average: [15] The word average has a devious history. It began in Arabic, as ‘awārīya, the plural of ‘awār, a noun derived from the verb ‘āra ‘mutilate’; this was used as a commercial term, denoting ‘damaged merchandise’. The first European language to adopt it was Italian, as avaria, and it passed via Old French avarie into English (where in the 16th century it acquired its -age ending, probably by association with the then semantically similar damage).
Already by this time it had come to signify the ‘financial loss incurred through damage to goods in transit’, and this passed in the 17th century to the ‘equal sharing of such loss by those with a financial interest in the goods’, and eventually, in the 18th century, to the current (mathematical and general) sense of ‘mean’.
average (n.)
late 15c., "financial loss incurred through damage to goods in transit," from French avarie "damage to ship," and Italian avaria; a word from 12c. Mediterranean maritime trade (compare Spanish averia; other Germanic forms, Dutch avarij, German haferei, etc., also are from Romanic languages), which is of uncertain origin. Sometimes traced to Arabic 'arwariya "damaged merchandise." Meaning shifted to "equal sharing of such loss by the interested parties." Transferred sense of "statement of a medial estimate" is first recorded 1735. The mathematical extension is from 1755.
average (adj.)
1770; see average (n.).
average (v.)
1769, from average (n.). Related: Averaged; averaging.
雙語(yǔ)例句
1. The average commuter journey there is five hours long.
那里的通勤一族平均上下班要花5個(gè)小時(shí)。
來(lái)自柯林斯例句
2. In 1970 the average size of a French farm was 19 hectares.
1970年，法國(guó)農(nóng)場(chǎng)的平均規(guī)模為19公頃。
來(lái)自柯林斯例句
3. Its profits are rising four times faster than the average company.
它的利潤(rùn)增長(zhǎng)速度比一般公司快4倍。
來(lái)自柯林斯例句
4. The train's average speed was no better than that of our bicycles.
火車(chē)的平均速度比我們騎自行車(chē)的速度快不了多少。
來(lái)自柯林斯例句
5. My fish average 2 lb 8 oz and I've had two eight-pounders.