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spoon [spoon 词源字典]: spoon: [OE] The word spoon originally denoted ‘chip of wood’. Such chips typically being slightly concave, they could be used for conveying liquid, and by the 14th century spoon, through Scandinavian influence, was being used in its present-day sense. It goes back ultimately to the same prehistoric base as produced English spade, and its Old Norse relative spánn ‘chip’ lies behind the span of spick and span. The late 19th-century slang use ‘court, make love, bill and coo’ comes from a late 18th-century application of the noun to a ‘shallow’ or foolish person.
=> spade[spoon etymology, spoon origin, 英语词源]
spoonerism: spoonerism: [19] The term spoonerism commemorates the name of the Reverend William Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College, Oxford, who reputedly was in the habit of producing utterances with the initial letters of words reversed, often to comic effect (as in ‘hush my brat’ for ‘brush my hat’ or ‘scoop of boy trouts’ for ‘troop of boy scouts’)
spoor: spoor: see spur
sporadic: sporadic: [17] Sporadic means etymologically ‘scattered like seed’. It comes via medieval Latin sporadicus from Greek sporadikós, a derivative of the adjective sporás ‘scattered’. This was formed from the same base as produced sporá ‘act of sowing, seed’, ancestor of English diaspora [19] (etymologically ‘dispersal’) and spore [19]. And both were related to speírein ‘sow’, source of English sperm.
=> diaspora, sperm, spore
sporran: sporran: [19] English acquired sporran from Gaelic, of course, but it is not ultimately of Celtic origin. It goes back to Latin bursa ‘purse’ (source of English bursar, purse, etc), which was early on borrowed into the Celtic languages, giving Irish sparán and Welsg ysbur as well as Gaelic sporan. As with so many other Scotticisms, it was Walter Scott who introduced the word to English.
=> bursar, purse, reimburse
sport: sport: [14] Sport is short for disport [14]. This came from Anglo-Norman desporter ‘carry away’, hence ‘divert’, a compound verb formed from the prefix des- ‘apart’ and porter ‘carry’. The noun originally meant ‘amusement, recreation’, and it was not used in its main modern sense ‘athletic contests’ until the mid 19th century.
=> disport, port, portable
spot: spot: [12] Spot may have been borrowed from Low German spot or Middle Dutch spotte. These point back to a prehistoric Germanic *sput-, which also produced Norwegian spott ‘speck, spot’. There may also be some connection with Old English splott ‘spot’.
spouse: spouse: [12] A spouse is etymologically someone who has made a ‘promise’ to another – in this case, of marriage. The word comes via Old French spous, spouse from Latin spōnsus ‘bridegroom’ and spōnsa ‘bride’, noun uses of the past participle of spondēre ‘promise solemnly, betroth’ (source of English despondent and sponsor).
=> sponsor
spout: spout: see spit
sprain: sprain: see express
spread: spread: [OE] Spread is a general West Germanic word, with relatives in German spreiten and Dutch speiden. These point back to a common prehistoric ancestor *spraidjan. Where that came from is not clear, although it may have links with Latin spargere ‘scatter, sprinkle’ (source of English aspersion [16] and sparse [18]) and Greek speírein ‘sow’ (a relative of English sperm, spore, etc).
spring: spring: [OE] The noun spring and the verb spring come from the same source: the Indo-European base *sprengh-, which denoted ‘rapid movement’. Of its Germanic verbal descendants, German and Dutch springen, like English spring, have moved on semantically to ‘jump’, but Swedish springa ‘run’ has stayed closer to its roots. The noun spring in Old English times denoted the place where a stream ‘rises’ from the ground, which soon evolved metaphorically into ‘source, origin’ in general.

The notion of ‘rising’ was also applied figuratively to the ‘beginning of the day’ and to the ‘emergence of new growth’, and the latter led in the 16th century, via the expression spring of the year, to the use of spring for the ‘season following winter’ (replacing the previous term Lent).
spruce: spruce: Spruce ‘neat’ [16] and spruce the tree [17] are completely different words, of course, but they could have a common origin – in Spruce, the old English name for Prussia. Spruce the tree was originally the spruce fir, literally the ‘Prussian fir’. And it is thought that the adjective spruce may have come from the expression spruce leather ‘Prussian leather’, which denoted a particularly fine sort of leather, used for making jackets. The word itself is an unexplained alteration of Pruce ‘Prussia’, which was acquired via Old French from medieval Latin Prussia.
=> prussia
spume: spume: see foam
spur: spur: [OE] Spur goes back ultimately to Indo- European *sper- ‘hit with the foot, kick’ (source also of English spurn [OE], which originally meant literally ‘hit with the foot, trip over’). From it was descended the prehistoric Germanic noun *spuron, which produced German sporn ‘spur’, Dutch spoor ‘track’ (source of English spoor [19]), and Swedish sporre ‘spur’ as well as English spur.
=> spoor, spurn
spurt: spurt: see spit
sputnik: sputnik: [20] Russian sputnik means literally ‘travelling companion’ (it is formed from s ‘with’ and put ‘way, journey’, with the agent suffix -nik). The Soviets gave the name to the series of Earth-orbiting satellites that they launched between 1957 and 1961. The first bleeps from space in October 1957 came as a severe shock to the West, which had not thought Soviet science capable of such a thing, and immediately propelled sputnik into the English language (the politically charged English version ‘fellow traveller’, which is more strictly a translation of Russian popútchik, was tried for a time, but never caught on).

It became one of the ‘in’ words of the late 1950s, and did much to popularize the suffix -nik in English (as in beatnik and peacenik).
sputter: sputter: see spit
sputum: sputum: see spit
spy: spy: [13] A spy is etymologically someone who ‘looks’. The word was adapted from Old French espie ‘watcher, spy’, a derivative of espier ‘watch, spy’ (from which English gets the verb spy, and also espy [14] and espionage [18]). This in turn was formed from the borrowed Germanic base *spekh- (source of German spähen ‘reconnoitre, watch’ and Swedish speja ‘spy, scout’), which went back ultimately to Indo- European *spek- ‘look’ (source of English inspect, spectator, etc).
=> espionage, expect, inspect, special, spectator