The word says its own picture: uni + form, one form. Picture a row of things cut to exactly the same shape — same size, same colour, no odd one out. Once you dress a whole group in that one form, the row of matching people is what English calls a uniform, and being inside those clothes came to say what job you do.
From the word’s history
The adjective came first, in the late 15th century, from French uniforme and Latin uniformis 'having only one form or shape' (uni- 'one' + forma 'form'). The clothing noun is much later, 1748, first in military use: clothes all cut to one same form for the members of one body. So the abstract sameness is the older layer, and the clothes are that sameness made out of cloth.
先有形容詞：十五世紀末從法語 uniforme、拉丁語 uniformis 來，意思是「只有一種形式或形狀」（uni-「一」+ forma「形狀」）。衣服那個名詞晚很多，一七四八年才出現，最早用在軍隊：同一個團體的人，衣服全照同一個樣式做。所以「一致」是比較老的那一層，而制服，就是這份一致被做成了布料。
Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/word/uniform
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料10 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
uniformadj/ˈjunɪˌfɔɹm/
- 1
Unvarying; all the same.
- "Chocolate and cream," the standard colours of G.W.R. rolling stock for 21 years, are now being replaced by an all-over utility coating of reddish-brown. This is the third time that a uniform brown has been adopted as the standard livery of G.W.R. carriages.
- Some exponents of these ideas went so far as to maintain that the perfect society required all its members to be completely uniform in all respects-not only their rights and duties, but their way of life and thought, food and clothing, and even (according to Dom Deschamps and others) their physical appearance.
- 2
Consistent; conforming to one standard.
- The only doubt is, about the manner of their unity; how far Churches are bound to be uniform in their Ceremonies, and what way they ought to take for that purpose.
- 3
mathematicsscienceswith speed of convergence not depending on choice of function argument; as in uniform continuity, uniform convergence
- 4
chemistrynatural-sciencesphysical-sciencesComposed of a single macromolecular species.
- 5
geometrymathematicssciences(of a polyhedron) That is isogonal and whose faces are regular polygons; (of an n-dimensional (n>3) polytope) that is isogonal and whose bounding (n-1)-dimensional facets are uniform polytopes.
uniformnoun/ˈjunɪˌfɔɹm/
- 1
A distinctive outfit that serves to identify members of a group, company, prison inmates, etc.
- The Hooverette [housedress] can be worn as a dress or as an apron. This is the latest in uniforms, madam, according to Vogue.
- ‘[…] I remember a lady coming to inspect St. Mary's Home where I was brought up and seeing us all in our lovely Elizabethan uniforms we were so proud of, and bursting into tears all over us because “it was wicked to dress us like charity children”.[…]’.
- 2
governmentlaw-enforcementA uniformed police officer (as opposed to a detective).
- Skeletor held the gun against Speedo’s head, held Speedo between himself and the cops who stood, motionless and futile, where they’d stopped. Robinson, Lindfors, Carter, three uniforms and I watched helpless as Skeletor, dragging Speedy with him, inched out the gate, started backing down the hill.
- Four men flew out of it, three uniforms and one in what appeared to be an English riding outfit—boots, whip, the whole nine yards. […] He called out, “I’m the superintendent of police.”
- 3
computer-graphicscomputingengineeringIn OpenGL, a global shader variable whose value does not change between rendering calls, serving as a parameter.
- 2009, Randi J. Rost, Bill Licea-Kane, Dan Ginsburg, OpenGL Shading Language Hence, uniforms of the same name in a vertex and fragment program will be the same uniform variable. Uniforms cannot be written to in a shader. This is sensible because an array of processors may be sharing the same resources […]
uniformverb/ˈjunɪˌfɔɹm/
- 1
To clothe in a uniform.
- You can't erect an army by uniforming and drilling a few hundred thousand clerks and farmers.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。