英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

admiral [admiral 词源字典]: admiral: [13] Admirals originally had nothing specifically to do with the sea. The word comes ultimately from Arabic ’amīr ‘commander’ (from which English later also acquired emir [17]). This entered into various titles followed by the particle -al- ‘of’ (’amīr-al-bahr ‘commander of the sea’, ’amīr-al-mūminīn ‘commander of the faithful’), and when it was borrowed into European languages, ’amīr-al- became misconstrued as an independent, free-standing word.

Moreover, the Romans, when they adopted it, smuggled in their own Latin prefix ad-, producing admiral. When this reached English (via Old French) it still meant simply ‘commander’, and it was not until the time of Edward III that a strong naval link began to emerge. The Arabic title ’amīr-al-bahr had had considerable linguistic influence in the wake of Arabic conquests around the Mediterranean seaboard (Spanish almirante de la mar, for instance), and specific application of the term to a naval commander spread via Spain, Italy, and France to England.

Thus in the 15th century England had its Admiral of the Sea or Admiral of the Navy, who was in charge of the national fleet. By 1500 the maritime connection was firmly established, and admiral came to be used on its own for ‘supreme naval commander’.
=> emir[admiral etymology, admiral origin, 英语词源]
advance: advance: [13] Advance originated in the Latin adverb abante ‘before’ (source of, among others, French avant and Italian avanti), which in turn was based on ab ‘from’ and ante ‘before’. In post-classical times a verb, *abantiāre, seems to have been formed from the adverb. It developed into Old French avancer, and passed into English as avaunce, initially with the meaning ‘promote’.

A new form, advancer, started life in Old French, on the mistaken association of avancer with other av- words, such as aventure, which really did derive from Latin words with the ad- prefix; over the 15th and 16th centuries this gradually established itself in English. The noun advance did not appear until the 17th century.
advantage: advantage: [14] Advantage comes from Old French avantage, which was based on avant ‘before’; the notion behind its formation was of being ahead of others, and hence in a superior position. As with advance, the intrusive -dbecame established in the 16th century, on the analogy of words genuinely containing the Latin prefix ad-. The reduced form vantage actually predates advantage in English, having entered the language via Anglo-Norman in the 13th century.
affair: affair: [13] Like ado, and of course to-do, affair originally meant literally ‘to do’. It was coined in Old French from the phrase à faire ‘to do’, and entered English via Anglo-Norman afere. The spelling affair was established by Caxton, who based it on the French model. The specific sense of a ‘love affair’ dates from the early 18th century.
=> fact
aggravate: aggravate: [16] Aggravate originally meant literally ‘to weigh down’ or ‘to make heavier’ (it was modelled on Latin aggravare ‘to make heavier’, which in turn was based on gravis ‘heavy’, source of English gravity and grief; its first cousin is aggrieve [13], which came via Old French agrever). From the first it was generally used in a metaphorical sense, and by the end of the 16th century the meaning ‘to make worse’ was well established. The sense ‘to annoy’, which some purists still object to, dates from at least the early 17th century.
=> grave, gravity, grief
aghast: aghast: [13] Aghast was originally the past participle of a verb, agasten ‘frighten’, which in turn was based on the Old English verb gǣstan ‘torment’. The spelling with gh did not finally become established until the 18th century, and in fact aghast was the last in a series of etymologically related words in the general semantic area of ‘fear’ and ‘horror’ to undergo this transformation. It seems to have acquired its gh by association with ghastly, which in turn got it from ghost (probably under the ultimate influence of Flemish gheest).
algebra: algebra: [16] Algebra symbolizes the debt of Western culture to Arab mathematics, but ironically when it first entered the English language it was used as a term for the setting of broken bones, and even sometimes for the fractures themselves (‘The helpes of Algebra and of dislocations’, Robert Copland, Formulary of Guydo in surgery 1541). This reflects the original literal meaning of the Arabic term al jebr, ‘the reuniting of broken parts’, from the verb jabara ‘reunite’.

