mosquito的词源

英文词源

mosquito

mosquito: [16] Mosquito comes ultimately from the Latin word for ‘fly’, musca (this went back to an Indo-European base *mu-, probably imitative of the sound of humming, which also produced English midge [OE], and hence its derivative midget [19] – originally a ‘tiny sand-fly’). Musca became Spanish mosca, whose diminutive form reached English as mosquito – etymologically a ‘small fly’. (The Italian descendant of musca, incidentally, is also mosca, and its diminutive, moschetto, was applied with black humour to the ‘bolt of a crossbow’. From it English gets musket [16].)
=> midge, midget, musket

mosquito (n.)

1580s, from Spanish mosquito "little gnat," diminutive of mosca "fly," from Latin musca "fly," from PIE root *mu- "gnat, fly," imitative of insect buzzing (compare Sanskrit maksa-, Greek myia, Old English mycg, Modern English midge, Old Church Slavonic mucha), perhaps imitative of the sound of humming insects.

中文词源

mosquito（蚊子）：小飞虫　　　

蚊子的体型通常很小，因此在古代西班牙语中被称为mosquito，是mosca（飞虫）的指小形式，字面意思就是“小飞虫”。英语单词mosquito就直接来自西班牙语。

　　mosquito：[mə'skito] n.蚊子

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：mosquito 词源，mosquito 含义。

mosquito：蚊子

来自西班牙语mosca,蚊子，-ito,小词后缀，来自拉丁语musca,蚊子，来自PIE*mu,蚊子，拟声词，模仿蚊子嗡嗡的声音，词源同moth,midge.