album

英文詞源

album

album: [17] Latin albus ‘white’ has been the source of a variety of English words: alb ‘ecclesiastical tunic’ [OE], albedo ‘reflective power’ [19], Albion [13], an old word for Britain, probably with reference to its white cliffs, albumen ‘white of egg’ [16], and auburn, as well as albino. Album is a nominalization of the neuter form of the adjective, which was used in classical times for a blank, or white, tablet on which public notices were inscribed.

Its original adoption in the modern era seems to have been in Germany, where scholars kept an album amicorum ‘album of friends’ in which to collect colleagues’ signatures. This notion of an autograph book continues in Dr Johnson’s definition of album in his Dictionary 1755: ‘a book in which foreigners have long been accustomed to insert the autographs of celebrated people’, but gradually it became a repository for all sorts of souvenirs, including in due course photographs.
=> alb, albedo, albino, albumen, auburn, daub

album (n.)

1650s, from Latin album "white color, whiteness," neuter of albus "white" (see alb). In classical times "a blank tablet on which the Pontifex Maximus registered the principal events of the year; a list of names." Revived 16c. by German scholars whose custom was to keep an album amicorum of colleagues' signatures; meaning then expanded into "book to collect souvenirs." According to Johnson, "a book in which foreigners have long been accustomed to insert autographs of celebrated people." Photographic albums first recorded 1859. Meaning "long-playing gramophone record" is by 1951, because the sleeves they came in resembled large albums.