The anatomical connotations of this were adopted when the word was borrowed, as algebra, into Spanish, Italian, and medieval Latin, from one or other of which English acquired it. In Arabic, however, it had long been applied to the solving of algebraic equations (the full Arabic expression was ’ilm aljebr wa’lmuqābalah ‘the science of reunion and equation’, and the mathematician al- Khwarizmi used aljebr as the title of his treatise on algebra – see ALGORITHM), and by the end of the 16th century this was firmly established as the central meaning of algebra in English.
algorithm: algorithm: [13] Algorithm comes from the name of an Arab mathematician, in full Abu Ja far Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–c. 850), who lived and taught in Baghdad and whose works in translation introduced Arabic numerals to the West. The last part of his name means literally ‘man from Khwarizm’, a town on the borders of Turkmenistan, now called Khiva. The Arabic system of numeration and calculation, based on 10, of which he was the chief exponent, became known in Arabic by his name – al-khwarizmi.

This was borrowed into medieval Latin as algorismus (with the Arabic -izmi transformed into the Latin suffix -ismus ‘-ism’). In Old French algorismus became augorime, which was the basis of the earliest English form of the word, augrim. From the 14th century onwards, Latin influence gradually led to the adoption of the spelling algorism in English.

This remains the standard form of the word when referring to the Arabic number system; but in the late 17th century an alternative version, algorithm, arose owing to association with Greek árithmos ‘number’ (source of arithmetic [13]), and this became established from the 1930s onwards as the term for a stepby- step mathematical procedure, as used in computing. Algol, the name of a computer programming language, was coined in the late 1950s from ‘algorithmic language’.
=> allegory, allergy, arithmetic
along: along: [OE] The a- in along is related to the prefix anti-, and the original notion contained in the word is of ‘extending a long way in the opposite direction’. This was the force of Old English andlang, a compound formed from and- ‘against, facing’ (whose original source was Greek anti- ‘against’) and lang ‘long’. The meaning gradually changed via simply ‘extending a long way’, through ‘continuous’ and ‘the whole length of something’ to ‘lengthwise’.

At the same time the and- prefix was gradually losing its identity: by the 10th century the forms anlong and onlong were becoming established, and the 14th century saw the beginnings of modern English along. But there is another along entirely, nowadays dialectal. Used in the phrase along of ‘with’ (as in ‘Come along o’me!’), it derives from Old English gelong ‘pertaining, dependent’.

This was a compound formed from the prefix ge-, suggesting suitability, and long, of which the notions of ‘pertaining’ and ‘appropriateness’ are preserved in modern English belong.
=> long
altar: altar: [OE] The etymological notion underlying the word altar is that of sacrificial burning. Latin altar, which was borrowed directly into Old English, was a derivative of the plural noun altāria, ‘burnt offerings’, which probably came from the verb adolēre ‘burn up’. Adolēre in turn appears to be a derivative of olēre ‘smell’ (the connection being the smell made by combustion), which is related to English odour, olfactory, and redolent. (The traditional view that altar derives from Latin altus ‘high’ is no longer generally accepted, although no doubt it played a part, by association, in its development.) In Middle English, the Old French form auter replaced altar, but in the 16th century the Latin form re-established itself.
=> odour, olfactory, redolent
amok: amok: [17] Amok is Malayan in origin, where it is an adjective, amoq, meaning ‘fighting frenziedly’. Its first brief brush with English actually came in the early 16th century, via Portuguese, which had adopted it as a noun, amouco, signifying a ‘homicidally crazed Malay’. This sense persisted until the late 18th century, but by then the phrase run amok, with all its modern connotations, was well established, and has since taken over the field entirely. The spelling amuck has always been fairly common, reflecting the word’s pronunciation.
anthem: anthem: [OE] Anthem is ultimately an alteration of antiphon ‘scriptural verse said or sung as a response’ (which was independently reborrowed into English from ecclesiastical Latin in the 15th century). It comes from Greek antíphōnos ‘responsive’, a compound formed from anti- ‘against’ and phōné ‘sound’ (source of English phonetic, telephone, etc).

By the time it had become established in Old English, antiphon had already developed to antefn, and gradually the /v/ sound of the f became assimilated to the following n, producing antemne and eventually antem. The spelling with th begins to appear in the 15th century, perhaps influenced by Old French anthaine; it gradually altered the pronunciation.

