chestnut

来自希腊词地名Castana, 至于树以地名还是地以树名尚存争议。nut, 坚果。比较current.

chestnut

chestnut: [16] The Greek word for ‘chestnut’ was kastanéā, which appears to have meant originally ‘nut from Castanea’ (in Pontus, Asia Minor) or ‘nut from Castana’ (in Thessaly, Greece). It came into English via Latin castanea and Old French chastaine, which in the 14th century produced the Middle English form chasteine or chesteine. Over the next two hundred years this developed to chestern, and in due course had nut added to it to produce the modern English form. Castana, the Spanish descendant of Latin castanea, is the source of castanet.
=> castanet

chestnut (n.)

1560s, from chesten nut (1510s), with superfluous nut (n.) + Middle English chasteine, from Old French chastain (12c., Modern French châtaigne), from Latin castanea "chestnut, chestnut tree," from Greek kastaneia, which the Greeks thought meant either "nut from Castanea" in Pontus, or "nut from Castana" in Thessaly, but probably both places are named for the trees, not the other way around, and the word is borrowed from a language of Asia Minor (compare Armenian kask "chestnut," kaskeni "chestnut tree"). In reference to the dark reddish-brown color, 1650s. Applied to the horse-chestnut by 1832.

Slang sense of "venerable joke or story" is from 1885, explained 1888 by Joseph Jefferson (see "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine," January 1888) as probably abstracted from the 1816 melodrama "The Broken Sword" by William Dimond where an oft-repeated story involving a chestnut tree figures in an exchange between the characters "Captain Zavior" and "Pablo":

Zav. Let me see--ay! it is exactly six years since that peace being restored to Spain, and my ship paid off, my kind brother offered me a snug hammock in the dwelling of my forefathers. I mounted a mule at Barcelona and trotted away for my native mountains. At the dawn of the fourth day's journey, I entered the wood of Collares, when, suddenly, from the thick boughs of a cork-tree--
Pab. [Jumping up.] A chesnut, Captain, a chesnut!
Zav. Bah, you booby! I say, a cork!
Pab. And I swear, a chesnut. Captain, this is the twenty-seventh time I have heard you relate this story, and you invariably said, a chesnut, till now.

Jefferson traced the connection through William Warren, "the veteran comedian of Boston" who often played Pablo in the melodrama.

1. The fruit is rather like a sweet chestnut.

这种果实颇似甜栗子。

2. The cock's breast is tinged with chestnut.

这只公鸡胸部羽毛呈浅栗色，带有白色细条纹。

3. an avenue of stately chestnut trees

两边有雄伟高大栗树的林荫道

4. We have a chestnut tree in the bottom of our garden.

我们的花园尽头有一棵栗树.

5. The chestnut is being retired.

那匹栗色马将要退休了.