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Harassment ( or ) covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour which disturbs or upsets, and it is characteristically repetitive. In the legal sense, it is behaviour which appears to be threatening or disturbing. Sexual harassment refers to persistent and unwanted sexual advances, typically in the workplace, where the consequences of refusing are potentially very disadvantageous to the victim. ==Etymology== The word is based in English since circa 1618 as loan word from the French ''フランス語:harassement'', which was in turn already attested in 1572 meaning ''torment, annoyance, bother, trouble'' 〔J. Amyot, Œuvres morales, p. 181〕 and later as of 1609 was also referred to ''the condition of being exhausted, overtired''.〔M. Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, I, 479〕〔Etymology of (harassement ) in the French etymologic dictionary CNRTL (in French)〕 Of the French verb ''harasser'' itself there are the first records in a Latin to French translation of 1527 of Thucydides’ History of the war that was between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians both in the countries of the Greeks and the Romans and the neighbouring places where the translator writes ''harasser'' allegedly meaning ''harceler'' (to exhaust the enemy by repeated raids); and in the military chant Chanson du franc archer〔The original (text ) of the chant〕 of 1562, where the term is referred to a gaunt jument (''de poil fauveau, tant maigre et harassée'': of fawn horsehair, so meagre and …) where it is supposed that the verb is used meaning ''overtired''.〔Etymology of (harasser ) in the French etymologic dictionary CNRTL (in French)〕 A hypothesis about the origin of the verb ''harasser'' is ''harace''/''harache'', which was used in the 14th century in expressions like ''courre à la harache'' (to pursue) and ''prendre aucun par la harache'' (to take somebody under constraint). The Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, a German etymological dictionary of the French language (1922–2002) compares phonetically and syntactically both ''harace'' and ''harache'' to the interjection ''hare'' and ''haro'' by alleging a pejorative and augmentative form. The latter was an exclamation indicating distress and emergency (recorded since 1180) but is also reported later in 1529 in the expression ''crier haro sur'' (to arise indignation over somebody). ''hare'' 's use is already reported in 1204 as an order to finish public activities as fairs or markets and later (1377) still as command but referred to dogs. This dictionary suggests a relation of ''haro''/''hare'' with the old lower franconian '' *hara'' (here) (as by bringing a dog to heel).〔Etymology of (haro )〕 While the pejorative of an exclamation and in particular of such an exclamation is theoretically possible for the first word (''harace'') and maybe phonetically plausible for ''harache'', a semantic, syntactic and phonetic similarity of the verb ''harasser'' as used in the first popular attestation (the chant mentioned above) with the word ''haras'' should be kept in mind: Already in 1160 ''haras'' indicated a group of horses constrained together for the purpose of reproduction and in 1280 it also indicated the enclosure facility itself, where those horses are constrained.〔Etymology of (haras )〕 The origin itself of ''harass'' is thought to be the old Scandinavian ''hârr'' with the Romanic suffix –as, which meant ''grey or dimmish horsehair''. Controversial is the etymological relation to the Arabic word for ''horse'' whose roman transliteration is faras. Although the French origin of the word ''harassment'' is beyond all question, in the Oxford English Dictionary and those dictionaries basing on it a supposed Old French verb ''harer'' should be the origin of the French verb ''harasser'', despite the fact that this verb cannot be found in French etymologic dictionaries like that of the or the (see also their corresponding websites as indicated in the interlinks); since the entry further alleges a derivation from ''hare'', like in the mentioned German etymological dictionary of the French language a possible misprint of ''harer'' = ''har/ass/er'' = ''harasser'' is plausible or cannot be excluded. In those dictionaries the relationship with ''harassment'' were an interpretation of the interjection ''hare'' as ''to urge/set a dog on'', despite the fact that it should indicate a shout to come and not to go (''hare'' = ''hara'' = ''here''; cf. above).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Harassment - Define Harassment at Dictionary.com )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Online Etymology Dictionary )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Harass - Definition of harass by Merriam-Webster )〕 The American Heritage Dictionary prudently indicates this origin only as possible. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Harassment」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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