rocket

英文词源

rocket

rocket: English has two words rocket. The older, and now less familiar, is the name of a plant of the cabbage family whose leaves are used in salads. It was inspired by the plant’s downy stems, for it goes back ultimately to Latin ērūca, which originally meant ‘hairy caterpillar’. This may have been related to ērīcius ‘hedgehog’, from which English gets caprice and urchin.

It passed into Italian as ruca, whose diminutive form ruchetta developed a variant rochetta – whence French roquette and finally English rocket [16]. Rocket ‘projectile’ [17] is ultimately an allusion to the shape of such objects. It comes via Old French roquette from Italian rocchetto, a diminutive form of rocca ‘spool’ – hence the application to the ‘cylindrical’ rocket. Rocca itself represents a borrowing from a prehistoric Germanic *rukkon, which also lies behind English ratchet.
=> caprice, urchin; ratchet

rocket (n.1)

garden plant of the cabbage family, c. 1500, from Middle French roquette (16c.), from Italian rochetta, diminutive of ruca "a kind of cabbage," from Latin eruca "colewort," perhaps so called for its downy stems and related to ericus "hedgehog," also "a beam set with spikes," from PIE *ghers- "to bristle" (see horror).

rocket (n.2)

type of self-propelling projectile, 1610s, from Italian rocchetto "a rocket," literally "a bobbin," diminutive of rocca "a distaff," so called because of cylindrical shape. The Italian word probably is from a Germanic source (compare Old High German rocko "distaff," Old Norse rokkr), from Proto-Germanic *rukkon-, from PIE root *rug- "fabric, spun yarn."

Originally "fireworks rocket," meaning "device propelled by a rocket engine" first recorded 1919; rocket-ship in the modern sense first attested February 1927 ("Popular Science"); earlier as a type of naval warship firing projectiles. Rocket science in the figurative sense of "difficult, complex process or topic" is attested by 1985. Rocket scientist is from 1952.

That such a feat is considered within the range of possibility is evidenced by the activities of scientists in Europe as well as in America. Two of them, Prof. Herman Oberth and Dr. Franz Hoeff, of Vienna, are constructing a five-ton rocket ship in which they hope to reach the moon in two days. ["Popular Science," Feb. 1927]

rocket (v.)

"to spring like a rocket," 1860, from rocket (n.2). Earlier "to attack with rockets" (1799). Related: Rocketed; rocketing.