acorn
acorn
a.corn AHD[³“kôrn”, ³“k…rn] DJ[6e!7k%8n, 6e!k*n] KK[6e7k%rn, 6ek*n]
n.（名词）
The fruit of an oak, consisting of a single-seeded, thick-walled nut set in a woody, cuplike base.
橡树果实：为木质，杯状基部包着的单一种子，厚壁的坚果
ORIGIN
1.Middle Englishakorn
中古英语akorn
2.from Old Englishæcern
源自 古英语æcern
NOTES
A thoughtful glance at the wordacorn might produce the surmise that it is made up ofoak andcorn, especially if we think ofcorn in its sense of “a kernel or seed of a plant,” as inpeppercorn. The fact that others thought the word was so constituted partly accounts for the present formacorn. Here we see the workings of the process of linguistic change known as folk etymology,an alteration in form of a word or phrase so that it resembles a more familiar term mistakenly regarded as analogous.Acorn actually goes back to Old Englishæcern, “acorn,” which in turn goes back to the Indo-European root½g-, meaning “fruit, berry.”
对acorn 稍加分析我们可能会产生这样的假设，它是由oak 和corn 两个词组成的， 特别是当我们想到corn 作为“植物的核或种子”的意思用时，如胡椒粒。 有人认为这种组合方式就可解释现在acorn 这种形式。 在这我们就看到了语言学上被称为俗语源学的语言变化形式。一词或词组在形式上改变从而错误地被认为是类似性地代表另一个更为熟悉的词。Acorn 在古英语中实际上是æcern， “acorn”的印欧语系中的词根是og- ，意指“水果，浆果。”
