英文词源
- oxygen
- oxygen: [18] Etymologically, oxygen means ‘acid-former’. The word was coined in French in the late 1780s as oxygène, based on Greek oxús ‘sharp, acid’ (a descendant of the same Indo- European base, *ak- ‘be pointed’, as produced English acid, acute, etc) and the Greek suffixgenes, denoting ‘formation, creation’ (a descendant of the Indo-European base *gen- ‘produce’, which has given English a vast range of words, from gene to genocide).
=> acid, acute, eager, gene, general, generate - oxygen (n.)
- gaseous chemical element, 1790, from French oxygène, coined in 1777 by French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), from Greek oxys "sharp, acid" (see acrid) + French -gène "something that produces" (from Greek -genes "formation, creation;" see -gen).
Intended to mean "acidifying (principle)," it was a Greeking of French principe acidifiant. So called because oxygen was then considered essential in the formation of acids (it is now known not to be). The element was isolated by Priestley (1774), who, using the old model of chemistry, called it dephlogisticated air. The downfall of the phlogiston theory required a new name, which Lavoisier provided.
中文词源
词根词缀： -oxy-氧 + -gen-生殖
该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：oxygen 词源，oxygen 含义。
来自希腊语oxys,尖锐的，刺鼻的，来自PIE*ak,尖，刺，词源同acid,acumen.-gen,生成，产生。即生成的尖锐刺鼻气体，后用于指氧气。
以ac-开头的单词多含“尖，酸”之义，如acute（敏锐的），acrid（尖刻的）等，“酸”具刺激性，所以和“尖”统一；词首oxy-本义即“酸”，体会ox-和ac-发音的对应；词根gen指“产生”；字面义“产生酸”，拉瓦锡造该词时，错误地认为所有酸都含有这种新气体。
