Etymology — The Origins of English Words

Borrowed from French douceur (“sweetness”), from Old French dolçor, dulcur, etc., from Latin dulcōr + -em, from dulcis (“sweet”). Naturalized in Middle English as douceoure, dousour but treated as a French loanword from the 17th century onward. Doublet of dulcour.

Borrowed from French expatriation, or from expatriate + -ion.

From Middle English decuple, from Middle French décuple, from Late Latin decuplus (“tenfold”), from Latin decem (“ten”), and plicō (“fold”).

From brilliant + -ancy; attested earlier than brilliance. Compare French brillance.

Imitative. First attested in 1846 in the intransitive sense of "bleat". Compare English bleat, Old English blǣtan (“to bleat”).

Alteration of dialectal clam, claum (“to grope or grasp ineffectually, snatch”), from Middle English *clammen, *clemmen, from Old English clæmman, clemman, from Proto-West Germanic *klammjan, from Proto-Germanic *klamjaną. In some senses, likely influenced by clamber. Compare dialectal glaump, glamp (“to grasp, snatch at, clutch, grope", also "gulp”), Scots clam, claum (“to grope or grasp ineffectually, snatch”), Norwegian klemme (“to seize with claws”), Middle High German klemmen (“to squeeze”). Doublet of glom. Related also to English clamp.

Borrowed from Medieval Latin disculpātus, perfect passive participle of disculpō (“to disculpate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from dis- (“off”, denoting the ending of an action) + culpō (“to blame”), from culpa (“fault”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). Doublet of disculp.

From Old French dilatation, from Late Latin dīlātātio, early 15th c.

From Old French desbourser (Modern French débourser). By surface analysis, dis- + burse (“purse”).

From Middle Dutch vrouwe (“lady”), from Old Dutch *frōwa, from Proto-West Germanic *frauwjā, from Proto-Germanic *frawjǭ (“lady, mistress”), from Proto-Indo-European *prōw- (“right; judge, master”). Cognate with Dutch vrouw (“woman, wife, lady, mistress”), Low German frouw, frauw (“woman, wife, lady”), German Frau (“woman, wife, lady”), Swedish fru, Icelandic freyja (“lady, mistress”, in compounds), Old English frōwe (“woman”), Old English frēa (“lord, master, husband”). Doublet of frau, vrou, and vrouw.

From Middle English Godhede, equivalent to God + -head (“-hood”). Doublet of godhead.

From Middle English attender, attendere, equivalent to attend + -er.

From Middle English conservatour, from Anglo-Norman conservatour, from Latin cōnservātor (“one who conserves”), agent noun from cōnservō (“to preserve”).

From Middle English descrien, descriven in the 14th century already had the dual sense of "to proclaim, announce, make known" and "to see, discern, discover". On the one hand, the Middle English word is a loan Old French descrier (“to proclaim, announce, cry”), from des- + crier (“shout, cry”); in this case, the word is a doublet of decry, which was loaned from the same French source in the 17th century. Alternatively, as suggested by the spelling descriven, the Middle English word may be a contraction of Old French descrire, descrivre (“to describe”), from Latin describere, and thus a doublet of describe (so Palmer 1890, attributing the view to Walter William Skeat), but modern dictionaries more often seem to prefer the view that there was a secondary, folk-etymological influence on descrien by descriven within Middle English (so The Century Dictionary 1911). The semantic shift from "announce" to "discern, detect" is via "to cry out on discovering something that has been looked for". Palmer (1890) compares the etymology of Latin explorare "to search a wood &c. with cries".

From back + chat.

From Middle English chaffare (“a bargain, a trade”, noun), equivalent to cheap + fare.

From Middle French émulation, from Latin aemulātiō.

From Old French communicable, Latin communicabilis.

C. 1600, from Middle French decrier (“to denigrate; depreciate”), from Old French descrier (“to shout”) (modern décrier). Doublet of descry. The pejorative meaning had not been present in the Middle English loan, but it was present in the French word from at least the 13th century, with a meaning of "to denigrate; depreciate; to announce the depreciation or suppression of a currency", presumably from the interpretation of de- as meaning "down, inferior".

From Middle English gobelyn, from Old Northern French gobelin (compare Norman goubelin, Walloon gobelin), possibly a blend of Old Dutch *kobeholdo (“goblin”) (compare Dutch kabouter, German Kobold) and Late Latin cobalus (“mountain sprite”), from Ancient Greek κόβαλος (kóbalos, “rogue, knave; goblin”). Displaced native Old English pūca from Proto-Germanic *pūkô (“a goblin, spook”), whence English puck.

From Middle English connexioun, from Latin connexiō (“a conclusion, binding together”), from connectō.

From forbid + -ance.

From blacken + -ing.

Learned borrowing from Latin ēsculentus (“fit for eating, eatable, edible; good to eat, delicious; nourishing; full of food”) + English -ent (suffix forming adjectives with the sense of causing, doing, or promoting a certain action). Ēsculentus is derived from ēsca (“food; dish prepared for the table; bait”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ed- (“to eat”)) + -ulentus (suffix meaning ‘abounding in, full of’ forming adjectives).