throw

英文词源

throw

throw: [OE] Old English thrāwan meant ‘twist, turn’. It came from a prehistoric Germanic *thrējan, which also produced German drehen ‘turn’. This in turn went back to the Indo- European base *ter-, whose other descendants include Greek teírein ‘wear out’, Latin terere ‘rub’ (source of English attrition [14], contrition [13], and trite [16]), Lithuanian trinù ‘rub, file, saw’, Welsh taradr ‘auger’, and English thread and turn.

It is not clear how the original sense ‘twist, turn’ (which survives in ‘throwing a pot’ on a potter’s wheel) evolved in English into ‘project, hurl’ (first recorded in the 13th century), but presumably there must have been some intermediate phase such as ‘throw with a twisting action – as in throwing the discus’.
=> attrition, contrition, thread, trite, turn

throw (v.)

"to project, propel," c. 1300, from Old English þrawan "to twist, turn, writhe, curl," (past tense þreow, past participle þrawen), from Proto-Germanic *threw- (cognates: Old Saxon thraian, Middle Dutch dræyen, Dutch draaien, Old High German draen, German drehen "to turn, twist;" not found in Scandinavian or Gothic), from PIE *tere- (1) "to rub, turn, rub by turning, bore" (cognates: Sanskrit turah "wounded, hurt," Greek teirein "to rub, rub away," Latin terere "to rub, thresh, grind, wear away," Old Church Slavonic tiro "to rub," Lithuanian trinu "to rub," Old Irish tarathar "borer," Welsh taraw "to strike").

Not the usual Old English word for "to throw" (weorpan, related to warp (v.) was common in this sense). The sense evolution may be via the notion of whirling a missile before throwing it. The sense of "put by force" (as in throw in jail) is first recorded 1550s; that of "confuse, flabbergast" is from 1844; that of "lose deliberately" is from 1868.

To throw the book at (someone) is 1932, from notion of judge sentencing a criminal from a law book full of possible punishments. To throw (one's) hat in the ring "issue a challenge," especially to announce one's candidacy, first recorded 1917. To throw up "vomit" is first recorded 1732. To throw (someone) off "confuse by a false scent" is from 1891.

throw (n.)

"act of throwing," 1520s, from throw (v.). Wrestling sense is first attested 1819.