英文词源
No matching word found in the dictionary.
Word of Random
- man




- man: [OE] Man is a widespread Germanic word (with relatives in German mann ‘man’ and mensch ‘person’, Dutch and Swedish man ‘man’, Danish mand ‘man’, and Swedish menniska ‘person’), and connections have even been found outside Germanic (Sanskrit, for instance, had mánu- ‘man’). But no decisive evidence has been found for an ultimate Indo- European source.
Among the suggestions put forward have been links with a base *men- ‘think’ or ‘breathe’, or with Latin manus ‘hand’. The etymologically primary sense of the word is ‘human being, person’, and that is what it generally meant in Old English: the sexes were generally distinguished by wer ‘man’ (which survives probably in werewolf and is related to world) and wīf (source of modern English wife) or cwene ‘woman’.
But during the Middle English and early modern English periods ‘male person’ gradually came to the fore, and today ‘person’ is decidedly on the decline (helped on its way by those who feel that the usage discriminates against women). Woman originated in Old English as a compound of wīf ‘woman, female’ and man ‘person’. Manikin [17] was borrowed from Dutch manneken, a diminutive form of man ‘man’; and mannequin [18] is the same word acquired via French.
=> manikin, mannequin
中文词源
来自短语to prime a pump,为水泵引水,来自pump,抽水泵,prime,首先的,装载,准备。比喻用法,即用泵抽水前先往水泵里面倒水,然后才比较容易打上水。
该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版:pump-priming 词源,pump-priming 含义。