The meaning ‘antiphon’ died out in the 18th century, having been succeeded by ‘piece of choral church music’ and more generally ‘song of praise’. The specific application to a ‘national song’ began in the 19th century.
=> antiphon, phonetic, telephone
antique: antique: [16] Originally, in Latin, antique was an adjectivized version of the adverb and preposition ‘before’: to ante ‘before’ was added the adjective suffix -īcus, to produce the adjective antīquus (somewhat later an exactly parallel formation, using the suffix -ānus rather than -īcus, produced the adjective which became English ancient).

English acquired the word either via French antique or directly from Latin. To begin with, and until relatively recently, it meant simply ‘ancient’, or specifically ‘of the ancient world’; it was only towards the end of the 18th century that the modern sense ‘made long ago and therefore collectable’ began to become established. In Italian, antico (from Latin antīquus) was often applied to grotesque carvings found in ancient remains.

It was borrowed into English in the 16th century as an adjective, antic, meaning ‘bizarre’, but also as a noun, usually used in the plural, in the sense ‘absurd behaviour’.
=> ancient, antic
apparel: apparel: [13] Apparel has the same source as apparatus, and originally it had the same meaning, too: until as late as the start of the 18th century, it was used for ‘equipment needed for performing a particular function’. But the sense ‘clothing’ is of equal antiquity in English, and by the 16th century it had become established as the central meaning of the word. Its immediate source was Old French apareil (modern French appareil means chiefly ‘apparatus’), which came from a hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb *appariculāre, an irregular formation based on Latin apparāre ‘make ready’ (see APPARATUS).
=> parent, prepare
appoint: appoint: [14] Appoint came from the Old French verb apointier ‘arrange’, which was based on the phrase a point, literally ‘to a point’. Hints of the original meaning can still be found in some of the verb’s early uses in English, in the sense ‘settle a matter decisively’, but its main modern meanings, ‘fix by prior arrangement’ and ‘select for a post’, had become established by the mid 15th century.
=> point
appraise: appraise: [15] Originally, appraise meant simply ‘fix the price of’. It came from the Old French verb aprisier ‘value’, which is ultimately a parallel formation with appreciate; it is not clear whether it came directly from late Latin appretiāre, or whether it was a newly formed compound in Old French, based on pris ‘price’. Its earliest spellings in English were thus apprize and apprise, and these continued in use down to the 19th century, with the more metaphorical meaning ‘estimate the worth of’ gradually coming to the fore.

From the 16th century onwards, however, it seems that association with the word praise (which is quite closely related etymologically) has been at work, and by the 19th century the form appraise was firmly established. Apprise ‘inform’, with which appraise is often confused (and which appears superficially to be far closer to the source pris or pretium ‘price’), in fact has no etymological connection with it.

It comes from appris, the past participle of French apprendre ‘teach’ (closely related to English apprehend).
=> appreciate, price
approve: approve: [14] The Latin source of approve, approbāre, was a derivative of probāre, source of English prove. Probāre originally meant ‘test something to find if it is good’ (it was based on Latin probus ‘good’) and this became extended to ‘show something to be good or valid’. It was this sense that was taken up by approbāre and carried further to ‘assent to as good’. When English acquired the word, via Old French aprover, it still carried the notion of ‘demonstrating’, but this was gradually taken over exclusively by prove, and the senses ‘sanction’ and ‘commend’, present since the beginning, established their primacy.
=> probity, prove
aquarium: aquarium: [19] Aquarium is a modern adaptation of the neuter form of the Latin adjective aquārius ‘watery’ (a noun aquārium existed in Roman times, but it meant ‘place where cattle drink’). Its model was vivarium, a 16th-century word for a ‘place for keeping live animals’. This was the term first pressed into service to describe such a place used for displaying fish and other aquatic life: in 1853 the magazine Athenaeum reported that ‘the new Fish house at the London Zoo has received the somewhat curious title of the “Marine Vivarium”’; and in the following year the guidebook to the Zoological Gardens called it the ‘Aquatic Vivarium’.

