Tonga词源

英文词源

tongue

tongue: [OE] Tongue is a general Germanic word, with relatives in German zunge, Dutch tong, Swedish tonga, and Danish tonge. These all evolved from a prehistoric Germanic *tunggōn, whose ultimate ancestor was Indo- European *dnghwā-. This also produced Latin lingua ‘tongue, language’ (source of English language, linguistic, etc), Welsh tafod ‘tongue’, Russian jazyk ‘tongue’, etc.
=> language, linguistic

taboo (adj.)

also tabu, 1777 (in Cook's "A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean"), "consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean or cursed," explained in some English sources as being from Tongan (Polynesian language of the island of Tonga) ta-bu "sacred," from ta "mark" + bu "especially." But this may be folk etymology, as linguists in the Pacific have reconstructed an irreducable Proto-Polynesian *tapu, from Proto-Oceanic *tabu "sacred, forbidden" (compare Hawaiian kapu "taboo, prohibition, sacred, holy, consecrated;" Tahitian tapu "restriction, sacred;" Maori tapu "be under ritual restriction, prohibited"). The noun and verb are English innovations first recorded in Cook's book.