monk

英文词源

monk

monk: [OE] Etymologically, a monk is someone who lives ‘alone’. The word comes ultimately from late Greek mónachos ‘solitary person, hermit’, which was derived from Greek mónos ‘alone’ (source of the English prefix mono-). It passed into late Latin as monachus (by which time it had come to denote ‘monk’), and eventually found its way to Old English as munuc – whence modern English monk.

Another derivative of Greek mónos was monázein ‘live alone’. On this was based late Greek monastérion, whose late Latin form monastērium has been acquired by English in two distinct phases: first in the Anglo-Saxon period as mynster, which has given modern English minster [OE], and then in the 15th century as monastery.
=> minster, monastery

monk (n.)

Old English munuc "monk" (used also of women), from Proto-Germanic *muniko- (cognates: Old Frisian munek, Middle Dutch monic, Old High German munih, German Mönch), an early borrowing from Vulgar Latin *monicus (source of French moine, Spanish monje, Italian monaco), from Late Latin monachus "monk," originally "religious hermit," from Ecclesiastical Greek monakhos "monk," noun use of a classical Greek adjective meaning "solitary," from monos "alone" (see mono-). For substitution of -o- for -u-, see come.

In England, before the Reformation, the term was not applied to the members of the mendicant orders, who were always called friars. From the 16th c. to the 19th c., however, it was usual to speak of the friars as a class of monks. In recent times the distinction between the terms has been carefully observed by well-informed writers. In French and Ger. the equivalent of monk is applied equally to 'monks' and 'friars.' [OED]