Within a year or two of this, however, the term aquarium had been coined and apparently established.
around: around: [14] Around was formed in Middle English from the prefix a- ‘on’ and the noun round (perhaps influenced by the Old French phrase a la reonde ‘in the round, roundabout’). It was slow to usurp existing forms such as about – it does not occur in Shakespeare or the 1611 translation of the Bible – and it does not seem to have become strongly established before the end of the 17th century. The adverb and preposition round may be a shortening of around.
=> round
askance: askance: [16] The origins of askance remain obscure. When it first entered the language it meant literally ‘obliquely, sideways’ (‘He bid his angels turn askance the poles of Earth’, John Milton, Paradise Lost 1667), so a possible source is Italian a scancio ‘obliquely, slantingly’, but this has never been firmly established. Its metaphorical use in the phrase look askance dates from the 17th century.
astronomy: astronomy: [13] Astronomy comes via Old French and Latin from Greek astronomíā, a derivative of the verb astronomein, literally ‘watch the stars’. Greek ástron and astér ‘star’ (whence English astral [17] and asterisk [17]) came ultimately from the Indo-European base *ster-, which also produced Latin stella ‘star’, German stern ‘star’, and English star.

The second element of the compound, which came from the verb némein, meant originally ‘arrange, distribute’. At first, no distinction was made between astronomy and astrology. Indeed, in Latin astrologia was the standard term for the study of the stars until Seneca introduced the Greek term astronomia. When the two terms first coexisted in English (astrology entered the language about a century later than astronomy) they were used interchangeably, and in fact when a distinction first began to be recognized between the two it was the opposite of that now accepted: astrology meant simply ‘observation’, whereas astronomy signified ‘divination’.

The current assignment of sense was not fully established until the 17th century.
=> asterisk, astral, star
axle: axle: [17] The word axle emerges surprisingly late considering the antiquity of axles, but related terms had existed in the language for perhaps a thousand years. Old English had eax, which came from a hypothetical Germanic *akhsō, related to Latin axis. This survived in the compound ax-tree until the 17th century (later in Scotland); tree in this context meant ‘beam’.

But from the early 14th century the native ax-tree began to be ousted by Old Norse öxultré (or as it became in English axle-tree); the element öxull came from a prehistoric Germanic *akhsulaz, a derivative of *akhsō. Axle first appeared on its own in the last decade of the 16th century (meaning ‘axis’, a sense it has since lost), and became firmly established in the early 17th century.
balk: balk: [OE] There are two separate strands of meaning in balk, or baulk, as it is also spelled. When it first entered English in the 9th century, from Old Norse bálkr, it meant a ‘ridge of land, especially one between ploughed furrows’, from which the modern sense ‘stumbling block, obstruction’ developed. It is not until about 1300 that the meaning ‘beam of timber’ appears in English, although it was an established sense of the Old Norse word’s Germanic ancestor *balkon (source also of English balcony).

The common element of meaning in these two strands is something like ‘bar’, which may have been present in the word’s ultimate Indo- European base *bhalg- (possible source of Greek phálagx ‘log, phalanx’).
=> balcony, phalanx
bantam: bantam: [18] When these diminutive chickens were first imported into Europe in the middle of the 18th century, it was thought that they had originated in a village called Bantam in Java, now in Indonesia, and they were named accordingly. This version of their history has never been firmly established, but the name stuck. Bantamweight as a category of boxing weights dates from the 1880s.
bask: bask: [14] When English first acquired this word, probably from Old Norse bathask, it was in the sense ‘wallow in blood’: ‘seeing his brother basking in his blood’, John Lydgate, Chronicles of Troy 1430. It was not until the 17th century that the modern sense ‘lie in pleasant warmth’ became established: ‘a fool, who laid him down, and basked him in the sun’, Shakespeare, As You Like It 1600. The word retains connotations of its earliest literal sense ‘bathe’ – Old Norse bathask was the reflexive form of batha ‘bathe’.
=> bathe
blank: blank: [15] Although English got blank from French blanc ‘white’, its ultimate source is Germanic. Forms such as Old High German blanc ‘white’ suggest a prehistoric Germanic *blangkaz, which could have been borrowed into Romanic, the undifferentiated precursor of the Romance languages, as *blancus – hence French blanc, Italian bianco, Spanish blanco, and Portuguese branco.

