breast的词源

英文词源

breast: breast: [OE] Breast can be traced back via prehistoric Germanic *breustam to an Indo- European base *bhrus- or *bhreus-, whose other descendants, including Old Saxon brustian ‘bud’, Middle High German briustern ‘swell’, and Irish brú ‘abdomen, womb’, suggest that the underlying reference contained in the word may be to the growth and swelling of the female breasts. By the time it reached Old English, as brēost, it had already developed a more general, non-sex-specific sense ‘chest’, but the meaning element ‘mammary gland’ has remained throughout, and indeed over the past two hundred years ‘chest’ has grown steadily more archaic.
breast (n.): Old English breost "breast, bosom; mind, thought, disposition," from Proto-Germanic *breustam "breast" (cognates: Old Saxon briost, Old Frisian briast, Old Norse brjost, Dutch borst, German brust, Gothic brusts), perhaps literally "swelling" and from PIE root *bhreus- "to swell, sprout" (cognates: Middle Irish bruasach "having a broad, strong chest," Old Irish bruinne "breast"). The spelling conforms to the Scottish and northern England dialectal pronunciation. Figurative sense of "seat of the emotions" was in Old English.

来自PIE *bhreus, 膨胀，鼓起。词源同brisket, 胸肉。

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：breast 词源，breast 含义。