bulb: [16] Bulb can be traced back to Greek bólbos, which was a name for various plants with a rounded swelling underground stem. In its passage via Latin bulbus to English it was often applied specifically to the ‘onion’, and that was its original meaning in English. Its application to the light bulb, dating from the 1850s, is an extension of an earlier 19th-century sense ‘bulbshaped swelling in a glass tube’, used from the 1830s for thermometer bulbs.
bulb (n.)
1560s, "an onion," from Middle French bulbe (15c.), from Latin bulbus "bulb, bulbous root, onion," from Greek bolbos "plant with round swelling on underground stem." Expanded by 1800 to "swelling in a glass tube" (thermometer bulb, light bulb, etc.).
例文
1. A 40 watt bulb would be quite sufficient and would not obtrude.
40ワットの電球は完全に明るく、まぶしくありません。
2.An efficient bulb may lighten the load of power stations.
省エネ電球一つで発電所の負荷を軽減できるかもしれない。
3. This makes the total cost of the bulb and energy ￡27.