英文词源
- midwife
- midwife: [14] A midwife is etymologically a ‘with-woman’. The mid- element represents the long extinct preposition mid ‘with’ (its Germanic relatives are still alive and well: German mit, Dutch met, and Swedish and Danish med). Wife preserves the original meaning of Old English wīf, ‘woman’. The idea underlying the word is that a midwife is ‘with’ a woman giving birth.
- midwife (n.)
- c. 1300, "woman assisting," literally "woman who is 'with' " (the mother at birth), from Middle English mid "with" (see mid) + wif "woman" (see wife). Cognate with German Beifrau.
中文词源
midwife：助产士，接生婆
mid-,伴随，相伴，wife,女人。用于指古代的接生婆，现在的助产士。
该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：midwife 词源，midwife 含义。
midwife：接生婆，助产士
midwife一词中的mid和如今意为“中间的”的mid不是一个词，也没有什么关系，它在古英语是with（和…一起）的意思，相当于现代德语中的mit。而wife在古英语原作wif，意为woman（妇女），和alewife(麦芽酒店女老板)，fishwife（卖鱼妇）二词中wife的含义相同。midwife的含义就是a woman who is with another (at childbirth)，因此被用来指“接生婆”或“助产士”也就不难理解了。
mile 英里
该词的词源是拉丁语milia，milia是mille（一千）的复数形式。古罗马人以（一）千步作为测量距离的单位，而千步又是以罗马军团的步度为准的，左步和右步算一步，每千步相当于1618码。千步在拉丁语作milia passuum，但常略为milia。从milia演变而来的mile（英里）的长度往往因时因地而异，多数英语国家的mile等于1760码，比古罗马人的milia要长100多码。