germ的词源
英文词源
- germ
- germ: [17] As its close relatives germane and germinate [17] suggest, germ has more to do etymologically with ‘sprouting’ and ‘coming to life’ than with ‘disease’. It comes via Old French germe from Latin germen ‘sprout, offshoot’, which may go back ultimately to the Indo- European base *gen- ‘produce’ (source of English gene, generate, genitive, etc).
The meaning ‘sprout, from which new life develops’ persisted into English (and still occurs in such contexts as wheatgerm – and indeed in metaphorical expressions like ‘the germ of an idea’). Then at the beginning of the 19th century it began to be used to put into words the idea of a ‘seed’ from which a disease grew: ‘The vaccine virus must act in one or other of these two ways: either it must destroy the germe of the small-pox … or it must neutralize this germe’, Medical Journal 1803.
By the end of the century it was an accepted colloquialism for ‘harmful microorganism’.
=> germane, germinate - germ (n.)
- mid-15c., "bud, sprout;" 1640s, "rudiment of a new organism in an existing one," from Middle French germe "germ (of egg); bud, seed, fruit; offering," from Latin germen (genitive germinis) "spring, offshoot; sprout, bud," which is of uncertain origin, perhaps from PIE root *gen-, *gene- "to beget, bear" (see german (adj.)). The older sense is preserved in wheat germ and germ of an idea; sense of "seed of a disease" first recorded 1796 in English; that of "harmful micro-organism" dates from 1871. Germ warfare recorded from 1920.
中文词源
来自拉丁语germen, 来自词根gen, 生育，萌芽，词源同generate. 字母n在m前r 化，比较carcinogen, 来自cancer. 后用于科学术语，细菌。
该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：germ 词源，germ 含义。
germ：细菌；微生物；胚芽
germ可指“胚芽”，同源的germinate指“发芽”都暗示我们其根义为“生，产生”。ger-的原型为gen-，受后面的-m音的影响，n异化为了r。词根-gen-（生）造词功能很强大，简单举例如gene（基因）。germ"微生物"，个人揣测：微生物是生命的最初形态。