The word originally meant simply ‘white’ in English, but this sense had all but died out by the early 18th century, by which time the present-day ‘unmarked’ was well established. Other derivatives of French blanc include the verb blanch [14], from French blanchier, and blanket [13], from Old French blancquet. Blanco is a trade name (based on blanc) coined in the 1890s for a whitening preparation for military webbing (subsequently applied to the khakicoloured version as well).
=> blanch, blanket
blaze: blaze: There are three distinct words blaze in English. The commonest, meaning ‘fire, flame’ [OE], comes from a prehistoric Germanic *blasōn. Its original signification was ‘torch’ (in the sense, of course, of a burning piece of wood or bunch of sticks), but by the year 1000 the main current meaning was established. The precise source of blaze ‘light-coloured mark or spot’ [17] is not known for certain, but there are several cognate forms in other Germanic languages, including Old Norse blesi and German blässe; perhaps the likeliest candidate as far as blaze is concerned is Middle Low German bles.

The verbal usage, as in ‘blaze a trail’ (that is, by making conspicuous marks on trees) originated in the mid 18th century. The related German adjective blass ‘pale’, which originally meant ‘shining’, points up the fact that ultimately these two words blaze are related, the primeval sense ‘shining’ having diverged on the one hand through ‘pale’, on the other through ‘glowing, burning’.

The third blaze, ‘proclaim’ [14], as in ‘blaze abroad’, is now seldom encountered. It originally meant ‘blow a trumpet’, and comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhlā- (source of blow). Its immediate source in English was Middle Dutch blāsen. Despite its formal and semantic similarity, it does not appear to have any connection with blazon [13], which comes from Old French blason ‘shield’, a word of unknown origin.

A blazer [19] got its name from being a brightly coloured jacket (from blaze meaning ‘fire, flame’). It originated among English university students in the late 19th century. According to a correspondent in the Daily News 22 August 1889, the word was originally applied specifically to the red jackets worn by members of the ‘Lady Margaret, St John’s College, Cambridge, Boat Club’.

But by the 1880s its more general application had become widely established: in the Durham University Journal of 21 February 1885 we read that ‘the latest novelty … for the river is flannels, a blazer, and spats’.
=> blow
block: block: [14] English borrowed block from Old French bloc, but its ultimate origin appears to be Germanic; French acquired it from Middle Dutch blok ‘tree trunk’. The derived verb block ‘impede’ first crops up in the early 15th century, but was not established until the later 16th century; it originally meant ‘put blocks [of wood] or obstacles in the way of’. Blockade was coined in the 17th century, perhaps on the model of ambuscade, a contemporary synonym of ambush.
=> blockade
blush: blush: [OE] Modern English blush is a descendant of Old English blyscan ‘turn red, blush’, which was related to and perhaps derived from Old English blysa ‘firebrand, torch’. Similarities of form and meaning make it tempting to compare blaze, which meant ‘torch’ in Old English and came from a prehistoric Germanic *blasōn, but no connection has ever been established. Middle Dutch blosen ‘glow’ may be an intermediate form.
born: born: [OE] The Old English past participle of the verb meaning ‘bear’ was boren. By Middle English times this had become contracted to born(e), but no distinction in meaning was made on the basis of spelling. This did not come about until around 1600, since when born has become established as the obstetric orthography, while borne remains the straightforward past participle of bear ‘carry’.
=> bear
botulism: botulism: [19] The fact that Latin botulus was used metaphorically for ‘intestine’ is in this case just a red herring; its principal meaning was ‘sausage’, and it was the discovery of the foodpoisoning germ in cooked meats, such assausages, which led to the term botulism. Early work on unmasking the bacterium responsible (now known as Clostridium botulinum) was done in Germany, and at first the German form of the word, botulismus, was used in English, but by the late 1880s we find the naturalized botulism fairly well established.
bower: bower: [OE] A bower was originally simply a place where one lived; the modern connotation of a ‘secluded arbour’ did not become fully established until the 16th century. Old English būr came from West and North Germanic *būraz or *būram, a derivative of the prolific base *bü- ‘dwell’, which also produced be, boor, booth, bound ‘intending to go’, build, burly, byelaw, byre, and the -bour of neighbour.
=> be, boor, booth, build, burly, byre, neighbour
burly: burly: [13] Burly has come down in the world over the centuries. Originally it meant ‘excellent, noble, stately’, and it appears to come from an unrecorded Old English adjective *būrlic, literally ‘bowerly’ – that is, ‘fit to frequent a lady’s apartment’. Gradually, connotations of ‘stoutness’ and ‘sturdiness’ began to take over, and by the 15th century the modern ‘heavily built’ had become well established.
=> boor, booth, bower
caviare: caviare: [16] Caviare is of Turkish origin; it comes from Turkish khāvyār. It spread from there to a number of European languages, including Italian caviale and French caviar, many of which contributed to the rather confusing diversity of forms in 16th-, 17th-, and early 18th-century English: cavialy, cavery, caveer, gaveare, etc. By the mid-18th century caviare or caviar had become the established spellings. Ironically, although caviare is quintessentially a Russian delicacy, Russian does not have the word caviare; it uses ikrá.
coarse: coarse: [14] For such an everyday word, the origins of coarse are surprisingly clouded. It first appears in the forms corse or course, and meaning ‘ordinary, everyday’, which has led to speculation that it is an application of the noun course, in the sense ‘the ordinary run of things, the usual practice’; however, not all etymologists accept this. The modern spelling coarse became established in the 18th century.
command: command: [13] Ultimately, command and commend are the same word. Both come from Latin compound verbs formed from the intensive prefix com- and the verb mandāre ‘entrust, commit to someone’s charge’ (from which we get mandate). In the classical period this combination produced commendāre ‘commit to someone’s charge, commend, recommend’, which passed into English in the 14th century (recommend, a medieval formation, was acquired by English from medieval Latin in the 14th century).

