| 单词 | 不大 |
| 释义 | 〔economy〕Economical or inexpensive to buy or use:廉价的，便宜的：经济的或买或使用起来花销不大的：〔governor〕The American Revolution did away with much that was British,but it neglected to discard an important British political term.The wordgovernor certainly seems to denote a very American office, and England has no corresponding official with that title for its counties.Nonetheless,governor has had a long history in English with reference to political rulers. In Middle Englishgovernour, the ancestor of governor, meant both "a sovereign ruler" and "a subordinate or substitute ruler.”In the later sense it was a natural term to use for heads of the British colonies in North America as well as elsewhere.During our colonial periodroyal governors were often unpopular,yet the word was not dropped after the Revolutionary Warand in fact was chosen to designate the executive head of a state when the United States of America was created.美国独立战争扫除了英国的许多东西，但却忽略了摒弃一个重要的英国政治术语。governor 这个单词肯定被看作是一个美国官方职务， 因为英国没有这样的官方职务。然而governor 作政权统治者含义在英国有很长的历史。 在中世纪的英语里，governour 是 governor 的前身， 意思是“主权统治者”和“下一级统治者或代理统治者。”用后一个意思来指英国在北美的殖民地或其他地方的首脑是很贴切的。在美国殖民地时期，皇家总督不大为人所知，然而这个词在独立战争以后并没被废除，实际上它被用来指美国建国以后各州的州长了〔fizzle〕In Philemon Holland's 1601 translation of Pliny'sNatural History, we are surprised by the use of the wordfizzle in the statement that if asses eat a certain plant,"they will fall a fizling and farting.” Fizzle was first used in English to mean,in the decorous parlance of theOxford English Dictionary, "to break wind without noise.” During the 19th centuryfizzle took on a related but more respectable sense, "to hiss, as does a piece of fireworks,”illustrated by a quotation from the November 7, 1881, issue of theLondon Daily News: "unambitious rockets which fizzle doggedly downwards.”In the same centuryfizzle also took on figurative senses, one of which seems to have been popular at Yale.TheYale Literary Magazine for 1849 helpfully defines the word as follows: “Fizzle, to rise with modest reluctance, to hesitate often, to decline finally; generally, to misunderstand the question.”The figurative sense offizzle that has caught on is the one with which we are most familiar today, "to fail or die out.”在腓利门荷兰1601年对普林尼的博物志 中， 我们对fizzle 一词的用法感到很惊讶， 它说如果驴吃了某种植物，“他们就会放屁。” Fizzle 首先在英语中指“无声地放屁，”是在牛津英语字典 的高雅用语中出现的。 在19世纪，fizzle 有了一个相关的但更文雅的含义， “发嘶嘶声，如同烟火那样，”这个词义是通过1881年11月7日的伦敦每日新闻 的引文说明的： “抱负不大的火箭，它们顽固地嘶嘶下坠。”同一世纪，fizzle 还赋与了比喻义， 其中的一个比喻义似乎在耶鲁大学很流行。1849年的耶鲁文学杂志 给这个词下了一个有益的定义： “Fizzle， 不十分情愿地上升，常犹豫不决，最终放弃； 通常是弄错问题。”人们已接受的fizzle 的比喻义， 即今天我们最为熟悉的“失败或消失”〔contingency〕An event that may occur but that is not likely or intended; a possibility.不测事件：可能发生但可能性又不大或非预期的事件；可能性〔less〕Not as great in amount or quantity:（数量上）较少的：在数或量上不大的：〔worth〕Here's my advice, for what it's worth.这是我的建议，尽管可能用处不大，你姑且听听〔count〕actions that import little;意义不大的行为；〔low〕Not loud; soft:低声的：不大的；轻柔的：〔certain〕Not great; calculable:不大的；可计算的：〔parallel〕In its mathematical usageparallel is an absolute term— two lines either do or do not intersect—and as such does not admit of qualification as to degree.Some grammarians have arguedthat this restriction should apply as well to nontechnical uses of the word.According to this logic,one may not sayThe two roads have been made more parallel, except perhaps as a loose way of saying what is rendered more precisely by expressions such asmore nearly parallel. Like the analogous objection that has been made to the comparison ofequal, the point betrays a misconception about the relation between mathematical concepts and