organ: [13] Greek órganon meant ‘tool, implement, instrument’. It was a descendant of the Indo-European base *worg- (source also of English work). Latin took the word over as organum, and in the post-classical period applied it to ‘musical instruments’. At first it was a very general term, but gradually it narrowed down to ‘wind instrument’, and in ecclesiastical Latin it came to be used for a musical instrument made from a number of pipes.
When English acquired it, via Old French organe, it was in the intermediate sense ‘wind instrument’ (in the 1611 translation of Psalm 150, ‘Praise him with stringed instruments and organs’, organ still means ‘pipe’), but by the end of the 17th century this had died out. The sense ‘functional part of the body’ goes right back to the word’s Greek source. The derivative organize [15] comes via Old French from medieval Latin organizāre.
This originally denoted literally ‘furnish with organs so as to form into a living being’, and hence ‘provide with a co-ordinated structure’. => organize, orgy, work
organ (n.)
fusion of late Old English organe, and Old French orgene (12c.), both meaning "musical instrument," both from Latin organa, plural of organum "a musical instrument," from Greek organon "implement, tool for making or doing; musical instrument; organ of sense, organ of the body," literally "that with which one works," from PIE *werg-ano-, from root *werg- "to do" (cognates: Greek ergon "work," orgia "religious performances;" Armenian gorc "work;" Avestan vareza "work, activity;" Gothic waurkjan, Old English wyrcan "to work," Old English weorc "deed, action, something done;" Old Norse yrka "work, take effect").
Applied vaguely in late Old English to musical instruments; sense narrowed by late 14c. to the musical instrument now known by that name (involving pipes supplied with wind by a bellows and worked by means of keys), though Augustine (c. 400) knew this as a specific sense of Latin organa. The meaning "body part adapted to a certain function" is attested from late 14c., from a Medieval Latin sense of Latin organum. Organist is first recorded 1590s; organ-grinder is attested from 1806.
双语例句
1. The patient'simmune system would reject the transplanted organ as a foreign object.
病人的免疫系统会对移植器官产生异质排斥反应。
来自柯林斯例句
2. We ended with Blake's Jerusalem, accompanied on the organ by Herbert Wiseman.
在赫伯特·怀斯曼的风琴伴奏下，我们演唱了布莱克的《耶路撒冷》作为终曲。
来自柯林斯例句
3. The most powerful organ of government in Scotland is the Scottish Office.
苏格兰职权最大的政府部门是苏格兰事务部。
来自柯林斯例句
4. He was lucky that the bullet hadn't entered a vital organ.
他很幸运,子弹没有打进身体的要害部位.
来自《简明英汉词典》
5. This paper is the official organ of the Socialist Party.
