* Unkempt:
means literally uncombed. It was coined from the prefix un-
'not' and the past participle of the now defunct
verb kemb 'comb'. This came from a prehistoric
Germanic *kambjan, a derivative of *kambaz
'comb' (ancestor of the English noun comb). It
began to be replaced by the new verb comb in the
14th century
*Accuse:
comes via Old French
acuser from the Latin verb acc.s.re, which was
based on the noun causa 'cause'. but cause in
the sense not of 'something that produces a
result', but of 'legal action' (a meaning
preserved in English cause list, for instance).
Hence acc.s.re was to 'call someone to account
for their actions'.
The grammatical term accusative
(denoting the case of the object of a verb in Latin
and other languages) is derived ultimately from
acc.s.re, but it arose originally owing to a
mistranslation. The Greek term for this case was
ptosis initiates 'case denoting causation' . a
reasonable description of the function of the
accusative. Unfortunately the Greek verb
aitiasthai also meant 'accuse', and it was this
sense that Latin grammarians chose to render
when adopting the term.
* Ache:
[OE] Of the noun ache and the verb ache,
[OE] Of the noun ache and the verb ache,
the verb came first. In Old English it was acan.
From it was formed the noun, æce or ece. For
many centuries, the distinction between the two
was preserved in their pronunciation: in the verb,
the ch was pronounced as it is now, with a /k/
sound, but the noun was pronounced similarly to
the letter H, with a /ch/ sound. It was not until the
early 19th century that the noun came regularly
to be pronounced the same way as the verb. It is
not clear what the ultimate origins of ache are,
but related forms do exist in other Germanic
languages (Low German āken, for instance, and
Middle Dutch akel), and it has been conjectured
that there may be some connection with the Old
High German exclamation (of pain) ah.
*Acre:
[OE] Acre is a word of ancient ancestry,
going back probably to the Indo-European base
*ag-, source of words such as agent and act. This
base had a range of meanings covering ‘do’ and
‘drive’, and it is possible that the notion of
driving contributed to the concept of driving
animals on to land for pasture. However that may
be, it gave rise to a group of words in Indo-
European languages, including Latin ager
(whence English agriculture), Greek agros,
Sanskrit ájras, and a hypothetical Germanic
*akraz. By this time, people’s agricultural
activities had moved on from herding animals in
open country to tilling the soil in enclosed areas,
and all of this group of words meant specifically
‘field’. From the Germanic form developed Old
English æcer, which as early as 1000 AD had
come to be used for referring to a particular
measured area of agricultural land (as much as a
pair of oxen could plough in one day).
*Adam’s apple :
The original apple in question was the forbidden fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, which the serpent in
the Garden of Eden tricked Eve into eating, and
which she in turn persuaded Adam to eat. It was
traditionally believed that a piece of it stuck in
Adam’s throat, and so it became an appropriate
and convenient metaphor for the thyroid
cartilage of the larynx, which protrudes
noticeably in men.
*Ado :
In origin, ado (like affair) means
literally ‘to do’. This use of the preposition at
(ado = at do) is a direct borrowing from Old
Norse, where it was used before the infinitive of
verbs, where English would use to. Ado persisted
in this literal sense in northern English dialects,
where Old Norse influence was strong, well into
the 19th century, but by the late 16th century it
was already a noun with the connotations of
‘activity’ or ‘fuss’ which have preserved it
(alongside the indigenous to-do) in modern
English.
*Advocate :
Etymologically, advocate
contains the notion of ‘calling’, specifically of
calling someone in for advice or as a witness.
This was the meaning of the Latin verb advocāre
(formed from vocāre ‘call’, from which English
also gets vocation). Its past participle,
advocātus, came to be used as a noun, originally
meaning ‘legal witness or adviser’, and later
‘attorney’. In Old French this became avocat, the
form in which English borrowed it; it was later
relatinized to advocate. The verb advocate does
not appear until the 17th century.
The word was also borrowed into Dutch, as
advocaat, and the compound advocaatenborrel,
literally ‘lawyer’s drink’, has, by shortening,
given English the name for a sweetish yellow
concoction of eggs and brandy.
*Calf:
English has two distinct words calf, both of
Germanic origin. Calf ‘young cow’ goes back to
Old English cealf, descendant of a prehistoric
West Germanic *kalbam, which also produced
German kalb and Dutch kalf. Calf of the leg
was borrowed from Old Norse kálfi, of unknown
origin.
*Camera:
Latin camera originally meant
‘vaulted room’ (a sense preserved in the
Radcliffe Camera, an 18th-century building
housing part of Oxford University library, which
has a vaulted roof). It came from Greek kamárā
‘vault, arch’, which is ultimately related to
English chimney. In due course the meaning
‘vaulted room’ became weakened to simply
‘room’, which reached English, via Old French
chambre, as chamber, and is preserved in the
legal Latin phrase in camera ‘privately, in
judge’s chambers’.
