Online Etymology Dictionary

redemption: c.1340, "deliverance from sin," from L. redemptionem (nom. redemptio) "a buying back, releasing, ransoming," from redemptus, pp. of redimere "to redeem, buy back," from re- "back" + emere "to take, buy, gain, procure" (see exempt). The -d- is from the Old L. habit of using red- as the form of re- before vowels, and this is practically the sole Eng. word in which it survives. Redemptorist is from Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (founded Naples, 1732, by St. Alphonsus Liguori). In the Mercian hymns, L. redemptionem is glossed by O.E. alesnisse.
pie (1): "pastry," c.1300, from M.L. pie "meat or fish enclosed in pastry," perhaps related to M.L. pia "pie, pastry," also possibly connected with pica "magpie" (see pie (2)) on notion of the bird's habit of collecting miscellaneous objects. Not known outside Eng., except Gaelic pighe, which is from Eng. In the Middle Ages, a pie had many ingredients, a pastry but one. Fruit pies began to appear c.1600. Fig. sense of "something easy" is from 1889. Pie-eyed "drunk" is from 1904. Phrase pie in the sky is 1911, from Joe Hill's Wobbly parody of hymns. Pieman is not attested earlier than the nursery rhyme "Simple Simon" (c.1820).
thrift: c.1300, "fact or condition of thriving," also "prosperity, savings," from M.E. thriven "to thrive" (see thrive), possibly infl. by O.N. þrift, variant of þrif "prosperity," from þrifask "to thrive." Sense of "habit of saving, economy" first recorded 1550s (thrifty in this sense is recorded from 1520s; also see spendthrift). Thrift shop first attested 1947.
Q: 16th letter of the classical Roman alphabet, from the Phoenician equivalent of Heb. koph, which was used for the more guttural of the two "k" sounds in Semitic. The letter existed, but was little used and not alphabetized, in Gk.; the stereotypical connection with -u- began in Latin. Anglo-Saxon scribes adopted the habit at first, but later used spellings with cw- or cu-. The qu- pattern returned to Eng. with the Norman Conquest. Scholars use -q- alone to transliterate Sem. koph (e.g. Quran, Qatar, Iraq). In Christian theology, Q has been used since 1901 to signify the hypothetical source of passages shared by Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark; probably it is an abbreviation of Ger. Quelle "source."
ostrich: early 13c., from O.Fr. ostruce (Fr. autruche), from V.L. avis struthio, from L. avis "bird" (from PIE *awi- "bird") + L.L. struthio "ostrich," from Gk. strouthion "ostrich," from strouthos melage "big sparrow." The Greeks also knew the bird as strouthokamelos "camel-sparrow," for its long neck. Among its proverbial peculiarities are indiscriminate voracity (especially a habit of swallowing iron and stone to aid digestion), want of regard for its eggs, and a tendency to hide its head in the sand when pursued.
"Like the Austridge, who hiding her little head, supposeth her great body obscured." [1623]
Ostriches do put their heads in the sand, but ostrich farmers say they do this in search of something to eat.
sedentary: 1598, "remaining in one place," from M.Fr. sedentaire, from L. sedentarius "sitting, remaining in one place," from sedentem (nom. sedens), prp. of sedere "to sit," from PIE base *sed- "to sit" (cf. Skt. a-sadat "sat down," sidati "sits;" O.Pers. hadis "abode;" Gk. ezesthai "to sit," hedra "seat, chair, face of a geometric solid;" O.Ir. suide "seat, sitting;" Welsh sedd "seat," eistedd "sitting;" O.C.S. sezda, sedeti "to sit;" Lith. sedmi "to sit;" Rus. sad "garden," Lith. soditi "to plant;" Goth. sitan, O.E. sittan "to sit;" see sit). Of persons, meaning "not in the habit of exercise" is recorded from 1662.
prohibition: late 14c., from O.Fr. prohibition (early 13c.), from L. prohibitionem (nom. prohibitio) "a hindering, forbidding," from prohibitus, pp. of prohibere "hold back," from pro- "away, forth" + habere "to hold" (see habit). Meaning "forced alcohol abstinence" is 1851, Amer.Eng.; in effect in U.S. as law 1920-1933 under the Volstead Act.
