- ancient
[ancient 词源字典] - ancient: [14] Like antique, ancient was originally, in Latin, an adjectivized version of the adverb and preposition ‘before’: to ante ‘before’ was added the adjective suffix -ānus, to produce the adjective *anteānus ‘going before’. In Old French this became ancien, and it passed into English via Anglo-Norman auncien. The final -t began to appear in the 15th century, by the same phonetic process as produced it in pageant and tyrant. The now archaic use of ancient as ‘standard, flag’ and as ‘standard-bearer’ (as most famously in Shakespeare’s ‘ancient Pistol’) arose from an alteration of ensign.
=> antique[ancient etymology, ancient origin, 英语词源] - ancient (n.)
- "standard-bearer," 1550s, a corruption of ensign. Archaic, but preserved in Shakespeare's character Aunchient Pistoll in "Henry V."
- standard (n.1)
- mid-12c., "flag or other conspicuous object to serve as a rallying point for a military force," from shortened form of Old French estandart "military standard, banner." According to Barnhart and others, this is probably from Frankish *standhard, literally "stand fast or firm," a compound of unrecorded Frankish words cognate stand (v.) and hard. So called because the flag was fixed to a pole or spear and stuck in the ground to stand upright. The more common theory [OED, etc.] calls this folk-etymology and connects the Old French word to estendre "to stretch out," from Latin extendere (see extend). Some senses (such as "upright pole," mid-15c.) seem to be influenced by if not from stand (v.). Standard-bearer in the figurative sense is from 1560s.
