英语词汇conk out的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

conk out. Partridge suggests that this aviation term for “the stalling of an engine,” which is also applied to “someone who falls asleep, passes out, or dies,” stems from the words “to be conquered,” an ingenious theory, while the O.E.D. says it may come from a Russian word meaning “to stall.” The word seems to have been coined by World War I military aviators and may just be imitative of the “conking” sound a motor makes when it stalls. Another theory is that conk out derives from the conk that means “a blow on the head,” which has been common in England and America since about 1870. Conk in this sense is a direct ancestor of the British slang word conk, for the head it- self, known in England since the early 19th century: a blow on the conk was probably dubbed a conk because the blow was as- sociated with the head (conk) and sometimes sounded like a “conk” as well. Conk for the head, in turn, is probably a variant spelling of the Latin word concha, “the head,” the same word that gives us the conch (pronounced “conk”) shell.

词汇	conk out
词源	conk out. Partridge suggests that this aviation term for “the stalling of an engine,” which is also applied to “someone who falls asleep, passes out, or dies,” stems from the words “to be conquered,” an ingenious theory, while the O.E.D. says it may come from a Russian word meaning “to stall.” The word seems to have been coined by World War I military aviators and may just be imitative of the “conking” sound a motor makes when it stalls. Another theory is that conk out derives from the conk that means “a blow on the head,” which has been common in England and America since about 1870. Conk in this sense is a direct ancestor of the British slang word conk, for the head it- self, known in England since the early 19th century: a blow on the conk was probably dubbed a conk because the blow was as- sociated with the head (conk) and sometimes sounded like a “conk” as well. Conk for the head, in turn, is probably a variant spelling of the Latin word concha, “the head,” the same word that gives us the conch (pronounced “conk”) shell.
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