世间万物的存在，必定有其存在的价值和意义，每一个事物的产生必定有其产生的根源，并非凭空而降。

Germanium锗

1885 年德国矿物学家威斯巴克在一矿山发现了一种以硫化银为主的新 矿石——弗赖堡矿石即硫化银锗矿（4Ag2S·GeS2）。

1886 年，德国化学家温克勒（C.A.Winkler）分析这一新矿物，八个全 分析结果均差 7％左右，因此他断定矿石中一定含有一种未知的新元素。他 认为这新元素必定同砷、锑、锡三者同属于一分析组，将矿物与碳酸钠和硫共熔，然后溶于水中，过滤，溶液中加入大量盐酸即得到大量片状的白色 淀，把这沉淀烘干后于氢气流中加热还原，就分离出这种新元素。温克勒为了纪念他的祖国德意志，把新元素命名为 Germanium，即“锗”， 源自德国的拉丁名称“Germania”。

The nationality term German, incidentally, is probably of Celtic origin, and has no etymological connection with germane.

germ As its close relatives germane and germinate suggest, germ has more to do etymologically with ‘sprouting’ and ‘coming to life’ than with ‘disease’. It comes via Old French germe from Latin germen ‘sprout, offshoot’, which may go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *gen- ‘produce’ (source of English gene, generate, genitive, etc). The meaning ‘sprout, from which new life develops’ persisted into English (and still occurs in such contexts as wheatgerm–and indeed in metaphorical expressions like ‘the germ of an idea’). Then at the beginning of the 19th century germane it began to be used to put into words the idea of a ‘seed’ from which a disease grew: ‘The vaccine virus must act in one or other of these two ways: either it must destroy the germe of the small-pox … or it must neutralize this germe’, Medical Journal 1803. By the end of the century it was an accepted colloquialism for ‘harmful microorganism’.

Germane is an alteration of german ‘closely related’, which now survives only in the rather archaic expression cousin-german. This came via Old French germain from Latin germānus, which meant ‘of the same race’ (it was a derivative of germen‘sprout, offspring’, from which English gets germ). The use of germane for ‘relevant’ as opposed to simply ‘related’ seems to have been inspired by Hamlet’s comment that a remark of Osric’s would have been ‘more german to the matter, if we could carry cannon by our sides’.

germ n. 细菌, 根源, 种子 n.萌芽, 起源

【同】 beginning microorganism origin seed

german adj. 同父母的; 同祖父母的, 同外祖父母的

germane adj. 有密切关系的

【同】 germane(p) related