggis origin, 英语词源] - rabbit
- rabbit: [14] Rabbit was probably introduced into English from Old French. No immediate source is known to have existed, but we do have corroborative evidence in French dialect rabotte ‘young rabbit’ and Walloon robète. The latter was a diminutive derivative of Flemish robbe (Walloon is the form of French spoken in Flanders and Belgium), and it seems likely that the word’s ultimate origins are Low German. At first it was used only for ‘young rabbit’ in English, and it did not really begin to take over from cony as the general term for the animal until the 18th century.
- corroborate (v.)
- 1530s, "to give (legal) confirmation to," from Latin corroboratus, past participle of corroborare "to strengthen, invigorate," from com- "together" or "thoroughly" (see com-) + roborare "to make strong," from robur, robus "strength," (see robust).
Meaning "to strengthen by evidence, to confirm" is from 1706. Sometimes in early use the word also has its literal Latin sense, especially of medicines. Related: Corroborated; corroborating; corroborative.
