- mile
[mile 词源字典] - mile: [OE] Latin mille denoted ‘thousand’ (it is the source of English millennium [17], etymologically a ‘thousand years’, and, via Italian and French, of million [14]). Its plural mīllia was used in ancient Rome for a measure of length equal to a thousand paces. This was borrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as *mīlja, which has subsequently differentiated into German meile, Dutch mijl, and English mile. (The English mile is over 100 yards longer than the Roman one was.)
=> millennium, million[mile etymology, mile origin, 英语词源] - mile (n.)
- Old English mil, from West Germanic *milja (cognates: Middle Dutch mile, Dutch mijl, Old High German mila, German meile), from Latin milia "thousands," plural of mille "a thousand" (neuter plural was mistaken in Germanic as a fem. singular), of unknown origin.
The Latin word also is the source of French mille, Italian miglio, Spanish milla. The Scandinavian words (Old Norse mila, etc.) are from English. An ancient Roman mile was 1,000 double paces (one step with each foot), for about 4,860 feet, but there were many local variants and a modern statute mile is about 400 feet longer. In Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, the Latin word was applied arbitrarily to the ancient Germanic rasta, a measure of from 3.25 to 6 English miles. Mile-a-minute (adj.) "very fast" is attested from 1957.
