- coulrophobia (n.)
[coulrophobia 词源字典] - "morbid fear of clowns," by 2001 (said in Web sites to date from 1990s or even 1980s), a popular term, not from psychology, possibly facetious, though the phenomenon is real enough; said to be built from Greek kolon "limb," with some supposed sense of "stilt-walker," hence "clown" + -phobia.
Ancient Greek words for "clown" were sklêro-paiktês, from paizein "to play (like a child);" or deikeliktas; other classical words used for theatrical clowns were related to "rustic," "peasant" (compare Latin fossor "clown," literally "laborer, digger," related to fossil).
The whole creation looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the Internet and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter; perhaps it is a mangling of Modern Greek klooun "clown," which is the English word borrowed into Greek.[coulrophobia etymology, coulrophobia origin, 英语词源] - Eve
- fem. proper name, Biblical first woman, Late Latin, from Hebrew Hawwah, literally "a living being," from base hawa "he lived" (compare Arabic hayya, Aramaic hayyin).
Like most of the explanations of names in Genesis, this is probably based on folk etymology or an imaginative playing with sound. ... In the Hebrew here, the phonetic similarity is between hawah, "Eve," and the verbal root hayah, "to live." It has been proposed that Eve's name conceals very different origins, for it sounds suspiciously like the Aramaic word for "serpent." [Robert Alter, "The Five Books of Moses," 2004, commentary on Gen. iii:20]
- suspicious (adj.)
- mid-14c., "deserving of or exciting suspicion," from Old French sospecious, from Latin suspiciosus, suspitiosus "exciting suspicion, causing mistrust," also "full of suspicion, ready to suspect," from stem of suspicere (see suspicion). Meaning "full of suspicion, inclined to suspect" in English is attested from c. 1400. Poe (c. 1845) proposed suspectful to take one of the two conflicting senses. Related: suspiciously; suspiciousness.
