sister: [OE] Sister is one of a widespread family of ‘sister’-words that go back ultimately to Indo- European *swesor. Amongst its other descendants are Latin soror (source of French soeur, Italian sorella, and Romanian sora, not to mention English sorority [16]), Russian, Czech, and Serbo-Croat sestra, Polish siostra, Welsh chwaer, Breton c’hoar, Lithuanian sesuo, and Sanskrit svasar-. To prehistoric Germanic it contributed *swestr, which has evolved into German schwester, Dutch zuster, Swedish syster, Danish s?ster, and English sister. English cousin goes back ultimately to a compound based on *swesor, the Old Latin antecedent of soror. => sorority
sister (n.)
mid-13c., from Old English sweostor, swuster "sister," or a Scandinavian cognate (Old Norse systir, Swedish syster, Danish s?ster), in either case from Proto-Germanic *swestr- (cognates: Old Saxon swestar, Old Frisian swester, Middle Dutch suster, Dutch zuster, Old High German swester, German Schwester, Gothic swistar).
These are from PIE *swesor, one of the most persistent and unchanging PIE root words, recognizable in almost every modern Indo-European language (Sanskrit svasar-, Avestan shanhar-, Latin soror, Old Church Slavonic, Russian sestra, Lithuanian sesuo, Old Irish siur, Welsh chwaer, Greek eor). French soeur "a sister" (11c., instead of *sereur) is directly from Latin soror, a rare case of a borrowing from the nominative case.
According to Klein's sources, probably from PIE roots *swe- "one's own" + *ser- "woman." For vowel evolution, see bury. Used of nuns in Old English; of a woman in general from 1906; of a black woman from 1926; and in the sense of "fellow feminist" from 1912. Meaning "female fellow-Christian" is from mid-15c. Sister act "variety act by two or more sisters" is from vaudeville (1908).
雙語例句
1. My sister needed an escort for a company dinner.
我妹妹需要一個陪她參加公司晚宴的男伴。
來自柯林斯例句
2. He had very little in common with his sister.
他和姐姐幾乎沒有什么共同語言。
來自柯林斯例句
3. Ray and sister Renee lived just 25 miles apart from each other.
雷和妹妹勒妮的住處僅相隔25英里。
來自柯林斯例句
4. Sister Francesca entered the chapel, took her seat, and promptly fell asleep.
弗朗西絲卡修女走進小教堂，坐下來，很快就睡著了。
來自柯林斯例句
5. Sister Morrison might take issue with me on that matter.