battery

英文詞源

battery

battery: [16] The original meaning of battery in English was literally ‘hitting’, as in assault and battery. It came from Old French batterie, a derivative of batre, battre ‘beat’ (from which English also gets batter [14]). The ultimate source of this, and of English battle, was Latin battuere ‘beat’. The development of the word’s modern diversity of senses was via ‘bombardment by artillery’, to ‘unit of artillery’, to ‘electric cell’: it seems that this last meaning was inspired by the notion of ‘discharge of electricity’ rather than ‘connected series of cells’.
=> batter, battle

battery (n.)

1530s, "action of battering," from Middle French batterie, from Old French baterie (12c.) "beating, thrashing, assault," from batre "beat," from Latin battuere "beat" (see batter (v.)).

Meaning shifted in Middle French from "bombardment" ("heavy blows" upon city walls or fortresses) to "unit of artillery" (a sense recorded in English from 1550s). Extension to "electrical cell" (1748, first used by Ben Franklin) is perhaps from the artillery sense via notion of "discharges" of electricity. In Middle English, bateri meant only "forged metal ware." In obsolete baseball jargon battery was the word for "pitcher and catcher" considered as a unit (1867, originally only the pitcher).