Online Etymology Dictionary

southmost (adj.): Old English suðmest; see south + -most.
southland (n.): Old English suðland, see south + land (n.).
sower (n.): Old English sawere, agent noun from sow (v.).
sourness (n.): Old English surnes; see sour (adj.) + -ness.
southward (adj.): Old English suðweard; see south + -ward.
speedway (n.): 1892, American English, from speed (n.) + way (n.).
sevenfold (adj.): Old English seofonfeald; see seven + -fold.
shades (n.): "sunglasses," 1958, American English, plural of shade (n.).
saw (v.): past tense of see; from Old English plural sawon.
skeeter (n.): colloquial shortening of mosquito, 1839, American English.
righteousness (n.): Old English rehtwisnisse; see righteous + -ness.
sharpness (n.): Old English scearpnis; see sharp (adj.) + -ness.
stink-bug (n.): 1869, American English, from stink + bug (n.).
tumour (n.): chiefly British English spelling of tumor; see -or.
sweat-bee (n.): 1870, American English, from sweat (n.) + bee (n.).
sweetness (n.): Old English swetnes; see sweet (adj.) + -ness.
uncleanness (n.): Old English unclænnes; see unclean + -ness.
fewness (n.): Old English; see few (adj.) + -ness.
upstate (adv.): 1901, American English, from up (adv.) + state (n.).
vapour (n.): chiefly British English spelling of vapor; see -or.
four-wheeled (adj.): Old English feowerhweolod; see four + wheel (n.).
whiteness (n.): Old English hwitnes; see white (adj.) + -ness.
wilful (adj.): British English spelling of willful. Related: Wilfully; wilfulness.
wrestler (n.): late Old English, agent noun from wrestle (v.).
fatness (n.): Old English fætnesse; see fat (adj.) + -ness.
yesternight (n., adv.): Old English gystran niht; see yester- + night.
eightfold (adj.): Old English eahtafeald; see eight + -fold.
walkway (n.): 1865, American English, from walk (v.) + way (n.).
well-born (adj.): Old English welboren; see well (adv.) + born.
wet (n.): Old English wæt (see wet (adj.)).
wetness (n.): Old English wetnise; see wet (adj.) + -ness.
high (adv.): Old English heah; see high (adj.).
goldarn (adj.): 1832, American English, euphemistic deformation of God-damn.
lind (n.): "the linden tree," Old English lind; see linden.
littleness (n.): Old English lytelnes; see little (adj.) + -ness.
week (n.): Old English wucu, wice, etc., from Proto-Germanic *wikon (source also of Old Norse vika, Old Frisian wike, Middle Dutch weke, Old High German wecha, German woche), probably originally with the sense of "a turning" or "succession" (compare Gothic wikon "in the course of," Old Norse vika "sea-mile," originally "change of oar," Old English wican "yield, give way"), from PIE root *weik- (4) "to bend, wind" (see vicarious). The vowel sound seems to have been uncertain in Old and Middle English and -e-, -i-, -o-, -u-, -y-, and various diphthongs are attested for it.

"Meaning primarily 'change, alteration,' the word may once have denoted some earlier time division, such as the 'change of moon, half month,' ... but there is no positive evidence of this" [Buck]. No evidence of a native Germanic week before contact with the Romans. The seven-day week is ancient, probably originating from the 28-day lunar cycle, divisible into four periods of seven day, at the end of each of which the moon enters a new phase. Reinforced during the spread of Christianity by the ancient Jewish seven-day week.

As a Roman astrological convention it was borrowed by other European peoples; the Germanic tribes substituting their own deities for those of the Romans, without regard to planets. The Coligny calendar suggests a Celtic division of the month into halves; the regular Greek division of the month was into three decades; and the Romans also had a market week of nine days.
Greek planetary names [for the days of the week] ... are attested for the early centuries of our era, but their use was apparently restricted to certain circles; at any rate they never became popular. In Rome, on the other hand, the planetary names became the established popular terms, too strongly intrenched to be displaced by the eccl[esiastical] names, and spreading through most of western Europe. [Carl Darling Buck, "A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages," 1949]
Phrase a week, as in eight days a week recorded by 1540s; see a- (1).
man (n.): Old English man, mann "human being, person (male or female); brave man, hero; servant, vassal," from Proto-Germanic *manwaz (source also of Old Saxon, Swedish, Dutch, Old High German man, German Mann, Old Norse maðr, Danish mand, Gothic manna "man"), from PIE root *man- (1) "man" (source also of Sanskrit manuh, Avestan manu-, Old Church Slavonic mozi, Russian muzh "man, male").