"People whose youth did not coincide with the twenties never had our reverence for strong drink. Older men knew liquor before it became the symbol of a sacred cause. Kids who began drinking after 1933 take it as a matter of course. ... Drinking, we proved to ourselves our freedom as individuals and flouted Congress. We conformed to a popular type of dissent -- dissent from a minority. It was the only period during which a fellow could be smug and slopped concurrently." [A.J. Liebling, "Between Meals," 1959]
hers: c.1300, hires, from her, a double possessive. Possessive pronouns in Mod. Eng. consist of the predicative (mine, thine, his, ours, yours, theirs) that come after the subject, and the attributive (my, thy, his, her, our, your, their) that come before it. In O.E. and early M.E., they were identical. To keep speech fluid, speakers began to affix an -n to the end of my and thy before words that began with vowels. This began late 13c. in the north of England, and by 1500 was standard. Then the predicative and attributive pronouns split, and the pronouns in that class usually took up -s (the regular affix of possession). But the non-standard speech of the Midlands and south of England extended -n throughout (hisn, hern, yourn), a habit attested from 14c. and more regular than the standard speech, which mixes -s and -n.
give: O.E. giefan (W. Saxon), class V strong verb (past tense geaf, pp. giefen), from P.Gmc. *gebanan (cf. O.Fris. jeva, M.Du. gheven, Ger. geben, Goth. giban), from PIE *ghab(h)- "to take, hold, have, give" (see habit). It became yiven in M.E., but changed to guttural "g" by infl. of O.N. gefa "to give," O.Dan. givæ. Meaning "to yield to pressure" is from 1577. Given "allotted, predestined" (O.E. giefeðe) also had a n. sense of "fate," reflecting an important concept in pagan Gmc. ideology. The modern sense of "what is given, known facts" is from 1879. To give (someone) a cold seems to reflect the old belief that one could be cured of disease by deliberately infecting others. What gives? "what is happening?" is attested from 1940. Give-and-take (n.) is originally from horse racing (1769) and refers to races in which bigger horses were given more weight to carry, lighter ones less. Give-away (n.) is from 1872.
kick (v.): c.1380, "to strike out with the foot" (earliest in biblical phrase now usually rendered as kick against the pricks), of uncertain origin, perhaps from O.N. kikna "bend backwards, sink at the knees." Fig. sense of "complain, protest, rebel against" (1388) probably is from the Bible verse. Slang sense of "die" is attested from 1725 (kick the wind was slang for "be hanged," 1598; see also bucket). Meaning "to end one's drug habit" is from 1936. To kick oneself in self-reproach is from 1891. The noun is first recorded 1530. Meaning "recoil (of a gun) when fired" is from 1826. Meaning "surge or fit of pleasure" (often as kicks) is from 1941; originally lit., "stimulation from liquor or drugs" (1844). The kick "the fashion" is c.1700. Kick-off is from 1857 as the first kick in a football match; fig. sense of "start, beginning event" is from 1875. Kickback "illegal or improper payment" is from 1934. Kickboxing first recorded 1971.
V: In M.E., -u- and -v- were used interchangeably, though with a preference for v- as the initial letter (vnder, vain, etc.) and -u- elsewhere (full, euer, etc.). The distinction into consonant and vowel identities was established in Eng. by 1630, under influence of continental printers, but into 19c. some dictionaries and other catalogues continued to list -u- and -v- words as a single series. No native Anglo-Saxon words begin in v- except those (vane, vat, vixen) altered by the southwestern England habit of replacing initial f- with v- (and initial s- with z-). Confusion of -v- and -w- was also a characteristic of 16c. Cockney accents. In Ger. rocket weapons systems of WWII, it stood for Vergeltungswaffe "reprisal weapon." V-eight as a type of motor engine is recorded from 1930 (V-engine is attested from 1924), so called for the arrangement. The V for "victory" hand sign was conceived Jan. 1941 by Belgian politician and resistance leader Victor de Laveleye, to signify Fr. victoire and Flem. vrijheid ("freedom"). It was broadcast into Europe by Radio België/Radio Belgique and popularized by the BBC by June 1941, from which time it became a universal allied gesture.
