aunt: [13] Aunt appears to come ultimately from *amma, a hypothetical non-Indo-European word for ‘mother’ (parallel to Indo-European *mammā, and like it reproducing syllables perceived to be uttered by babies), which at some point was borrowed into Latin. It first appears in the derived form amita ‘paternal aunt’, which passed into English via Old French ante (of which modern French tante is an alternation) and Anglo-Norman aunte.
aunt (n.)
c. 1300, from Anglo-French aunte, Old French ante (Modern French tante, from a 13c. variant), from Latin amita "paternal aunt" diminutive of *amma a baby-talk word for "mother" (cognates: Greek amma "mother," Old Norse amma "grandmother," Middle Irish ammait "old hag," Hebrew em, Arabic umm "mother").
Extended senses include "an old woman, a gossip" (1580s); "a procuress" (1670s); and "any benevolent woman," in American English, where auntie was recorded since c. 1790 as "a term often used in accosting elderly women." The French word also has become the word for "aunt" in Dutch, German (Tante), and Danish. Swedish has retained the original Germanic (and Indo-European) custom of distinguishing aunts by separate terms derived from "father's sister" (faster) and "mother's sister" (moster). The Old English equivalents were faeu and modrige. In Latin, too, the formal word for "aunt on mother's side" was matertera. Some languages have a separate term for aunts-in-law as opposed to blood relations.
雙語例句
1. She looks disconcertingly like a familiar aunt or grandmother.
令人疑惑的是，她看上去就像一位面熟的鄰家阿姨或是祖母。
來自柯林斯例句
2. There's been no trace of my aunt and uncle.
沒有我姑姑、姑夫的蹤跡。
來自柯林斯例句
3. The studio is midway between his aunt's old home and his cottage.
工作室就在從他姑姑的老宅到他的小屋的中途。
來自柯林斯例句
4. He lives with an aunt who keeps house for him.
他和一位幫他料理家務(wù)的姑媽住在一起。
來自柯林斯例句
5. Her Aunt Sallie gave her an uncharacteristically extravagant gift.