silk: [OE] Like the substance itself, the word silk originated in the Far East, possibly in Chinese sī ‘silk’. Its immediate ancestor is most closely represented by Manchurian sirghe and Mongolian sirkek. Silk-traders brought their term west, and the Greeks used it to coin a name for them: Seres, the ‘silk people’. That is the source of Latin sēricum and Irish sīric ‘silk’, and also of English serge.
But there must have been another oriental form, with an l rather than an r, which made its more northerly way via the Balto-Slavic languages (leaving Russian shelk and Lithuanian shilkai ‘silk’) to Germanic, where it has given Swedish and Danish silke and English silk. => serge
silk (n.)
c. 1300, from Old English seoloc, sioloc "silk, silken cloth," from Latin sericum "silk," plural serica "silken garments, silks," literally "Seric stuff," neuter of Sericus, from Greek Serikos "silken; pertaining to the Seres," an oriental people of Asia from whom the Greeks got silks. Western cultivation began 552 C.E., when agents from Byzantium impersonating monks smuggled silkworms and mulberry leaves out of China. Chinese si "silk," Manchurian sirghe, Mongolian sirkek have been compared to this and the people name in Greek might be a rendering via Mongolian of the Chinese word for "silk," but this is uncertain.
Also found in Old Norse as silki but not elsewhere in Germanic. The more common Germanic form is represented by Middle English say, from Old French seie, with Spanish seda, Italian seta, Dutch zijde, German Seide is from Medieval Latin seta "silk," perhaps elliptical for seta serica, or else a particular use of seta "bristle, hair" (see seta (n.)).
According to some sources [Buck, OED], the use of -l- instead of -r- in the Balto-Slavic form of the word (Old Church Slavonic šelku, Lithuanian šilkai) passed into English via the Baltic trade and may reflect a Chinese dialectal form, or a Slavic alteration of the Greek word. But the Slavic linguist Vasmer dismisses that, based on the initial sh- in the Slavic words, and suggests the Slavic words are from Scandinavian rather than the reverse.
As an adjective from mid-14c. In reference to the "hair" of corn, 1660s, American English. Figurative use of silk-stocking (n.) is from 1590s; as an adjective meaning "wealthy" it is attested from 1798, American English (silk stockings, especially worn by men, being regarded as extravagant and reprehensible, indicative of luxurious habits). Silk-screen (n.) is first attested 1930; as a verb from 1961. Silk road so called in English from 1931.
双语例句
1. Her silk shirtdress was sky-blue, the colour of her eyes.
她一袭天蓝色的真丝衬衫式连身裙，和她的双眸颜色一样。
来自柯林斯例句
2. Dena bought rolls of silk that seemed ridiculously cheap.
德娜买了几卷看起来非常次的丝绸。
来自柯林斯例句
3. Her silk dress was sky-blue, the colour of her eyes.
她的丝绸连衣裙是天蓝色的，和她眼睛的颜色一样。
来自柯林斯例句
4. Natural fabrics like silk and wool are better insulators than synthetics.
丝绸和羊毛之类的纯天然织物比合成纤维的保暖性更好。
来自柯林斯例句
5. Pauline wore a silk dress with a strand of pearls.
