英文词源
- medium
- medium: [16] Latin medius meant ‘middle’ (it came from an Indo-European source that also produced English mid and middle). Its neuter form, used as a noun, has given English medium, but it has made several other contributions to the language, including mean ‘average’, medial [16], median [16], mediate [16] (and its derivatives immediate [16] – etymologically ‘acting directly, without any mediation’ – and intermediate [17]), medieval [19] (literally ‘of the Middle Ages’), mediocre, meridian, mitten, and moiety.
Its Italian descendant is mezzo ‘half’, which has given English intermezzo [19], mezzanine [18], mezzosoprano [18], and mezzotint [18].
=> immediate, intermezzo, mean, median, mediate, middle, mitten - medium (n.)
- 1580s, "a middle ground, quality, or degree," from Latin medium "the middle, midst, center; interval," noun use of neuter of adjective medius (see medial (adj.)). Meaning "intermediate agency, channel of communication" is from c. 1600. That of "person who conveys spiritual messages" first recorded 1853, from notion of "substance through which something is conveyed." Artistic sense (oil, watercolors, etc.) is from 1854. Happy medium is the "golden mean," Horace's aurea mediocritas.
- medium (adj.)
- 1660s, "average," from medium (n.). The Latin adjective was medius. Meaning "intermediate" is from 1796. As a size designation from 1711. as a designation of cooked meat, it is attested from 1931, short for medium-rare (1881).
中文词源
来自拉丁语medius,中间的,词源同middle,-um,表中性。引申词义中间物,媒介,媒体等。
该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版:medium 词源,medium 含义。
词根词缀: -medi-中间 + -um名词词尾