wall: [OE] Wall was borrowed into Old English from Latin vallum ‘rampart’. This originally denoted a ‘stockade made of stakes’, and it was derived from vallus ‘stake’. German wall, Dutch wal, and Swedish vall, also borrowings from Latin, preserve its meaning ‘rampart, embankment’, but English wall has become considerably wider in its application. An interval is etymologically a space ‘between ramparts’. => interval
wall (n.)
Old English weall, Anglian wall "rampart, dike, earthwork" (natural as well as man-made), "dam, cliff, rocky shore," also "defensive fortification around a city, side of a building," an Anglo-Frisian and Saxon borrowing (Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch wal) from Latin vallum "wall, rampart, row or line of stakes," apparently a collective form of vallus "stake," from PIE *walso- "a post." Swedish vall, Danish val are from Low German.
Meaning "interior partition of a structure" is mid-13c. In this case, English uses one word where many languages have two, such as German Mauer "outer wall of a town, fortress, etc.," used also in reference to the former Berlin Wall, and wand "partition wall within a building" (compare the distinction, not always rigorously kept, in Italian muro/parete, Irish mur/fraig, Lithuanian muras/siena, etc.). The Latin word for "defensive wall" was murus (see mural).
Anatomical use from late 14c. To give (someone) the wall "allow him or her to walk on the (cleaner) wall side of the pavement" is from 1530s. To turn (one's) face to the wall "prepare to die" is from 1570s. Phrase up the wall "angry, crazy" is from 1951; off the wall "unorthodox, unconventional" is recorded from 1966, American English student slang. To go over the wall "escape" (originally from prison) is from 1933. Wall-to-wall (adj.) recorded 1939, of shelving, etc.; metaphoric use (usually disparaging) is from 1967.
wall (v.)
"to enclose with a wall," late Old English *weallian (implied in geweallod), from the source of wall (n.). Meaning "fill up (a doorway, etc.) with a wall" is from c. 1500. Meaning "shut up in a wall, immure" is from 1520s. Related: Walled; walling.
双语例句
1. Lucy had strung a banner across the wall saying "Welcome Home Daddy".
露西在墙上挂了一条横幅，上面写着“欢迎爸爸回家”。
来自柯林斯例句
2. The child kept her eyes fixed on the wall behind him.
这个小女孩眼睛一直紧盯着他身后的那堵墙。
来自柯林斯例句
3. A Wall Street Journal editorial encapsulated the views of many conservatives.
《华尔街日报》的一篇社论概述了很多保守派人士的观点。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The pockmarks made by her bullets are still on the wall.
