meal: [OE] Meal ‘repast’ and meal ‘flour’ are two distinct words. The former originally meant ‘measure’: it goes back via prehistoric Germanic *mǣlaz (source of German mal ‘time, occasion’ and mahl ‘meal’, Dutch maal ‘time, meal’, and Swedish mål ‘meal’) to the Indo-European base *me- ‘measure’, which is also the ancestor of English measure.
The semantic progression from ‘measure’ (which died out for meal in the Middle English period, but survives in the compound piecemeal [13], etymologically ‘measured piece by piece’) to ‘repast’ was via ‘measured or fixed time’ (hence the meaning ‘time, occasion’ in many of the related Germanic forms) and ‘time fixed for eating’. Meal ‘flour’ (as in oatmeal) goes back ultimately to Indo-European *mel-, *mol-, *ml- ‘grind’, source of a wide range of other English words from mild and mill to molar and mould.
From it was descended West and North Germanic *melwam, which has differentiated to German mehl, Dutch meel, Swedish mjōl, Danish mel, and English meal. It has been speculated that mellow [15] may have originated in the use of Old English melu ‘meal’ as an adjective, in the sense ‘soft and rich like flour’. => measure, piecemeal; mellow, mild, mill, molar, mould
meal (n.1)
"food; time for eating," c. 1200 (perhaps late Old English), mel "appointed time for eating," also "a meal, feast," from Old English mæl "fixed time, occasion, a meal," from Proto-Germanic *mæla- (cognates: Old Frisian mel "time;" Middle Dutch mael, Dutch maal "time, meal;" Old Norse mal "measure, time, meal;" German Mal "time," Mahl "meal;" Gothic mel "time, hour"), from PIE *me-lo-, from root *me- "to measure" (see meter (n.2)). Original sense of "time" is preserved in piecemeal. Meals-on-wheels attested from 1961. Meal ticket first attested 1870 in literal sense of "ticket of admission to a dining hall;" figurative sense of "source of income or livelihood" is from 1899.
meal (n.2)
"edible ground grain," Old English melu "meal, flour," from Proto-Germanic *melwan "grind" (cognates: Old Frisian mele "meal," Old Saxon melo, Middle Dutch mele, Dutch meel, Old High German melo, German Mehl, Old Norse mjöl "meal;" Old Saxon, Old High German, Gothic malan "to grind," German mahlen), from PIE root *mel- (1) "soft" (see mallet).
双语例句
1. We had a nice meal with a bottle of champagne.
我们美餐了一顿，还喝了一瓶香槟。
来自柯林斯例句
2. The waiter offered him red wine or white wine with his meal.
侍者为他端上佐餐的红葡萄酒或者白葡萄酒。
来自柯林斯例句
3. You get an interesting meal for a reasonable price.
你花不多的钱就可以吃一顿很特别的饭。
来自柯林斯例句
4. On arrival, a six-course meal was top of the agenda.
他们到达之后要做的第一件事是吃一顿六道菜的大餐。
来自柯林斯例句
5. Ray and I ate our meal and reminisced about the trip.
