fledge

英 [fledʒ] 美[flɛdʒ]

畅通词汇GRE

第三人称单数: fledges;过去式: fledged;过去分词: fledged;现在分词: fledging;

1、fly => fledge. lay => ledge.
2、1、fly + -edge => fledge. lay + -edge => ledge.
3、含义：having the feathers, fit to fly.

fledge: fledge: [16] The notion underlying fledge is the ‘ability to fly’. Historically, the idea of ‘having feathers’ is simply a secondary development of that underlying notion. The verb comes from an obsolete adjective fledge ‘feathered’, which goes back ultimately to a pre-historic West Germanic *fluggja (source also of German flügge ‘fledged’). This was derived from a variant of the base which produced English fly.

There is no immediate connection with fletcher ‘arrowmaker’ [14], despite the formal resemblance and the semantic connection with ‘putting feathered flights on arrows’, but further back in time there may be a link. Fletcher came from Old French flechier, a derivative of fleche ‘arrow’. A possible source for this was an unrecorded Frankish *fliugika, which, like fledge, could be traceable back to the same Germanic ancestor as that of English fly.
=> fly
fledge (v.): "to acquire feathers," 1560s, from Old English adjective *-flycge (Kentish -flecge; in unfligge "featherless," glossing Latin implumes) "having the feathers developed, fit to fly," from Proto-Germanic *flugja- "ready to fly" (cognates: Middle Dutch vlugge, Low German flügge), from PIE *pleuk- "to fly" (see fletcher). Meaning "bring up a bird" (until it can fly on its own) is from 1580s. Related: Fledged; fledging.

1. Those people should accuse of using living animals like chickens or rabbits fledge boa.: 用活的动物，例如小鸡或者兔子来喂养蟒蛇的人应该被谴责。

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