ham的词源

英文词源

ham

ham: [OE] The etymological meaning of ham is ‘bend’ – it comes from Germanic *kham- ‘be crooked’ – and up until the 16th century it denoted exclusively the ‘part of the leg at the back of the knee’ (a portion of the anatomy now without a word of its own in English). Hamstring [16] reflects this original meaning. From the mid-16th century, it gradually extended semantically to ‘back of the thigh’ and hence ‘thigh’ generally, and by the 17th century it was being used for the ‘thigh of a slaughtered animal, especially a pig, preserved and used for food’. Ham in the sense ‘performer who overacts’, first recorded in the late 19th century, apparently comes from an earlier hamfatter ‘bad actor’, which may have been inspired by the Negro minstrel song ‘The Ham-fat Man’.

ham (n.1)

"thigh of a hog used for food" (especially salted and cured or smoke-dried), 1630s, extended from earlier sense " part of the human leg behind the knee; hock of a quadruped," from Old English hamm "hollow or bend of the knee," from Proto-Germanic *hamma- (cognates: Old Norse höm, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch hamme, Old High German hamma), from PIE *kone-mo- "shin bone" (cognates: Greek kneme "calf of the leg," Old Irish cnaim "bone"). Ham-fisted (adj.) in reference to hard-hitting characters is from 1905; ham-handed "coarse, clumsy" is by 1896. With hammen ifalden "with folded hams" was a Middle English way of saying "kneeling."

ham (n.2)

"overacting inferior performer," 1882, American English, apparently a shortening of hamfatter (1880) "actor of low grade," which is said (since at least 1889) to be from the old minstrel show song, "The Ham-fat Man" (attested by 1856). The song, a comical black-face number, has nothing to do with acting, but the connection might be with the quality of acting in minstrel shows, where the song was popular (compare the definition of hambone in the 1942 "American Thesaurus of Slang," "unconvincing blackface dialectician"). Its most popular aspect was the chorus and the performance of the line "Hoochee, kouchee, kouchee, says the ham fat man."

Ham also had a sports slang sense of "incompetent pugilist" (1888), perhaps from the notion in ham-fisted. The notion of "amateurish" led to the sense of "amateur radio operator" (1919).

ham (v.)

"over-act in performance," 1933, from ham (n.2). Related: Hammed; hamming. As an adjective in this sense by 1935.

中文词源

ham：火腿，表演过火的拙劣演员，业余广播员

来自古英语hamm,膝弯，膝盖骨，词源同hamstring,Hamburg.引申词义大腿，猪大腿肉，火腿。词义拙劣演员来自1880年美国滑稽歌舞剧The Ham-fat man,因其无聊过火的表演而得名。词义业余广播员来自amateur radio,出于自嘲的意味缩写成ham.

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：ham 词源，ham 含义。

ham（火腿）：膝盖背后的弯曲部位

从词源上讲，英语单词ham指的是“弯曲部位”。它来自原始日耳曼语kham-(弯曲的）。 直到16世纪前，这个词指的都是“膝盖背后的弯曲部位”。单词hamstring (腿筋）就显示 了 ham的原始含义。从16世纪中叶开始，该词含义逐渐发生变化。先是指“大腿背面”， 后变成“大腿”。到17世纪时，它的含义己经变成“用猪等牲畜的大腿腌制加工而成的肉制 品”，相当于中国的火腿。