Later on, the compounding process was repeated, giving late Latin commandāre. By this time, mandāre had come to mean ‘order’ as well as ‘entrust’ (a change reflected in English mandatory). Commandāre inherited both these senses, and they coexisted through Old French comander and Anglo- Norman comaunder into Middle English commande.

But ‘entrust’ was gradually taken over from the 14th century by commend, and by the end of the 15th century command meant simply ‘order’. Commandeer and commando are both of Afrikaans origin, and became established in English at the end of the 19th century largely as a result of the Boer War. Commodore [17] is probably a modification of Dutch komandeur, from French commandeur ‘commander’.
=> commend, commodore, demand, mandatory, recommend, remand
conker: conker: [19] A conker was originally a ‘snail shell’. Small boys tied them on to pieces of string and played a game involving trying to break their opponent’s shell (another method of playing was simply to press two shells together and see which one broke). The first record of the use of horse chestnuts instead of snail shells is from the 1880s, but in the succeeding century this has established itself as the word’s sole application.

It is not entirely clear where it originally came from. The connection with molluscs has inevitably suggested a derivation from conch (itself ultimately from Greek kónkhē), but early 19th-century spellings of the game as conquering, and of conker as conqueror, point to a simpler explanation, that the stronger snail shell defeated, or ‘conquered’, the weaker.
convalesce: convalesce: [15] Latin valēre meant ‘be strong or healthy’ (from it English gets valiant, valid, valour, and value). Derived from it was valēscere ‘grow strong’, which, with the addition of the intensive prefix com- produced convalēscere, source of English convalesce. It was quite a commonly used word in Scottish English from earliest times, but does not seem to have established itself south of the border until the 19th century.
=> valiant, valid, valour, value
corpse: corpse: [14] Latin corpus ‘body’ has two direct descendants in English: corpse, which came via Old French cors, and corps [18], which came via modern French corps. The former first entered English in the 13th century as cors, and during the 14th century it had its original Latin p reinserted. At first it meant simply ‘body’, but by the end of the 14th century the current sense ‘dead body’ was becoming firmly established.

The idea originally underlying corps, on the other hand, was of a small ‘body’ of troops. Other English derivatives of corpus include corporal, corporate [15], from the past participle of Latin corporāre ‘make into a body’, corpulent [14], two diminutives corpuscle [17] and corset [14], and corsage [15]. Corpus itself was acquired in the 14th century.
=> corporal, corporate, corpulent, corset
count: count: There are two distinct words count in English. Count ‘enumerate’ [14] comes ultimately from Latin computāre ‘calculate’ (source of English compute). It came into English from Old French conter, which had, via the notion of ‘adding up and rendering an account’, developed the sense ‘tell a story’ (preserved in English in the derivatives account and recount).

