if: [OE] The Old English version of if was gif, but its initial g was closer to modern English y in pronunciation than to g, and the conjunction gradually evolved through Middle English yif to if. It is not known where it ultimately came from; it is evidently connected with Old High German iba ‘condition’ and Old Norse ef ‘doubt’, but whether it started life as a noun like these or was from the beginning a conjunction is not clear. Its surviving Germanic relatives are German ob ‘whether’ and Dutch of ‘if’.
if (conj.)
Old English gif (initial g- in Old English pronounced with a sound close to Modern English -y-), from Proto-Germanic *ja-ba (cognates: Old Saxon, Old Norse ef, Old Frisian gef, Old High German ibu, German ob, Dutch of "if, whether"), from PIE pronominal stem *i- [Watkins]; Klein, OED suggest probably originally from an oblique case of a noun meaning "doubt" (compare Old High German iba "condition, stipulation, doubt," Old Norse if "doubt, hesitation," Swedish jäf "exception, challenge"). As a noun from 1510s.
双语例句
1. If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.
如果你等待，发生的只有变老。
来自金山词霸 每日一句
2. If you love life, life will love you back.
热爱生活，生活也会厚爱你。
来自金山词霸 每日一句
3. If you're not satisfied with the life you're living, don't just complain. Do something about it.
对于现况的不满，不能只是抱怨，要有勇气作出改变。
来自金山词霸 每日一句
4. If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.--Jean Paul Sartre
如果你独处时感到寂寞，说明没有把自己陪好。
来自金山词霸 每日一句
5. Friendship means understanding, not agreement. It means forgiveness, not forgetting.It means the memories last, even if contact is lost.