nonfiction的词源

英文词源

essay: essay: [15] Essay and assay [14] are fundamentally the same word, and only began to perge in the 15th century. Both come via Old French assaier from Vulgar Latin *exagiāre ‘weigh out’, a verb derived from late Latin exagium ‘weighing’; this in turn was formed from the Latin verb exigere ‘weigh’ (source of English exact and examine).

Accordingly, both originally had underlying connotations of ‘testing by weighing’. But while these have become more concrete in assay ‘analyse precious metals’, essay has, under the influence of French essayer, gone down the more metaphorical route from ‘test’ to ‘try’. The verb now survives only in fairly formal use, but the noun is much more frequent, owing to its application to a ‘short nonfictional literary composition’.

It was first used thus in English by Francis Bacon in 1597 as the title of a collection of such pieces, and it is generally assumed that he borrowed the idea from the Essais of Montaigne, published in 1580.
=> assay, exact, examine
non-fiction (adj.): also nonfiction, 1866, a librarians' word, first in the reports of the Boston Public Library, from non- + fiction. Apparently not in widespread use until after 1900.

词根词缀： non-否定 + -fict-塑造,虚构 + -ion名词词尾

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