英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

kale (n.)[kale 词源字典]: also kail, c. 1300, alternative form of cawul (c. 1200), surviving in this spelling after Middle English as a Scottish variant of cole "cabbage" (see cole-slaw). Slang meaning "money" is from 1902.[kale etymology, kale origin, 英语词源]
kaleidoscope (n.): 1817, literally "observer of beautiful forms," coined by its inventor, Scottish scientist David Brewster (1781-1868), from Greek kalos "beautiful" (see Callisto) + eidos "shape" (see -oid) + -scope, on model of telescope, etc. They sold by the thousands in the few years after their invention, but Brewster failed to secure a patent.

Figurative meaning "constantly changing pattern" is first attested 1819 in Lord Byron, whose publisher had sent him one of the toys. As a verb, from 1891. A kaleidophone (1827) was invented by English physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) to make sound waves visible.
kaleidoscopic (adj.): 1820, from kaleidoscope + -ic. Figurative use by 1855.
Kali: a name of Devi, the Hindu mother-goddess, in her death-goddess aspect, 1798, from Sanskrit kali, literally "the black one," fem. of kalah "blue-black, black," from a Dravidian language. Also taken as the fem. of kala "time" (as destroyer). She is portrayed as black-skinned, blood-smeared, and wearing a necklace of skulls and a girdle of snakes.
Kama Sutra: also Kamasutra, 1874, from Sanskrit Kama Sutra, name of the ancient treatise on love and sexual performance, from kama "love" (see whore) + sutra "series of aphorisms" (see sutra).
Kamchatka: Siberian peninsula, named for a native people, the Kamchadal, from Koriak konchachal, said to mean "men of the far end."
kami: Japanese for "superior, lord," a title given to governors, also used of deities; the word was chosen by Japanese converts and Protestant missionaries to refer to the Christian god.
kamikaze (n.): "suicide flier," 1945, Japanese, literally "divine wind," from kami "god, providence, divine" (see kami) + kaze "wind." Originally the name given in folklore to a typhoon which saved Japan from Mongol invasion by wrecking Kublai Khan's fleet (August 1281). The attacks began in October 1944 off the Philippines.
As an aside, at war's end, the Japanese had, by actual count, a total of 16,397 aircraft still available for service, including 6,374 operational fighters and bombers, and if they had used only the fighters and bombers for kamikaze missions, they might have realized, additionally, 900 ships sunk or damaged and 22,000 sailors killed or injured. In fact, however, the Japanese had outfitted many aircraft, including trainers, as potential suicide attackers. As intelligence estimates indicated, the Japanese believed they could inflict at least 50,000 casualties to an invasion force by kamikaze attacks alone. [Richard P. Hallion, "Military Technology and the Pacific War," 1995]
As an adjective by 1946.
Kampuchea: name taken by Cambodia after the communist takeover in 1975, representing a local pronunciation of the name that came into English as Cambodia.
kanaka (n.): U.S. nautical and Australian name for "native of South Sea islands," 1840, from Hawaiian kanaka "man" (Samoan tangata).
kangaroo (n.): 1770, used by Capt. Cook and botanist Joseph Banks, supposedly an aborigine word from northeast Queensland, Australia, usually said to be unknown now in any native language. However, according to Australian linguist R.M.W. Dixon ("The Languages of Australia," Cambridge, 1980), the word probably is from Guugu Yimidhirr (Endeavour River-area Aborigine language) /gaNurru/ "large black kangaroo."
In 1898 the pioneer ethnologist W.E. Roth wrote a letter to the Australasian pointing out that gang-oo-roo did mean 'kangaroo' in Guugu Yimidhirr, but this newspaper correspondence went unnoticed by lexicographers. Finally the observations of Cook and Roth were confirmed when in 1972 the anthropologist John Haviland began intensive study of Guugu Yimidhirr and again recorded /gaNurru/. [Dixon]
Kangaroo court is American English, first recorded 1850 in a Southwestern context (also mustang court), from notion of proceeding by leaps.
kanji (n.): "Chinese ideographs that make up the bulk of Japanese writing," 1920, from Japanese kan "Chinese" + ji "letter, character."
Kansas: named for the river, which is named for the native people, from French variant of Kansa, native name of the Siouan people who lived there (1722). It is a plural (see Arkansas). Established as a U.S. territory in 1854, admitted as a state 1861. Related: Kansan.
Kantian (adj.): 1796, of or pertaining to German thinker Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) or his philosophy.
kaolin (n.): "china clay," 1727, from French kaolin (1712), from Chinese Kao-ling, old-style transliteration of the name of a mountain in Jiangxi, China (near which it was originally dug up), from Chinese gao "high" + ling "mountain, hill."
kapellmeister (n.): "conductor," 1838, German, literally "chapel master," from Kapelle "chapel" (also the name given to a band or orchestra) + Meister "master."
kapok (n.): 1735, from Malay kapoq, name of the large tropical tree which produces the fibers.
kappa: tenth letter of the Greek alphabet, from an Aramaized form of qoph; see K.
kaput (adj.): "finished, worn out, dead," 1895, from German kaputt "destroyed, ruined, lost" (1640s), which in this sense probably is a misunderstanding of the phrase capot machen, a partial translation of French faire capot, a phrase which meant "to win all the tricks (from the other player) in piquet," an obsolete card game. Literally "to make a bonnet;" perhaps the notion is throwing a hood over the other player, but faire capot also meant in French marine jargon "to overset in a squall when under sail." The word was popularized in English during World War I.
"Kaput" -- a slang word in common use which corresponds roughly to the English "done in," the French "fichu." Everything enemy was "kaput" in the early days of German victories. [F. Britten Austin, "According to Orders," New York, 1919]
French capot is literally "cover, bonnet," also the name of a type of greatcloak worn by sailors and soldiers (see capote). The card-playing sense attested in German only from 1690s, but capot in the (presumably) transferred sense of "destroyed, ruined, lost" is attested from 1640s. [see William Jervis Jones, "A Lexicon of French Borrowings in the German Vocabulary (1575-1648)," Berlin, de Gruyter, 1976]. In Hoyle and other English gaming sources, faire capot is "to win all the tricks," and a different phrase, être capot, "to be a bonnet," is sometimes cited as the term for losing them. The sense reversal in German might have come about because if someone wins all the tricks the other player has to lose them, and the same word capot, when it entered English from French in the mid-17c. meant "to score a cabot against; to win all the tricks from."
"There are others, says a third, that have played with my Lady Lurewell at picquet besides my lord; I have capotted her myself two or three times in an evening." [George Farquhar (1677-1707), "Sir Harry Wildair"]
karabiner (n.): coupling device, 1932, shortened from German karabiner-haken, usually translated as "spring hook."