| 单词 | 中意 |
| 释义 | 〔comet〕Comets have been feared throughout much of human history,and even in our own time their goings and comings receive great attention.Perhaps a comet might seem less awesome if we realized that our name for it is based on a figurative resemblance between it and human beings.This figurative name is recorded first in the works of Aristotle,in which he useskomē, the Greek word for "hair of the head,” to mean "luminous tail of a comet.” Aristotle then uses the derived wordkomētēs, "wearing long hair,” as a noun meaning "comet.” The Greek word was adopted into Latin ascomētēs, which was refashioned in Late Latin and given the formcomēta, furnishing Old English with comēta, the earliest English ancestor of our wordcomet. 在大多数人类历史期间，人们害怕彗星，甚至在我们自己的时代彗星的到来与离去仍受到很大注意。如果我们认识到我们对它的名字是基于它和人在外形上的相似性，也许彗星看起来就不太可怕了。比喻的名字首先记录在亚里士多德的著作中，他使用的kome 是希腊语中意为“头发”的词，表示“彗星明亮的尾巴。 然后亚里士多德使用导出的单词kometes “戴长发”，作为名词意义的"comet"。 希腊单词被采用到拉丁语为cometes， 它再形成晚期拉丁语，给定形式为cometa， 以 cometa 的形式出现于老式英语， 这就是我们单词comet 的最早英语原形 〔bylaw〕A casual glance at the wordbylaw might make one think that the element by- means "secondary, subsidiary,” especially sincebylaw can mean "a secondary law.” It is possible thatby-, as in byway, has influencedbylaw in the sense "secondary law"; however,bylaw existed long before the sense in question. The word is first recorded in 1283 with the meaning "a body of customs or regulations, as of a village, manor, religious organization, or sect.”By- in this word comes from Old Norse, as may the wordbylaw, and is related to if not identical with the element -by in the names of many places, such as Whitby, where Scandinavians settled when they invaded England during the early Middle Ages.We get the sense of this-by if we compare the related word entered as bær, b÷r, bȳr, in the standard dictionary of Old Icelandic, meaning "a town or village" in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and "a farm or landed estate" in Iceland. We thus see whybylaw would mean "a body of customs of a village or manor" and why we use the word to mean "a law or rule governing the internal affairs of an organization.”随意瞟一眼单词bylaw 可能会使人想起前缀 by- ，意为“第二位的，次要的”， 因为bylaw 意为“附属的法规”。 可能因为前缀by- 位于 byway 中， 它影响了bylaw “附属法规”这一意义； 然而bylaw 一词在上述意义产生之前早已存在。 该词最初是在1283年以“一种习俗或规章体系，如村庄、县邑、宗教组织或派系之中”这种含义记载的。前缀By- 来自古斯堪的纳维亚语中， 正如bylaw 一词在许多地名之中与后缀 -by 若不是完全一致，就是彼此相关， 如惠特比，这是斯堪的纳维亚人在中世纪早期侵入英格兰之后的定居地。如果我们将古冰岛标准字典中的相关词bær, b÷r, bȳr （在挪威、瑞典和丹麦这些国家中意为“城镇或村庄”而在冰岛意为“农场或庄园”）加以比较，就会得出后缀 -by 的含义。 我们因而可以明白为什么bylaw 一词意为“村庄或县邑的习俗体系” 以及我们为什么使用其“一种法规或规则，用于管理一个组织的内部事务”这一意义〔Frisbee〕A trademark used for a plastic disk-shaped toy that players throw and catch. This trademark sometimes occurs in print meaning "a throw-and-catch game played with this toy":飞碟：一种玩时由游戏者抛出和接住的碟形塑料玩具商标，此商标有时在书面语中意为“使用这种玩具的抛接游戏”：〔wilderness〕Deer comes from the Old English word dēor, meaning "beast.” Clearly the word has narrowed in meaning and lost its general sense.But another word in English,wilderness, may point to this general sense of Old English dēor. The etymology ofwilderness is variously given, but one etymology traces the-der- of wilderness back to dēor and wild- back to Old English wilde, "wild.” Der- may thus carry on dēor in its general sense, reminding us that wild beasts might be the only inhabitants of a wilderness.Wilderness, though it may have existed in Old English, is first found in 13th-century Middle English.Deer 来自于古英语中意为“野兽”的一词 deor 。 很明显这个词的词义缩小了，失去了它较笼统的意义。但英语中的另一个词wilderness, 大概会指出古英语中 deor 的笼统意义。 wilderness 的词源很多， 但一种说法顺着wilderness 中的 -der- 找到 deor ，顺着 wild- 中找到古英语中的 wilde “野蛮的”。 Der- 大概因此具有笼统意义上的 deor 的意义， 提醒我们野兽大概是荒野处的唯一居民。Wilderness 尽管在古英语中已存在， 但是在13世纪中世纪英语中首次出现的〔paradise〕Perhaps the supreme example of the semantic process known as melioration is the wordparadise. In tracing this word from its origins to its present status,we see an elevation, or melioration, of meaning that raises the word to new heights.The history begins with the Avestan (the eastern dialect of Old Iranian) wordpairi-daēza-, "enclosure,” made up ofpairi, "around,” and daēza-, "wall.” The Greek military leader and historian Xenophon, who served with Greek mercenaries in Persia,first used the Greek wordparadeisos adopted from the Avestan wordto refer to the Persian kings' and nobles' parks or pleasure grounds.This Greek word extended to mean "garden" or "orchard" was an obvious choice for translators of the Bible into Greekto use both for the Garden of Eden and the Abode of the Blessed, or heaven.The Greek word was adopted into Late Latin and was used much as we might expect in its biblical senses in ecclesiastical Latin (Late Latinparadīsus ). The Old English wordparadis taken from Latin is found, but our word probably really established itself in Middle English (first recorded before 1200),derived both from Latin and from Old French, which had adopted the word from Latin.paradise. 这个词也许能作为词义进化最典型的例子， 从它的起源到现在的地位，我们可以看到词义的进化或改进把这个词带到了一个新的高度。这个历史过程从意为“领地，圈地”的阿维斯陀语（古伊朗人西部方言）pairi-daeza-, 开始， 由意为“环形的”pairi, 和意为“墙”的 daeza-, 组成。 曾随希腊雇佣军到波斯服役的希腊军事将领和历史学家色诺芬，首先使用了希腊语词paradeisos, ， 该词采用了阿维斯陀词，指波斯国王和贵族们的花园或游乐场，这个希腊词衍生到表示“花园”或“果园”，显然是译者在把《圣经》翻译成希腊文时所做出的选择，以用来表明伊甸园和天国或天堂，有这两种含义的希腊词被引入后期的拉丁语中且当它们在教会拉丁文（后期拉丁语paradisus )中意为《圣经》方面的意义时被更广泛地使用， 古英语paradis 一词来自拉丁文， 但我们用的这个词可能在中古英语（首次记录在1200年前）中真正确立了起来，人们发现它源于拉丁文和从拉丁文中采纳了这个词的古法语 |
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