acorn: [OE] Acorn has no etymological connection with oak; its nearest linguistic relative in English is probably acre. The Old English word was ?cern, which may well have derived from ?cer ‘open land’ (the related Middle High German ackeran referred to beech mast as well as acorns, and Gothic akran developed more widely still, to mean simply ‘fruit’).
There are cognate words in other, non- Germanic, Indo-European languages, such as Russian yagoda ‘berry’ and Welsh aeron ‘fruits’. Left to develop on its own, ?cern would have become modern English achern, but the accidental similarity of oak and corn have combined to reroute its pronunciation. => acre
acorn (n.)
Old English ?cern "nut," common Germanic (cognates: Old Norse akarn, Dutch aker, Low German ecker "acorn," German Ecker, Gothic akran "fruit"), originally the mast of any forest tree, and ultimately related (via notion of "fruit of the open or unenclosed land") to Old English ?cer "open land," Gothic akrs "field," Old French aigrun "fruits and vegetables" (from Frankish or some other Germanic source); see acre.
The sense gradually restricted in Low German, Scandinavian, and English to the most important of the forest produce for feeding swine, the mast of the oak tree. Spelling changed 15c.-16c. by folk etymology association with oak (Old English ac) and corn (n.1).
雙語例句
1. The oak is implicit in the acorn.
橡樹孕育于橡子之中.
來自《簡明英漢詞典》
2. The tree grew from a small acorn.
橡樹從一粒小橡子生長而來.
來自《簡明英漢詞典》
3. To see the problem here more clearly, let's look at a different biological system, say, an acorn.
為更清晰地理解此處的問題，我們來看一種不同的生物系統(tǒng)，比如說，橡子。
來自柯林斯例句
4. How could you mistake a stop sign for an acorn?
你怎么能把停止牌錯當(dāng)成橡樹果?
來自電影對白
5. We will live on acorn noodles for the winter this year.