their ordinary-language equivalents.Applied to objects in the world,parallel can only denote a rough approximation to a geometric ideal. A pair of rails or parked cars cannot be truly parallel in the mathematician's sense of the termbut only more or less so,just as a road or shelf cannot be truly straight in the geometric sensebut nonetheless may be described as very straight or relatively straight.The grammarians' compunctions make even less sense when applied to metaphorical uses ofparallel, as inThe difficulties faced by the Republicans are quite parallel to those that confronted the Democrats four years ago, in which the intended meaning has nothing to do with the possibility of intersectionbut instead suggests the structural correspondence of two distinct situations.In this sense, parallelism is clearly a matter of degreeand the wordparallel can be modified accordingly. See Usage Note at equal ,perfect ,unique 在数学用法中，parallel 是一个绝对的表达法—— 两条线要么相交，要么就不相交——它既没有限定性也没有程度差别。一些语法学家曾提出，这种限制也应该适用于该词在非科技方面的用法，按照这种逻辑，人们不能说这两条路已被修得更加平行了， 除非作为用例如更接近于平行 这样的表达方法更精确地表示的东西的不够精确的说出方法。 象对equal 的比较所做的类似反对一样， 这个观点使数学概念与普通用语中等价词之间的关系引起误解。当运用到世间的实物时，parellel 仅能指与几何理想状态大致接近的状况。 一对铁轨或停放的车辆不可能按数学家对于这个术语的理解来真正地相互并行，而不过是大致平行而已，正如公路和架子不可能是真正几何意义上的笔直，但仍可被描绘成很直的或相对而言的笔直。在用到parallel 的比喻用法时，语法学家的不安就更显得意义不大了， 例如：共和党人所面临的重重困难与四年前民主党人遇到的困难十分相似， 在这句话中，该词的引申意义与相交的可能性毫无关系，然而它暗指了两种不同情况结构上的一致。在此意义上，相似性明显是程度的问题，相应地，parallel 一词也能被其它词限定修饰了。 参见 equal,perfect,unique〔bosky〕"a bosky park leading to a modest yet majestic plaza"(Jack Beatty)“一个树木掩蔽的公园，它通向不大但宏伟的广场”(杰克·贝蒂)〔lonely〕Henry Bradley, one of the four editors of theOxford English Dictionary, said "It is a truth often overlooked, but not unimportant, that every addition to the resources of a language must in the first instance have been due to an act (though not necessarily to a voluntary or conscious act) of some one person.”In many casesthis one person may have been an author,since the first recorded instance of a word is often found in an author's work.Of course, as Bradley warns,this is the firstrecorded instance; it is possible that a given author picked up the word or sense somewhere elseor that these reside undiscovered in an earlier work.In any caseit might be a minor relief of our condition the next time we feel lonely to know that the first recorded instance of the wordlonely occurs in the works of Shakespeare. The passage appears inCoriolanus (1607-1608) in a speech by Coriolanus to his mother Volumnia:"My mother, you wot [know] well/My hazards still have been your solace, and/Believe't not lightly—though I go alone,/Like to alonely dragon, that his fen/Makes fear'd and talk'd of more than seen—your son/Will or exceed the common or be caught/With cautelous [crafty] baits and practice.” Lonely here, of course, has the sense "solitary.” The dragon does not feel dejected,or if he does,he does not seem to know how to reach out to others effectively.牛津英语词典 的四位编纂者之一亨利·布莱德雷说： “人们经常忽视这样一个现实，但它并非不重要，那就是对某种语言词汇的每一次添加都首先是由于某一个人的行为（尽管不一定是自愿的或有意识的行为）”。许多时候，这一个人可能是个作者，因为一个词有记载的首次使用往往出自一位作者的作品。当然，正如布莱德雷所提醒人们的，这是首次有记载的 的例子； 某个作者可能是从别处学到这个词或这个意思，或是这个词或意思在更早的作品中已经出现，只是未被人们发现。不管怎样，当我们知道lonely 这个词的有记载的首次使用出现在莎士比亚的作品中时，这些都不大能减轻我们的沮丧心情。 在卡里奥拉纳斯 （1607-1608年）中， 卡里奥拉纳斯对他母亲弗罗姆尼娅讲的一段话中有这样的文字：“我的母亲，你清楚地知道／我的冒险一直是你的安慰，而且／不要轻信——尽管我要只身前往，／就象去面对一条孤单的 龙，他的沼泽／令人谈而色变，尽管并未亲见——你的儿子／决意或是胜过凡人或是被狡猾的圈套和手段擒捉”。 Lonely 在这里的意思当然是“孤单的”。 龙不会感到沮丧，即便它感到沮丧，他也不太可能知道如何让别人体会到它的感情〔modest〕a modest price; a newspaper with a modest circulation.适中的价格，订阅量不大的报纸 |
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