Online Etymology Dictionary

history: 1390, "relation of incidents" (true or false), from O.Fr. historie, from L. historia "narrative, account, tale, story," from Gk. historia "a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative," from historein "inquire," from histor "wise man, judge," from PIE *wid-tor-, from base *weid- "to know," lit. "to see" (see vision). Related to Gk. idein "to see," and to eidenai "to know." In M.E., not differentiated from story; sense of "record of past events" probably first attested 1485. Sense of "systematic account (without reference to time) of a set of natural phenomena" (1567) is now obs. except in natural history. What is historic (1669) is noted or celebrated in history; what is historical (1561) deals with history. Historian "writer of history in the higher sense," distinguished from a mere annalist or chronicler, is from 1531. The O.E. word was þeod-wita.
storied: 1481, "ornamented with scenes from history," from story (1). Meaning "celebrated in history or legend" is from 1725.
story (1): "account of some happening," early 13c., "narrative of important events or celebrated persons of the past," from O.Fr. estorie, from L.L. storia and L. historia "history, account, tale, story" (see history). Meaning "recital of true events" first recorded late 14c.; sense of "narrative of fictitious events meant to entertain" is from c.1500. Not differentiated from history till 1500s. As a euphemism for "a lie" it dates from 1690s. Meaning "newspaper article" is from 1892. Story-teller is from 1709. Story-line first attested 1941. That's another story "that requires different treatment" is attested from 1818. Story of my life "sad truth" first recorded 1938.
vae victis: L., lit. "woe to the vanquished," from Livy, "History" V.xlviii.9.
regulate: c.1630, from L.L. regulatus, pp. of regulare "to control by rule, direct" (5c.), from L. regula "rule" (see regular). Regulation is first recorded 1672, "act of regulating;" sense of "rule for management" is first attested 1715. Regulator is first recorded 1655; in Eng. history, with a capital R-, "member of a commission appointed in 1687 to manage county elections." In U.S. history, applied to local posses that kept order (or disturbed it) in rural regions c.1767-71. Meaning "clock by which other timepieces are set" is attested from 1758.
minuteman: U.S. history, class of militia available for immediate service (i.e. "ready in a matter of minutes"), 1774. As the name of a type of ICBM, from 1961, so called because they could be launched with very little preparation.
dark ages: 1739, any benighted time in history, period of ignorance; specific focus on the centuries from the fall of Rome to the revival of secular literature is from 1830s.
pyrgologist: "one versed in the structure and history of towers," 1877, from Gk. pyrgos "tower."
Parnellite: in Ir. history, 1881, adherent of the Irish Home Rule policy of Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91).
natural: c.1300, naturel, "of one's inborn character, of the world of nature (especially as opposed to man)," from O.Fr. naturel, from L. naturalis "by birth, according to nature," from natura "nature" (see nature). Meaning "easy, free from affectation" is attested from c.1600. As a euphemism for "illegitimate, bastard" (of children), it is first recorded 1580s, on notion of blood kinship (but not legal status). The noun sense of "person with a natural gift or talent" is first attested 1925, originally in prizefighting. Natural-born first attested 1580s. Natural order "apparent order in nature" is from 1690s. Natural childbirth first attested 1933. Natural life, usually in ref. to the duration of life, is from late 15c. Natural history is from 1560s (see history). To die of natural causes is from 1570s.
setting: late 14c., "fact or action of being set or setting," from set (v.). Ref. to mounts for jewels, etc. is from 1815; meaning "background, history, environment" is attested from 1841.
John Bull: "Englishman who exemplifies the national character," 1772, from name of a character representing the English nation in Arbuthnot's satire "History of John Bull" (1712).
caroline: 1652, "of or pertaining to a Charles," from Fr., from L. Carolus "Charles." Esp. of Charlemagne, or, in English history, Charles I and Charles II.
Murphy's law: 1958, used of various pessimistic aphorisms. If there ever was a real Murphy his identity is lost to history. Said to be military originally, and probably pre-dates the earliest printed example (the 1958 citation calls it "an old military maxim").
eremite: c.1200, learned form of hermit (q.v.), from Church L. eremita. Since mid-17c. in poetic or rhetorical use only, except in ref. to specific examples in early Church history.
knickerbocker: "descendant of Du. settler of New York," 1831, from Diedrich Knickerbocker, the name under which Washington Irving published his popular "History of New York" (1809). The pen-name was borrowed from Irving's friend Herman Knickerbocker, and lit. means "toy marble-baker."
tyrannosaurus: carnivorous Cretaceous bipedal dinosaur, 1905, Mod.L., the genus name, coined by H.F. Osborn (published 1906 in "Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History" XXI, p.259) from Gk. tyrannos "tyrant" + sauros "lizard."