In the 17th century, an optical instrument was
invented consisting of a small closed box with a
lens fixed in one side which produced an image
of external objects on the inside of the box. The
same effect could be got in a small darkened
room, and so the device was called a camera
obscura ‘dark chamber’. When the new science
of photography developed in the 19th century,
using the basic principle of the camera obscura,
camera was applied to the picture-forming box
* Cancer :
comes from Latin cancer,
which meant literally ‘crab’. It was a translation
of Greek karkínos ‘crab’, which, together with
its derivative karkínōma (source of English
carcinoma ) was, according to the ancient
Greek physician Galen, applied to tumours on
account of the crablike pattern formed by the
distended blood vessels around the affected part.
Until the 17th century, the term generally used
for the condition in English was canker, which
arose from an earlier borrowing of Latin cancer
in Old English times; before then, cancer had
been used exclusively in the astrological sense.
The French derivative of Latin cancer, chancre,
was borrowed into English in the 16th century
for ‘syphilitic ulcer’.
*Candid :
Originally, candid meant simply
‘white’; its current sense ‘frank’ developed
metaphorically via ‘pure’ and ‘unbiased’.
English acquired the word, probably through
French candide, from Latin candidum, a
derivative of the verb candēre ‘be white, glow’
(which is related to English candle,
incandescent, and incense). The derived noun
candour is 18th-century in English. Candida, the
fungus which causes the disease thrush, got its
name from being ‘white’. And in ancient Rome,
people who were standing for election wore
white togas; they were thus called candidāti,
whence English candidate
*Ellipse :
Greek élleipsis meant literally
‘defect, failure’. It was a derivative of elleípein,
literally ‘leave in’, hence ‘leave behind, leave
out, fall short, fail’, a compound verb formed
from the prefix en- ‘in’ and leípein ‘leave’
(which is related to English loan and relinquish).
It was borrowed into English in the 17th century
as ellipsis in the grammatical sense ‘omission of
a word or words’, but its mathematical use for an
‘oval’ (enshrined in the form ellipse, borrowed
via French ellipse and Latin ellīpsis) comes from
the notion that a square drawn on lines passing
vertically and laterally through the centre of an
ellipse ‘falls short’ of the entire length of the
lateral line.
*Else:
[OE] Else shares its sense of ‘otherness’
with related words in other parts of the Indo-
European language family. It comes ultimately
from the base *al-, which also produced Latin
alter ‘other’ (source of English alter) and alius
‘other’ (source of English alibi and alien) and
Greek állos ‘other’ (source of the prefix allo- in
such English words as allopathy, allophone, and
allotropy). Its Germanic descendant was *aljo-
‘other’, whose genitive neuter case *aljaz, used
adverbially, eventually became English else.
*Insult:
The -sult of insult comes from a word
that meant ‘jump’. Its source was Latin insultāre
‘jump on’, a compound verb based on saltāre
‘jump’. This was a derivative of salīre ‘jump’,
source in one way or another of English assail,
assault, desultory, salacious, and salient. Old
French took insultāre over as insulter and used it
for ‘triumph over in an arrogant way’. This was
how the word was originally used in English, but
at the beginning of the 17th century the now
familiar sense ‘abuse’ (which had actually
developed first in the Latin verb) was
introduced.
*Insulin:
a hormone which promotes
the utilization of blood sugar, was first isolated
in 1921 by F G Banting and C H Best. Its name,
which was inspired by the fact that insulin is
secreted by groups of cells known as the islets of
Langerhans (insula is Latin for ‘island’), was
actually coined in French around 1909, and was
independently proposed in English on a couple
of further occasions before the substance itself
was anything more than a hypothesis.
*Jaw :
Given that it is a fairly important part of
the body, our knowledge of the origins of the
word for ‘jaw’ is surprisingly sketchy. The Old
English terms for ‘jaw’ were céace (modern
English cheek) and ceafl (ancestor of modern
English jowl), and when jaw first turns up
towards the end of the 14th century it is in the
form iowe. This strongly suggests a derivation
from Old French joe ‘cheek’, but the connection
has never been established for certain, and many
etymologists consider it more likely that it is
related to chew.
*knee:
[OE] The majority of modern European
words for ‘knee’ go back to a common Indo-
European ancestor which probably originally
signified ‘bend’. This was *g(e)neu or *goneu,
which lies behind Latin genu ‘knee’ (source of
French genou and Italian ginocchio, and also of
English genuine) and may well be connected
with Greek gōníā ‘angle’, from which English
gets diagonal. It passed into Germanic as
*knewam, which over the centuries has
diversified into German and Dutch knie,
Swedish knä, Danish knoe, and English knee. The
derivative kneel [OE] was formed before the
Anglo-Saxons reached Britain, and is shared by
Dutch (knielen).
*Limb:
[OE] The Old English word for ‘limb’ was
lim. Like thumb, it later (in the 16th century)
acquired an intrusive b, which has long since
ceased to be pronounced. It has cognates in
Swedish and Danish lem, and Dutch lid ‘limb’ is
probably related too.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Reference :
John Ayto, Word Origins 2e_ dictionary of English etymology 2005
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