Plural men (German Männer) shows effects of i-mutation. Sometimes connected to root *men- "to think" (see mind), which would make the ground sense of man "one who has intelligence," but not all linguists accept this. Liberman, for instance, writes, "Most probably man 'human being' is a secularized divine name" from Mannus [Tacitus, "Germania," chap. 2], "believed to be the progenitor of the human race."
So I am as he that seythe, `Come hyddr John, my man.' [1473]
Sense of "adult male" is late (c. 1000); Old English used wer and wif to distinguish the sexes, but wer began to disappear late 13c. and was replaced by man. Universal sense of the word remains in mankind and manslaughter. Similarly, Latin had homo "human being" and vir "adult male human being," but they merged in Vulgar Latin, with homo extended to both senses. A like evolution took place in Slavic languages, and in some of them the word has narrowed to mean "husband." PIE had two stems: *uiHro "freeman" (source of Sanskrit vira-, Lithuanian vyras, Latin vir, Old Irish fer, Gothic wair) and *hner "man," a title more of honor than *uiHro (source of Sanskrit nar-, Armenian ayr, Welsh ner, Greek aner).
MANTRAP, a woman's commodity. [Grose, "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," London, 1785]
Man also was in Old English as an indefinite pronoun, "one, people, they." The chess pieces so called from c. 1400. As an interjection of surprise or emphasis, first recorded c. 1400, but especially popular from early 20c. Man-about-town is from 1734; the Man "the boss" is from 1918. To be man or mouse "be brave or be timid" is from 1540s. Men's Liberation first attested 1970.
At the kinges court, my brother, Ech man for himself. [Chaucer, "Knight's Tale," c. 1386]
fire (n.): Old English fyr "fire, a fire," from Proto-Germanic *fur-i- (source also of Old Saxon fiur, Old Frisian fiur, Old Norse fürr, Middle Dutch and Dutch vuur, Old High German fiur, German Feuer "fire"), from PIE *perjos, from root *paəwr- "fire" (source also of Armenian hur "fire, torch," Czech pyr "hot ashes," Greek pyr, Umbrian pir, Sanskrit pu, Hittite pahhur "fire"). Current spelling is attested as early as 1200, but did not fully displace Middle English fier (preserved in fiery) until c. 1600.

PIE apparently had two roots for fire: *paewr- and *egni- (source of Latin ignis). The former was "inanimate," referring to fire as a substance, and the latter was "animate," referring to it as a living force (compare water (n.1)).
Brend child fuir fordredeþ ["The Proverbs of Hendyng," c. 1250]
English fire was applied to "ardent, burning" passions or feelings from mid-14c. Meaning "discharge of firearms, action of guns, etc." is from 1580s. To be on fire is from c. 1500 (in fire attested from c. 1400, as is on a flame "on fire"). To play with fire in the figurative sense "risk disaster, meddle carelessly or ignorantly with a dangerous matter" is by 1861, from the common warning to children. Phrase where's the fire?, said to one in an obvious hurry, is by 1917, American English.

Fire-bell is from 1620s; fire-alarm as a self-acting, mechanical device is from 1808 as a theoretical creation; practical versions began to appear in the early 1830s. Fire-escape (n.) is from 1788 (the original so-called was a sort of rope-ladder disguised as a small settee); fire-extinguisher is from 1826. A fire-bucket (1580s) carries water to a fire. Fire-house is from 1899; fire-hall from 1867, fire-station from 1828. Fire company "men for managing a fire-engine" is from 1744, American English. Fire brigade "firefighters organized in a body in a particular place" is from 1838. Fire department, usually a branch of local government, is from 1805. Fire-chief is from 1877; fire-ranger from 1909.

Symbolic fire and the sword is by c. 1600 (translating Latin flamma ferroque absumi); earlier yron and fyre (1560s), with suerd & flawme (mid-15c.), mid fure & mid here ("with fire and armed force"), c. 1200. Fire-breathing is from 1590s. To set the river on fire, "accomplish something surprising or remarkable" (usually with a negative and said of one considered foolish or incompetent) is by 1830, often with the name of a river, varying according to locality, but the original is set the Thames on fire (1796). The hypothetical feat was mentioned as the type of something impossibly difficult by 1720; it circulated as a theoretical possibility under some current models of chemistry c. 1792-95, which may have contributed to the rise of the expression.
[A]mong other fanciful modes of demonstrating the practicability of conducting the gas wherever it might be required, he anchored a small boat in the stream about 50 yards from the shore, to which he conveyed a pipe, having the end turned up so as to rise above the water, and forcing the gas through the pipe, lighted it just above the surface, observing to his friends "that he had now set the river on fire." ["On the Origins and Progress of Gas-lighting," in "Repertory of Patent Inventions," vol. III, London, 1827]
K: eleventh Roman letter, from Greek kappa, from Phoenician kaph or a similar Semitic source, said to mean literally "hollow of the hand" and to be so called for its shape.

Little used in classical Latin, which at an early age conformed most of its words (the exceptions had ritual importance) to a spelling using -c- (a character derived from Greek gamma). In Late Latin, pronunciation of -c- shifted (in the direction of "s"). Greek names brought into Latin also were regularized with a -c- spelling, and then underwent the Late Latin sound-shift; hence the modern pronunciation of Cyrus, Circe. To keep their pronunciation clear, the many Greek words (often Church words) that entered Latin after this shift tended to take Latin -k- for Greek kappa.