C.E.: as an abbreviation for "Common Era" or "Christian Era," and a non-Christian alternative to A.D., attested from 1838 in works on Jewish history. Companion B.C.E. is attested from 1881.
ahistorical: "without reference to or regard for history," 1957, from a- (2) "not" + historical.
declension: 1560s, a grammatical term, ult. from L. declinationem, noun of action from declinare (see decline); perhaps via French; "the form is irregular, and its history obscure" [OED].
eschaton: "divinely ordained climax of history," 1935, from Gk. eskhaton, neut. of eskhatos (see eschatology).
knickers: "short, loose-fitting undergarment," now usually for women, 1881, shortening of knickerbockers (1859), said to be so called for their resemblance to those of Dutchmen in Cruikshank's illustrations from Washington Irving's "History of New York" (see knickerbocker).
Columbus: his name is Latinized from his native It. Cristoforo Colombo, in Sp. Christobal Colon.
"America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else, and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it." [S.E. Morison, "The Oxford History of the United States," 1965]
worthy (adj.): mid-13c., "having merit," from worth (1). Attested from c.1300 as a noun meaning "person of merit" (esp. in Nine Worthies, famous men of history and legend: Joshua, David, Judas Maccabæus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Arthur, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon -- three Jews, three gentiles, three Christians).
corse: mid-13c., from O.Fr. cors, from L. corpus "body" (see corps for history and development). Archaic from 16c.
megalomaniac: 1890 (n.), 1899 (adj.), from megalomania (q.v.).
"The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history." [Bertrand Russell]
Related: Megalomaniacal.
hegemony: 1567, from Gk. hegemonia "leadership," from hegemon "leader," from hegeisthai "to lead." Originally of predominance of one city state or another in Gk. history.
pileated: 1728, from L. pileatus "capped," from pileus "felt cap without a brim," from Gk. pilos. Applied in natural history to certain birds and sea urchins.
Ameslan: 1972, acronym of Ame(rican) S(ign) Lan(guage), known by that name since 1960, but its history goes back to 1817, evolving from French Sign Language (introduced at American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Conn.) and indigenous sign languages, especially that of Martha's Vineyard. [See "Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language," Nora Ellen Groce, Harvard University Press, 1985]
terrestrial: early 15c., from L. terrestris "earthly," from terra "earth" (see terrain). Originally opposed to celestial; natural history sense of "living on land" is attested from 1630s. The noun meaning "a human being, a mortal" is recorded from 1590s.
secessionist: 1860, first recorded in U.S. context, from secession + -ist (colloquial short form secesh is attested from 1861); the earlier noun had been seceder, but this had religious overtones, especially in reference to Scottish Church history.
unready: mid-14c., "not prepared," from un- (1) "not" + ready. In English history, applied to Anglo-Saxon King Ethelred II (d.1016), where it preserves the fuller original sense of O.E. ungeræd "ill-advised, rede-less, no-counsel" and plays on the king's name (which lit. means "good-counsel"). The epithet is attested from c.1210.
aberrant: 1830, originally in natural history, from L. aberrantem (nom. aberrans), prp. of aberrare "to wonder away, go astray" (see aberration).
Whig: British political party, 1657, in part perhaps a disparaging use of whigg "a country bumpkin" (c.1645); but mainly a shortened form of Whiggamore (1649) "one of the adherents of the Presbyterian cause in western Scotland who marched on Edinburgh in 1648 to oppose Charles I." Perhaps originally "a horse drover," from dialectal verb whig "to urge forward" + mare. The name was first used 1689 in reference to members of the British political party that opposed the Tories. American Revolution sense of "colonist who opposes Crown policies" is from 1768. Later it was applied to opponents of Andrew Jackson (as early as 1825), and taken as the name of a political party (1834) that merged into the Republican Party in 1854-56.
"... in the spring of 1834 Jackson's opponents adopted the name Whig, traditional term for critics of executive usurpations. James Watson Webb, editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, encouraged use of the name. [Henry] Clay gave it national currency in a speech on April 14, 1834, likening "the whigs of the present day" to those who had resisted George III, and by summer it was official." [Daniel Walker Howe, "What Hath God Wrought," 2007, p.390]
Whig historian is recorded from 1924. Whig history is "the tendency in many historians ... to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present." [Herbert Butterfield, "The Whig Interpretation of History," 1931]
Nestor: name for "old king renowned for wise counsel," 1588, from Gk., name of the aged and wise hero in the "Iliad." In Church history, a Nestorian (1449) is a follower of Nestorius, 5c. patriarch of Constantinople, whose doctrine attributed distinct divine and human persons to Christ and was condemned as heresy.
anthropology: "science of the natural history of man," 1590s, coined from Gk. anthropo- + -logia "study of." In Aristotle, anthropologos is used literally, as "speaking of man." Related: Anthropological (1825); anthropologist (1798).
