bride词源

英文词源

bride

bride: [OE] Bride goes back via Old English bryd to Germanic *brūthiz, and has a wide range of relations in other Germanic languages (including German braut, Dutch bruid, and Swedish brud). All mean ‘woman being married’, so the word has shown remarkable semantic stability; but where it came from originally is not known. In modern English bridal is purely adjectival, but it originated in the Old English noun brydealu ‘wedding feast’, literally ‘bride ale’.

bride (n.)

Old English bryd "bride, betrothed or newly married woman," from Proto-Germanic *bruthiz "woman being married" (cognates: Old Frisian breid, Dutch bruid, Old High German brut, German Braut "bride"). Gothic cognate bruþs, however, meant "daughter-in-law," and the form of the word borrowed from Old High German into Medieval Latin (bruta) and Old French (bruy) had only this sense. In ancient Indo-European custom, the married woman went to live with her husband's family, so the only "newly wed female" in such a household would have been the daughter-in-law. On the same notion, some trace the word itself to the PIE verbal root *bru- "to cook, brew, make broth," as this likely was the daughter-in-law's job.