heart

英文词源

heart

heart: [OE] Heart is part of a widespread Indo- European family of words for the ‘cardiac muscle’, which all go back to the common ancestor *kerd-. From it come Greek kardíā (source of English cardiac [17]), Latin cor (whence French coeur, Italian cuor, Spanish corazón, not to mention a wide range of English descendants, including concord, cordial, courage, quarry ‘hunted animal’, and record), modern Irish croidhe, Russian serdce, and Latvian sirds.

Its Germanic off-spring was *khertōn, which produced German herz, Dutch hart, Swedish hjärta, Danish hjerte, and English heart. The only major Indo-European languages to have taken a different path are Romanian, whose inima ‘heart’ comes from Latin anima ‘soul’, and Welsh, which keeps craidd for the metaphorical sense ‘centre’, but for the bodily organ has calon, a descendant of Latin caldus ‘warm’.
=> cardiac, concord, cordial, courage, quarry, record

heart (n.)

Old English heorte "heart (hollow muscular organ that circulates blood); breast, soul, spirit, will, desire; courage; mind, intellect," from Proto-Germanic *herton- (cognates: Old Saxon herta, Old Frisian herte, Old Norse hjarta, Dutch hart, Old High German herza, German Herz, Gothic hairto), from PIE *kerd- (1) "heart" (cognates: Greek kardia, Latin cor, Old Irish cride, Welsh craidd, Hittite kir, Lithuanian širdis, Russian serdce "heart," Breton kreiz "middle," Old Church Slavonic sreda "middle").

Spelling with -ea- is c. 1500, reflecting what then was a long vowel, and the spelling remained when the pronunciation shifted. Most of the modern figurative senses were present in Old English, including "memory" (from the notion of the heart as the seat of all mental faculties, now only in by heart, which is from late 14c.), "seat of inmost feelings; will; seat of emotions, especially love and affection; seat of courage." Meaning "inner part of anything" is from early 14c. In reference to the conventional heart-shape in illustration, late 15c.

Heart attack attested from 1875; heart disease is from 1864. The card game hearts is so called from 1886. To have one's heart in the right place "mean well" is from 1774. Heart and soul "one's whole being" is from 1650s. To eat (one's own) heart "waste away with grief, resentment, etc." is from 1580s.

heart (v.)

Old English hiertan "give heart to," from heart (n.). Shakespeare used it as "take to heart" (c. 1600); 1866 of cabbages, "to form a heart." Meaning "to love" is by 1993, from the popular New York state tourism campaign that used the heart symbol in place of the word "love."