war

英文词源

war

war: [12] The word war was acquired from werre, the northern dialect form of Old French guerre. This in turn came from prehistoric Germanic *werra ‘strife’, which was formed from the base *wers- (source also of English worse and German wirren ‘confuse’). Warrior [13] is from the Old Northern French derivative werreieor. The diminutive of guerra, the Spanish equivalent of French guerre, gave English guerilla.
=> guerilla

war (n.)

late Old English wyrre, werre "large-scale military conflict," from Old North French werre "war" (Old French guerre "difficulty, dispute; hostility; fight, combat, war;" Modern French guerre), from Frankish *werra, from Proto-Germanic *werz-a- (cognates: Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, German verwirren "to confuse, perplex"), from PIE *wers- (1) "to confuse, mix up". Cognates suggest the original sense was "to bring into confusion."

Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian guerra also are from Germanic; Romanic peoples turned to Germanic for a "war" word possibly to avoid Latin bellum because its form tended to merge with bello- "beautiful." There was no common Germanic word for "war" at the dawn of historical times. Old English had many poetic words for "war" (wig, guð, heaðo, hild, all common in personal names), but the usual one to translate Latin bellum was gewin "struggle, strife" (related to win (v.)).

First record of war time is late 14c. Warpath (1775) is originally in reference to North American Indians, as are war-whoop (1761), war-paint (1826), and war-dance (1757). War crime first attested 1906 (in Oppenheim's "International Law"). War chest is attested from 1901; now usually figurative. War games translates German Kriegspiel (see kriegspiel).

war (v.)

"to make war on," mid-12c.; see war (n.). Related: Warred; warring.