tongue: O.E. tunge "organ of speech, speech, language," from P.Gmc. *tungon (cf. O.S., O.N. tunga, O.Fris. tunge, M.Du. tonghe, Du. tong, O.H.G. zunga, Ger. Zunge, Goth. tuggo), from PIE *dnghwa- (cf. L. lingua "tongue, speech, language," from Old L. dingua; O.Ir. tenge, Welsh tafod, Lith. liezuvis, O.C.S. jezyku). The substitution of M.E. -o- for O.E. -u- before -m- or -n- was a scribal habit (cf. some, monk, etc.) to avoid misreading the letters in the old style hand, which jammed them together; and the spelling of the ending of the word apparently is a 14c. attempt to indicate proper pronunciation, but the result is "neither etymological nor phonetic, and is only in a very small degree historical" [OED]. Meaning "foreign language" is from 1535. The verb meaning "to touch with the tongue, lick" is attested from 1687. Tongue-tied is first recorded 1529; tongue-in-cheek (adj.) is recorded from 1933, from phrase to speak with one's tongue in one's cheek "to speak insincerely" (1748), which somehow must have been suggestive of sly irony or humorous insincerity, but the exact notion is obscure.
I: 12c. shortening of O.E. ic, first person sing. nom. pronoun, from P.Gmc. *ekan (cf. O.Fris. ik, O.N. ek, Norw. eg, Dan. jeg, O.H.G. ih, Ger. ich, Goth. ik), from PIE *ego(m) (cf. Skt. aham, Hitt. uk, L. ego, Gk. ego, Rus. ja). Reduced to i by 1137 in northern England, it began to be capitalized c.1250 to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.
"The reason for writing I is ... the orthographic habit in the middle ages of using a 'long i' (that is, j or I) whenever the letter was isolated or formed the last letter of a group; the numeral 'one' was written j or I (and three iij, etc.), just as much as the pronoun." [Otto Jespersen, "Growth and Structure of the English Language," p.233]
The form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c.1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. The dot on the "small" letter -i- began to appear in 11c. L. manuscripts, to distinguish the letter from the stroke of another letter (such as -m- or -n-). Originally a diacritic, it was reduced to a dot with the introduction of Roman type fonts. The basic word for "I" in Japanese is watakushi, but it is not much used. Words that boys usually use are boku (polite) or ore (OH-ray), a rougher word, which can be rude depending on the situation. Girls usually use atashi (a feminine-sounding word) or the neutral watashi, but a tomboy might use boku like boys do.
-or: suffix forming nouns of quality, state, or condition, from M.E. -our, from O.Fr. -our (Fr. -eur), from L. -orem (nom. -or), a suffix added to pp. verbal stems. Also in some cases from L. -atorem (nom. -ator). In U.S., via Noah Webster, -or is nearly universal (but not in glamour, curious, generous), while in Britain -our is used in most cases (but with many exceptions: author, error, senator, ancestor, horror etc.). The -our form predominated after c.1300, but Mencken reports that the first three folios of Shakespeare's plays used both spellings indiscriminately and with equal frequency; only in the Fourth Folio of 1685 does -our become consistent. A partial revival of -or on the L. model took place from 16c. (governour began to lose its -u- 16c. and it was gone by 19c.), and also among phonetic spellers in both England and America (John Wesley wrote that -or was "a fashionable impropriety" in England in 1791). In the U.S., Noah Webster criticized the habit of deleting -u- in -our words in his first speller ("A Grammatical Institute of the English Language," commonly called the Blue-Black Speller) in 1783. His own deletion of the -u- began with the revision of 1804, and was enshrined in the influential "Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language" (1806), which also established in the U.S. -ic for British -ick and -er for -re, along with many other attempts at reformed spelling which never caught on (e.g. masheen for machine). His attempt to justify them on the grounds of etymology and the custom of great writers does not hold up. Fowler notes the British drop the -u- when forming adjs. ending in -orous (humorous) and derivatives in -ation and -ize, in which cases the Latin origin is respected (e.g. vaporize). When the Americans began to consistently spell it one way, the British hardened their insistence on the other. "The American abolition of -our in such words as honour and favour has probably retarded rather than quickened English progress in the same direction." [Fowler]
