英文词源
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Word of Random
- exquisite
- exquisite: [15] Etymologically, exquisite means ‘sought out’. It comes from the past participle of Latin exquīrere, a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and quaerere ‘search’ (source of English query, quest, and question). Already in Latin it had acquired the metaphorical sense ‘sought after, choice, excellent’, which it brought with it into English.
From the 15th to the 18th centuries, however, the adjective underwent something of an explosion (being used in such widely varied senses as ‘ingenious, far-fetched’, ‘abstruse’, ‘affected’, ‘careful’, ‘elaborate’, and even – in relation to diseases – ‘true, typical’: ‘an exquisite diabetes caused by attraction of urine’, translation of Théophile Bonet’s Mercurius Compitalitius 1684) before settling back into the now familiar ‘excellent in beauty’.
=> query, quest, question
