reprieve

英文詞源

reprieve

reprieve: [16] Reprieve originally meant ‘send back to prison’ (‘Of this treason he was found guilty, and reprieved in the Tower a long time’, Edmund Campion, History of Ireland 1571), but since this was often the alternative to execution, the word soon came to mean ‘suspend a death sentence’. The form in which it originally occurs, at the end of the 15th century, is repry, and it is not clear where the v came from. Repry was borrowed from repris, the past participle of Old French reprendre ‘take back’.

This in turn went back to Latin reprehendere (source of English reprehensible [14]), a compound verb formed from the prefix re- ‘back, again’ and prehendere ‘seize, take’ (source of English prison, prize, surprise, etc). The medieval Latin derivative reprehensālia produced English reprisal [15], and the feminine past participle of Old French reprendre was the source of English reprise [14].
=> apprehend, prison, prize, reprisal, reprise, surprise

reprieve (v.)

1570s, reprive, "take back to prison," alteration (perhaps by influence of reprove) of Middle English repryen "to remand, detain" (late 15c.), probably from Middle French repris, past participle of reprendre "take back" (see reprise). Meaning "to suspend an impending execution" is recorded from 1590s; this sense evolved because being sent back to prison was the alternative to being executed. Spelling with -ie- is from 1640s, perhaps by analogy of achieve, etc. Related: Reprieved; reprieving.

reprieve (n.)

1590s, from reprieve (v.).