The derivative counter [14] began life as medieval Latin computātōrium ‘place of accounts’, and entered English via Anglo- Norman counteour. Its modern sense ‘surface for transactions in a shop’ does not seem to have become firmly established until the early 19th century, although it was applied to similar objects in banks from the late 17th century. The noble title count [16] comes via Old French conte from Latin comes, which originally meant ‘companion, attendant’ (it was a compound noun, formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and īre ‘go’, and so its underlying etymological meaning is ‘one who goes with another’).

In the Roman empire it was used for the governor of a province, and in Anglo- Norman it was used to translate English earl. It has never been used as an English title, but the feminine form countess was adopted for the wife of an earl in the 12th century (and viscount was borrowed from Anglo-Norman viscounte in the 14th century). The Latin derivative comitātus was originally a collective noun denoting a ‘group of companions’, but with the development of meaning in comes it came to mean first ‘office of a governor’ and latterly ‘area controlled by a governor’.

In England, this area was the ‘shire’, and so county [14], acquired via Anglo-Norman counte, came to be a synonym for ‘shire’. Another descendant of Latin comes is concomitant [17], from the present participle of late Latin concomitārī.
=> account, compute, putative, recount; concomitant, county
deer: deer: [OE] In Old English, dēor meant ‘animal’ in general, as opposed to ‘human being’ (as its modern Germanic relatives, German tier, Dutch dier, and Swedish djur, still do). Apparently connected forms in some other Indo-European languages, such as Lithuanian dusti ‘gasp’ and Church Slavonic dychati ‘breathe’, suggest that it comes via a prehistoric Germanic *deuzom from Indo-European *dheusóm, which meant ‘creature that breathes’ (English animal and Sanskrit prānin- ‘living creature’ have similar semantic origins).

Traces of specialization in meaning to ‘deer’ occur as early as the 9th century (although the main Old English word for ‘deer’ was heorot, source of modern English hart), and during the Middle English period it became firmly established, driving out ‘animal’ by the 15th century.
defend: defend: [13] Defend comes via Old French defendre from Latin dēfendere ‘ward off’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘off, away’ and an element that survives elsewhere only in other compound forms (represented in English by offend). It has been suggested that this is related to Sanskrit han- ‘strike’ and Old English gūth ‘battle’, and that it can be traced ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European *gwendh-.

Defend had not long become established in English when it produced the offspring fend, dispensing with the first syllable. This in turn formed the basis of the derivatives fender [15] and forfend [14]. Fence likewise comes from defence.
=> fence, fend
despot: despot: [16] The ultimate source of despot is Greek despótēs ‘lord’. It is related to Sanskrit dampati ‘master of the house’, and both probably go back to an Indo-European compound formed from *domo- ‘house’ (source of Latin domus ‘house’, and hence of English domestic) and another element related to Latin potis ‘able’ and English power. (Latin dominus ‘lord’, a derivative of domus ‘house’ and originally meaning ‘master of the house’, is a semantically parallel formation.) Greek despótēs was used for ‘lord, master’ or ‘ruler’ in various contexts, with no particular pejorative connotation (in modern Greek it means ‘bishop’).

But most rulers in ancient times enjoyed absolute power, and so eventually the word (which entered English via medieval Latin despota and early modern French despot) came to mean ‘tyrannical ruler’; this sense became firmly established at the time of the French Revolution.
=> domestic, dominion
destiny: destiny: [14] Etymologically, one’s destiny is that which has been firmly established or determined for one (as if by fate). The word comes from destinee, the Old French descendant of Latin dēstinātus. This was the past participle of dēstināre ‘make firm, establish’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dē- and *stanāre ‘fix’ (source also of English obstinate). This in turn was a derivative of stare ‘stand’, a relative of English stand. The Latin verb also gave English destine [14] and hence destination [15], whose current use comes from an earlier place of destination ‘place for which one is bound’.
=> destination, obstinate, stand
diphtheria: diphtheria: [19] The disease diphtheria is characterized by the formation of a false membrane in the throat which obstructs breathing, and when the French physician Pierre Bretonneau described it in the 1820s, he coined a name for it based on Greek diphthéra, which means ‘piece of leather’. Using the suffix -itis, denoting inflammation, he formed the modern Latin term diphtheritis (used in English until the 1850s) and its French equivalent diphthérit.