K- thus became a supplementary letter to -c- in Medieval Latin, used with Greek and foreign words. But most of the languages descended from Latin had little need of it, having evolved other solutions to the sound shifts.

K- also was scarce in Old English. After the Norman conquest, new scribal habits restricted -c- and expanded the use of -k-, which began to be common in English spelling from 13c. This probably was done because the sound value of -c- was evolving in French and the other letter was available to clearly mark the "k" sound for scribes working in English. For more, see C.

In words transliterated from Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Japanese, Hawaiian, etc., it represents several different sounds lumped. In modern use some of them are now with kh-; in older borrowings they often followed traditional English spelling and were written with a C- (Corea, Caaba, etc.).

As a symbol for potassium, it represents Latin kalium "potash." In CMYK as a color system for commercial printing it means "black" but seems to stand for key in a specialized printing sense. Slang meaning "one thousand dollars" is 1970s, from kilo-. K as a measure of capacity (especially in computer memory) meaning "one thousand" also is an abbreviation of kilo-.

As an indication of "strikeout" in baseball score-keeping it dates from 1874 and is said to represent the last letter of struck. The invention of the scorecard symbols is attributed to English-born U.S. newspaperman Henry Chadwick (1824-1908) principally of the old New York "Clipper," who had been writing baseball since 1858, and who explained it thus:
Smith was the first striker, and went out on three strikes, which is recorded by the figure "1" for the first out, and the letter K to indicate how put out, K being the last letter of the word "struck." The letter K is used in this instance as being easier to remember in connection with the word struck than S, the first letter, would be. [Henry Chadwick, "Chadwick's Base Ball Manual," London, 1874]
earmark (n.): mid-15c., from ear (n.1) + mark (n.1). Originally a cut or mark in the ear of sheep and cattle, serving as a sign of ownership (also a punishment of certain criminals); first recorded 1570s in figurative sense "stamp of ownership."
quintillion (n.): 1670s, from Latin quintus "the fifth" (see quinque-) + ending from million. Compare billion. In Great Britain, the fifth power of a million (1 followed by 30 zeroes); in U.S. the sixth power of a thousand (1 followed by 18 zeroes).
quadrillion (n.): 1670s, from French quadrillion (16c.) from quadri- "four" (see quadri-) + (m)illion. Compare billion. In Great Britain, the fourth power of a million (1 followed by 24 zeroes); in the U.S., the fifth power of a thousand (1 followed by 15 zeroes).
enliven (v.): 1630s, "give life to," from en- (1) "make, put in" + live for life + -en (1). Meaning "make lively or cheerful" is from 1690s. Related: Enlivened; enlivening. Enlive in same sense is from 1590s. A noun, enlivement, is recorded from 1877.
innocuous (adj.): 1590s, from Latin innocuus "harmless; innocent; inoffensive," from in- "not" (see in- (1)) + nocuus "hurtful," from root of nocere "to injure, harm," from *nok-s-, suffixed form of PIE root *nek- (1) "death" (see necro-). Related: Innocuously; innocuousness.
etiology (n.): also aetiology, "science of causes or causation," 1550s, from Late Latin aetiologia, from Greek aitiologia "statement of cause," from aitia "cause, responsibility" (from PIE *ai-t-ya-, from root *ai- (1) "to give, allot;" see diet (n.1)) + -logia "a speaking" (see -logy). Related: Etiologic; etiological.
intrepid (adj.): "unmoved by danger, undaunted," 1690s, from French intrépide (16c.) and directly from Latin intrepidus "unshaken, undaunted, not alarmed," from in- "not" (see in- (1)) + trepidus "alarmed," from PIE *trep-(1) "to tremble" (see trepidation). Related: Intrepidly; intrepidness (1620s).
inundation (n.): early 15c., from Latin inundationem (nominative inundatio) "an overflowing," noun of action from past participle stem of inundare "to overflow," from in- "onto" (see in- (2)) + undare "to flow," from unda "a wave," from PIE *unda-, nasalized form of root *wed- (1) "water, wet" (see water (n.1)).
anaerobic (adj.): "capable of living without oxygen," 1879 (as anaerobian; modern form first attested 1884), from French anaérobie, coined 1863 by French bacteriologist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), from Greek an- "without" (see an- (1)) + aer "air" (see air (n.1)) + bios "life" (see bio-).
bluebird (n.): also blue-bird, North American warbler-like bird, 1680s, from blue (1) in reference to its plumage + bird (n.1). Figurative use in bluebird of happiness is from 1909 play romance "l'Oiseau bleu," literally "The Blue Bird," by Belgian dramatist and poet Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949).
pie (n.3): also pi, printers' slang for "a mass of type jumbled together" (also pi, pye), 1650s, perhaps from pie (n.1) on notion of a "medley," or pie (n.2); compare pica (n.1). As a verb from 1870. Related: Pied.