fuck: a difficult word to trace, in part because it was taboo to the editors of the original OED when the "F" volume was compiled, 1893-97. Written form only attested from early 16c. OED 2nd edition cites 1503, in the form fukkit; earliest appearance of current spelling is 1535 -- "Bischops ... may fuck thair fill and be vnmaryit" [Sir David Lyndesay, "Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits"], but presumably it is a much more ancient word than that, simply one that wasn't likely to be written in the kind of texts that have survived from O.E. and M.E. Buck cites proper name John le Fucker from 1278. The word apparently is hinted at in a scurrilous 15c. poem, titled "Flen flyys," written in bastard L. and M.E. The relevant line reads:
Non sunt in celi
quia fuccant uuiuys of heli
"They [the monks] are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely." Fuccant is pseudo-Latin, and in the original it is written in cipher. The earliest examples of the word otherwise are from Scottish, which suggests a Scandinavian origin, perhaps from a word akin to Norw. dial. fukka "copulate," or Swedish dial. focka "copulate, strike, push," and fock "penis." Another theory traces it to M.E. fkye, fike "move restlessly, fidget," which also meant "dally, flirt," and probably is from a general North Sea Gmc. word, cf. M.Du. fokken, Ger. ficken "fuck," earlier "make quick movements to and fro, flick," still earlier "itch, scratch;" the vulgar sense attested from 16c. This would parallel in sense the usual M.E. slang term for "have sexual intercourse," swive, from O.E. swifan "to move lightly over, sweep" (see swivel). Chronology and phonology rule out Shipley's attempt to derive it from M.E. firk "to press hard, beat." As a noun, it dates from 1680. French foutre and Italian fottere look like the English word but are unrelated, derived rather from L. futuere, which is perhaps from PIE base *bhau(t)- "knock, strike off," extended via a figurative use "from the sexual application of violent action" [Shipley; cf. the sexual slang use of bang, etc.]. Popular and Internet derivations from acronyms (and the "pluck yew" fable) are merely ingenious trifling. The O.E. word was hæman, from ham "dwelling, home," with a sense of "take home, co-habit." Fuck was outlawed in print in England (by the Obscene Publications Act, 1857) and the U.S. (by the Comstock Act, 1873). The word may have been shunned in print, but it continued in conversation, especially among soldiers during WWI.
"It became so common that an effective way for the soldier to express this emotion was to omit this word. Thus if a sergeant said, 'Get your ----ing rifles!' it was understood as a matter of routine. But if he said 'Get your rifles!' there was an immediate implication of urgency and danger." [John Brophy, "Songs and Slang of the British Soldier: 1914-1918," pub. 1930]
The legal barriers broke down in the 20th century, with the "Ulysses" decision (U.S., 1933) and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (U.S., 1959; U.K., 1960). Johnson excluded the word, and fuck wasn't in a single English language dictionary from 1795 to 1965. "The Penguin Dictionary" broke the taboo in the latter year. Houghton Mifflin followed, in 1969, with "The American Heritage Dictionary," but it also published a "Clean Green" edition without the word, to assure itself access to the lucrative public high school market. The abbreviation F (or eff) probably began as euphemistic, but by 1943 it was being used as a cuss word, too. In 1948, the publishers of "The Naked and the Dead" persuaded Norman Mailer to use the euphemism fug instead. When Mailer later was introduced to Dorothy Parker, she greeted him with, "So you're the man who can't spell 'fuck' " [The quip sometimes is attributed to Tallulah Bankhead]. Hemingway used muck in "For whom the Bell Tolls" (1940). The major breakthrough in publication was James Jones' "From Here to Eternity" (1950), with 50 fucks (down from 258 in the original manuscript). Egyptian legal agreements from the 23rd Dynasty (749-21 B.C.E.) frequently include the phrase, "If you do not obey this decree, may a donkey copulate with you!" [Reinhold Aman, "Maledicta," Summer 1977]. Fuck-all "nothing" first recorded 1960. Verbal phrase fuck up "to ruin, spoil, destroy" first attested c.1916. A widespread group of Slavic words (cf. Pol. pierdolić) can mean both "fornicate" and "make a mistake." Fuck off attested from 1929; as a command to depart, by 1944. Flying fuck originally meant "have sex on horseback" and is first attested c.1800 in broadside ballad "New Feats of Horsemanship." For the unkillable urban legend that this word is an acronym of some sort (a fiction traceable on the Internet to 1995 but probably predating that) see here, and also here. Related: Fucked; fucking. Agent noun fucker attested from 1590s in literal sense; by 1893 as a term of abuse (or admiration).