He subsequently substituted diphthérie, and this was borrowed into and established in English in the late 1850s when an epidemic of the disease (then also termed Boulogne sore throat, from its first having been observed in Boulogne) struck Britain.
discreet: discreet: [14] Discreet and discrete [14] are ultimately the same word. Both come from Latin discrētus, the past participle of discernere ‘distinguish’ (source of English discern). Discrete was borrowed direct from Latin, and retains its original meaning more closely: ‘distinct, separate’. The Latin abstract noun formed from the past participle, discrētiō (source of English discretion [14]), developed the sense ‘power to make distinctions’.

This fed back into the adjective, giving it the meaning ‘showing good judgment’, the semantic guise in which English acquired it from Old French discret. This was usually spelled discrete too until the 16th century, when discreet (based on the -ee- spelling commonly used in words like sweet and feet which rhymed with discrete) became the established form for the more widely used sense ‘judicious’.
=> certain, discern, discrete, secret
diverse: diverse: [13] Diverse is one of a small family of English words, including also divers, divert, and divorce, which come ultimately from Latin dīvertere. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘aside’ and vertere ‘turn’ (source of English verse, version, vertebra, etc and related to worth), and hence meant literally ‘turn aside, turn out of the way’.

It developed in various metaphorical directions, however. One was ‘turn one’s husband or wife out of the way’ which, via the variant dīvortere, gave English divorce [14]. The central sense of the verb passed more or less unchanged into English, via French divertir, as divert [15], but its past participle diversus illustrates a further metaphorical strand, in which ‘turned aside’ has become ‘separate, different’.

English acquired this via Old French in the 13th century in two distinct forms: masculine divers and feminine diverse. The present-day semantic distinction between the former (‘various, several’) and the latter (‘different’) had established itself by around 1700.
=> divert, divorce, verse, version, worth
dizzy: dizzy: [OE] Dizzy originally signified ‘foolish, stupid’, a meaning which from the 13th century retreated into dialectal use and has only comparatively recently returned to the mainstream language in the milder form ‘scatterbrained’. The now central sense ‘giddy’ is recorded from the 14th century. The word comes from a West Germanic base *dus-, which also produced Dutch duizelen ‘be giddy’. Its formal and semantic similarity to doze and tizzy are obvious, but no actual etymological link between the three seems ever to have been established.
doctor: doctor: [14] Doctor, doctrine, and document all go back ultimately to the Latin verb docēre ‘teach’. This in turn was a descendant of an Indo-European base *dok-, *dek- which also produced Greek dokein ‘seem, think’ (source of English dogma [17], orthodox, and paradox) and didáskein ‘learn’ (source of English didactic [17]) and Latin decere ‘be fitting or suitable’ (source of English decent, decorate, and dignity) and dexter (source of English dextrous).

Latin doctor was derived from doctus, the past participle of docēre, and came into English via Old French doctour. It originally meant ‘teacher’, and the main modern sense of ‘medical practitioner’, although sporadically recorded in Middle English, did not become firmly established until the late 16th century. Latin doctrīna ‘teaching, learning’, a derivative of Latin doctor, produced English doctrine [14].

Latin documentum, which came directly from docēre, originally meant ‘lesson’, but in medieval Latin its signification had passed through ‘written instruction’ to ‘official paper’. English acquired it as document [15]. The derivative documentary is 19th-century.
=> dainty, decent, decorate, dextrous, didactic, dignity, doctrine, document, dogma, orthodox, paradox
draught: draught: [12] Draught and draft are essentially the same word, but draft (more accurately representing its modern English pronunciation) has become established since the 18th century as the spelling for ‘preliminary drawing or plan’, ‘money order’, and (in American English) ‘conscription’. The word itself probably comes from an unrecorded Old Norse *drahtr, an abstract noun meaning ‘pulling’ derived from a prehistoric Germanic verb *dragan (source of English drag and draw).

Most of its modern English meanings are fairly transparently descended from the idea of ‘pulling’: ‘draught beer’, for example, is ‘drawn’ from a barrel. Of the less obvious ones, ‘current of air’ is air that is ‘drawn’ through an opening; the game draughts comes from an earlier, Middle English sense of draught, ‘act of drawing a piece across the board in chess and similar games’; while draft ‘provisional plan’ was originally ‘something drawn or sketched’.
=> draft, drag, draw