aisle

英文词源

aisle

aisle: [15] The original English form of this word was ele. It was borrowed from Old French, which in turn took it from Latin āla ‘wing’ (the modern French form of the word, aile, has a diminutive form, aileron ‘movable control surface on an aircraft’s wing’ [20], which has been acquired by English). Besides meaning literally ‘bird’s wing’, āla was used metaphorically for ‘wing of a building’, which was the source of its original meaning in English, the ‘sides of the nave of a church’.

The Latin word comes from an unrecorded *acsla, which is one of a complex web of ‘turning’ words that include Latin axis, Greek axon ‘axis’, Latin axilla ‘armpit’ (whence English axillary and axil), and English axle. The notion of an aisle as a detached, separate part of a building led to an association with isle and island which eventually affected Middle English ele’s spelling.

From the 16th to the 18th century the word was usually spelled ile or isle. A further complication entered the picture in the 18th century in the form of French aile, which took the spelling on to today’s settled form, aisle.
=> aileron, axis

aisle (n.)

late 14c., ele, "lateral division of a church (usually separated by a row of pillars), from Old French ele "wing (of a bird or an army), side of a ship" (12c., Modern French aile), from Latin ala, related to axilla "wing, upper arm, armpit; wing of an army," from PIE *aks- "axis" (see axis), via a suffixed form *aks-la-. The root meaning in "turning" connects it with axle and axis.

Confused from 15c. with unrelated ile "island" (perhaps from notion of a "detached" part of a church), and so it took an -s- when isle did, c. 1700; by 1750 it had acquired an a-, on the model of French cognate aile. The word also was confused with alley, which gave it the sense of "passage between rows of pews or seats" (1731), which was thence extended to railway cars, theaters, etc.