Etymology — The origins of English words

From heart + -s- + ease: an infusion made from the plant is traditionally believed to cure lovesickness.

Back-formation from headhunter.

From gorbelly + -ed.

From identical + -ity.

From hero + -like.

Clipping of grotesque + -y. Piecewise doublet of grody, the American equivalent. Compare Middle English groti, grooti (“slimy, muddy”), from Old English grotiġ (“earthy, dirty”) (modern dialectal English groaty, Scots grotty), which is equivalent to groat + -y. Compare also Scottish Gaelic grod (“rotten, lousy, terrible”), Middle Irish grot (“bitter, sour”). Originated or popularised by the 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, starring the Beatles and written by Alun Owen.

Borrowed from French immanence.

Arthur Hutchinson (1866-1937), Cambridge mineralogist, + -ite.

From grunt + -er.

Possible an alteration of high-fluting. Another speculation connects the term with high-flighting/-flying. First appears c. 1839 in the Spirit of the Times.

See handshoe.

Unknown. Likely a contraction of earlier hilderling, itself an alteration of hinderling.

Coined by British philosopher Paul Grice before or in 1967.

From Middle English groundli, growndly, grundlich (“firm, solid; deep, profound; fundamental, radical; of a person: learned, well-grounded”) [and other forms], from ground (“surface of the earth on which one stands; earth, soil; burial site; field of battle, battleground; dry land; flat land; piece of land; region; country; the earth; lowest part, base, bottom; foundation; platform; basis for a doctrine, opinion, etc.; fundamental principle; source; background (of a painting, etc.)”) (from Old English grund (“ground; bottom, foundation; abyss”), from Proto-Germanic *grunduz (“ground; foundation”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrem- (“to resound; to grumble, roar, thunder”)) + -li (suffix forming adjectives). The English word is analysable as ground + -ly (suffix forming adjectives), and is cognate with German gründlich (“careful, thorough; deep, profound”), Swedish grundlig (“thorough; in depth; profound; radical”).

From haver + -ing.

From ill- + fare. Compare evilfare, welfare, etc. First attested in c. 1300.

From hyle + -ical, originally translating Latin hylicus in notes on Irenaeus's Against Heretics after the manner of earlier psychical and pneumatical, from Ancient Greek ὑλικός (hulikós, “wooden, material”), from ῡ̔́λη (hū́lē, “wood, matter”) + -ικός (-ikós, “-ic, forming adjectives”).

Variant of Hitchcock.

From Middle English ydelschipe, equivalent to idle + -ship.

Borrowed from Latin hordeolus, diminutive from hordeum (“barley”) + -olus, referring to its resemblance to a grain of barley in appearance and size.

From Middle English idroforbia (“hydrophobia”), from Latin hydrophobia, from Ancient Greek ὑδροφοβία (hudrophobía), from ὑδρο- (hudro-), combining form of ῠ̔́δωρ (hŭ́dōr, “water”), + φοβία (phobía, “phobia”). The word is analysable as hydro- + -phobia.

From Middle English herbage, from Old French erbage, from Early Medieval Latin herbāticum, from Latin herba (“grass”). By surface analysis, herb + -age.

Originally Californian surfer slang from the 1960s. Perhaps from the greeting Ho! Dad, though no evidence for this derivation is known. The suggestion that it derives from Western Hemisphere Spanish jodido (“fucked, difficult, annoying”) similarly lacks evidence; also the vowel change from -did to -dad is unexplained.

Coined by William H. Whyte in 1952, from group + think, modelled on earlier doublethink from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.