Celtic: 1656, of archaeology or history, from Fr. Celtique or L. Celticus "pertaining to the Celts (see Celt). Of languages, from 1707; of other qualities, 19c. Celtic twilight is from Yeats's name for his collection of adapted Irish folk tales (1893).
mudsill: 1685, "lowest sill of a house," from mud + sill (q.v.). The word entered U.S. political history in a speech by James M. Hammond of South Carolina, March 4, 1858, in U.S. Senate, alluding to the very mudsills of society, and the term subsequently was embraced by Northern workers in the pre-Civil War sectional rivalry.
Caucasus: mountain range between Europe and the Middle East, from Gk. kaukhasis, said by Pliny ("Natural History," book six, chap. XVII) to be from a Scythian word similar to kroy-khasis, lit. "(the mountain) ice-shining, white with snow." But possibly from a Pelasgian root *kau- meaning "mountain."
lost (adj.): "defeated" (c.1300), "wasted, spent in vain," c.1500; also "no longer to be found" (1526), from the pp. of lose (q.v.). Lost Cause in ref. to the Southern U.S. bid for independence is from the title of E.A. Pollard's history of the CSA and the rebellion (1866). Lost Generation in ref. to the period 1914-18 first attested 1926 in Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," where he credits it to Gertrude Stein.
landmark: O.E. landmearc, from land (n.) + mearc (see mark). Originally "object set up to mark the boundaries of a kingdom, estate, etc." Modern figurative sense of "event, etc., considered a high point in history" is from 1859.
story (2): "floor of a building," c.1400, from Anglo-L. historia "floor of a building" (c.1200), also "picture," from L. historia (see history). Perhaps so called because the fronts of buildings in the Middle Ages often were decorated with rows of painted windows.
schlemiel: "awkward, clumsy person," 1892, from Yiddish shlemiel "bungler," from main character in A. von Chamisso's Ger. fable "The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl" (1813), probably from Biblical name Shelumiel (Num. i.6), chief of the tribe of Simeon, identified with the Simeonite prince Zimri ben Salu, who was killed while committing adultery. (cf. schlemazel).
cuddle: c.1520, probably a variant of obs. cull, coll "to embrace" (see collar), or perhaps M.E. *couthelen, from couth "known," hence "comfortable with." The word has a spotty early history, and it seems to have been a nursery word at first. Related: Cuddly (1863).
queasy: 1459, coysy, possibly from O.N. kveisa "boil," perhaps influenced by Anglo-Fr. queisier, from O.Fr. coisier "to wound, hurt, make uneasy," from the same Gmc. root as kveisa. But history is obscure and evidences of development are wanting.
reconstruct: 1768, "to build anew," from re- "back, again" + construct (q.v.). Meaning "to restore (something) mentally" is attested from 1862. Reconstruction is attested from 1791, "action or process of reconstructing. Specific sense in U.S. history (usually with a capital R-) is attested from 1865. It was used earlier during Amer. Civil War in ref. to reconstitution of the union.
boa: late 14c., "large snake," from L. boa, type of large serpent mentioned in Pliny's "Natural History;" origin unknown (in M.E. folk etymology associated with Gk. bous "ox"); perhaps ult. from PIE root *beu- "to swell." Extension to "snake-like coil of fur worn by ladies" is from 1836. Boa constrictor so called from 1788.
prehistoric: 1851, modeled on Fr. préhistorique, from pre- + history (q.v.). Prehistory is attested from 1871.
bonus: 1773, "Stock Exchange Latin" [Weekley], from L. bonus "good" (adj.); see bene-. The correct noun form would be bonum. In U.S. history the bonus army was tens of thousands of World War I veterans and followers who marched on Washington, D.C., in 1932 demanding early redemption of their service bonus certificates (which carried a maximum value of $625).
thus: O.E. þus "in this way," related to þæt "that" and this, but the exact connection and P.Gmc. history are obscure. Cognate with O.S., O.Fris. thus, M.Du., Du. dus. Colloquial adv. thusly first recorded 1865.