brute的词源

英文词源

brute: brute: [15] The primordial meaning of brute appears to be ‘heavy’. It comes from Latin brūtus ‘heavy’, and it has been speculated that it is related to Latin grāvis ‘heavy’ (from which English gets grave, gravity, and grieve). In Latin the sense ‘heavy’ had already progressed to ‘stupid’, and it later developed to ‘of the lower animals’. It was with this meaning that the word reached English via French. Connotations of ‘cruelty’ do not begin to appear until the 17th century. Brut meaning ‘very dry’ in relation to champagne is a late 19th-century borrowing of the French adjectival form brut, literally ‘rough’.
brute (adj.): early 15c., "of or belonging to animals," from Middle French brut "coarse, brutal, raw, crude," from Latin brutus "heavy, dull, stupid," an Oscan word, from PIE root *gwere- (2) "heavy" (see grave (adj.)). Before reaching English the meaning expanded to "of the lower animals." Used of human beings from 1530s.
brute (n.): 1610s, from brute (adj.).