The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone.

2018年8月19日 · As an adjective, "of or pertaining to a dictionary," from 1630s. Dictionarist "compiler of a dictionary" (1610s) is older than dictionarian (1806 as a noun, 1785 as an adjective). Grose's 1788 "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" has "RICHARD SNARY.

2024年7月17日 · As practised by Socrates in the Cratylus, etymology involves a claim about the underlying semantic content of the name, what it really means or indicates. This content is taken to have been put there by the ancient namegivers: giving an etymology is thus a matter of unwrapping or decoding a name to find the message the namegivers have placed ...

2022年3月21日 · search (n.). c. 1400, serche, "act of searching; a seeking or looking; a search through an area or a place; examination of records, wills, etc.;" early 15c., "right to investigate illegal activity;" from Anglo-French serche, Old French cerche "investigation," from cerchier (see search (v.)). Search-warrant, granted by authority to a constable to enter premises of …

2022年10月16日 · also pseudoscience, "a pretended or mistaken science," 1796 (the earliest reference is to alchemy), from pseudo- + science. The term pseudo-science is hybrid, and therefore objectionable. Pseudognosy would be better etymology, but the unlearned might be apt to association with i

Etymology is the study of the origin of words and how the meaning of words has changed over the course of history.

2022年8月4日 · late 14c., verbe, "a word" (a sense now obsolete but preserved in verbal, etc.); especially specifically in grammar, "a word that asserts or declares; that part of speech of which the office is predication, and which, either alone or with various modifiers or adjuncts, combines with a subject to make a sentence" [Century Dictionary].

2020年12月10日 · idiom. (n.). 1580s, "form of speech peculiar to a people or place;" meaning "phrase or expression peculiar to a language" is from 1620s; from French idiome (16c.) and directly from Late Latin idioma "a peculiarity in language," from Greek idioma "peculiarity, peculiar phraseology" (Fowler writes that "A manifestation of the peculiar" is "the closest possible …

2024年4月11日 · old. (adj.). Old English ald (Anglian), eald (West Saxon, Kentish) "antique, of ancient origin, belonging to antiquity, primeval; long in existence or use; near the end of the normal span of life; elder, mature, experienced," from Proto-Germanic *althaz "grown up, adult" (source also of Old Frisian ald, Gothic alþeis, Dutch oud, German alt), originally a past …

etymology late 14c., ethimolegia "facts of the origin and development of a word," from Old French etimologie, ethimologie (14c., Modern French étymologie), from Latin etymologia, from Greek etymologia "analysis of a word to find its true origin," properly "study of the true sense (of a wor