英文词源
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Word of Random
- loaf
- loaf: English has two words loaf. By far the older is ‘portion of bread’ [OE], which goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khlaibaz. This also produced German laib and Danish lev ‘loaf’, and was borrowed, originally into Gothic, from an Old Slavic chleb (source of modern Russian and Polish chleb ‘bread, loaf’). Heavily disguised, loaf forms part of both lady and lord (which etymologically mean respectively ‘loafkneader’ and ‘loaf-guardian’), and it also contributed the first syllable to Lammas [OE], literally ‘loaf-mass’.
The verb loaf ‘dawdle, mooch’ [19] seems to have been a back-formation from loafer, which was probably adapted in 19th-century American English from German landläufer ‘vagabond’, a compound of land ‘land’ and läufer ‘runner’ (to which English leap is related).
=> lady, lord; leap
