alive的词源

英文词源

alive: alive: [OE] Alive comes from the Old English phrase on life, literally ‘on life’. Līfe was the dative case of līf ‘life’; between two vowels f was pronounced /v/ in Old English, hence the distinction in modern English pronunciation between life and alive.
=> life
alive (adj.): c. 1200, from Old English on life "in living." The fuller form on live was still current 17c. Alive and kicking "alert, vigorous," attested from 1859; "The allusion is to a child in the womb after quickening" [Farmer]. Used emphatically, especially with man; as in:
[A]bout a thousand gentlemen having bought his almanacks for this year, merely to find what he said against me, at every line they read they would lift up their eyes, and cry out betwixt rage and laughter, "they were sure no man alive ever writ such damned stuff as this." [Jonathan Swift, Bickerstaff's Vindication, 1709]
Thus abstracted as an expletive, man alive! (1845).

词根词缀： a-加强意义 + live(= life )生命

同源词：leave, life, live

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：alive 词源，alive 含义。