| 单词 | 兜圈子 |
| 释义 | 〔talk〕talked around the subject but never got to the point.只是在那个话题上兜圈子而没有说到点子上〔mill〕Tomill, in Western U.S. English, means "to halt a cattle stampede by turning the lead animals.”In theOxford English Dictionary we find this 19th-century example of the verb: "At last the cattle ran with less energy, and it was presently easy to ‘mill’ them into a circle and to turn them where it seemed most desirable" (Munsey's Magazine).This usage ofmill comes from the resemblance of the cattle's circular motion to the action of millstones. A related intransitive sense of the verb is better known in Standard English: A crowd milled around in the street. Originally this sense ofmill also meant "circular motion"; now it means "to move around in churning confusion"with no pattern in particular.Mill 这个词在美国西部所说的英语中， 意为“通过让领头牲畜绕圈子跑来制止牛群的惊跑”。在牛津英语词典 中， 我们可以找到该动词19世纪用法的例子： “最后牛群终于跑得快没劲儿了，这时候可以容易地驱赶头牛，把其它牛绕进圈子里，然后把它们赶到最合适的地方去” （芒西杂志）。Mill 的这种用法来自牛群绕圈跑与磨石运作的相似之处。 该词作不及物动词时所具有的与此相关的意义在标准英语中更为常见： 一群人在大街上兜圈子。 Mill 的这一含义本来亦指“旋转运动”； 现在它指“在旋涡般的混乱中到处移动”，不再有其它特指〔orange〕Oranges imported to China from the United States reflect a journey come full circle,for the orange had worked its way westward for centuries, originating in China,then being introduced to India,and traveling on to the Middle East, into Europe,and finally to the New World.The history of the wordorange keeps step with this journey only part of the way. The word is possibly ultimately of Dravidian origin, that is, it comes from a language or languages in a large non-Indo-European family of languages,including Tamil and Telugu, that are spoken in southern India and northern Sri Lanka.The Dravidian word or words were adopted into the Indo-European language Sanskritwith the formnāraṅgaḥ. As the fruit passed westward,so did the word,as evidenced by Persiannārang and Arabic nāranj. Arabs brought the first oranges to Spain,and the fruit rapidly spread throughout Europe.The important word for the development of our term is Old Italianmelarancio, derived from mela, "fruit,” and arancio, "orange tree,” from Arabicnāranj. Old Italianmelarancio was translated into Old French as pume orenge, theo replacing the a because of the influence of the name of the town of Orange, from which oranges reached the northern part of France.The final stage of the odyssey of the word was its borrowing into English from the Old French formorenge. Our word is first recorded in Middle English in a text probably composed around 1380,a time preceding the arrival of the orange in the New World.从美国进口到中国的桔子恰恰反映出兜圈子似的行进里程，因为原产于中国的桔子几个世纪以来不断向西行进，先是被引入印度，之后传播到中东国家、欧洲，最后引进了新大陆，orange 这个词的发展历史只与桔子的发展历程在一部分时段上是有其同步性的， 它最可能是来源于达罗毗荼，也就是说，它来源于非印一欧语系中的一种或多种语言，包括用于印度南部和斯里兰卡北部的泰米尔语和泰卢固语。达罗毗荼语是以梵文形式引入印欧语系的，形式如narangch。 当这种水果向西传播时，这个单词也同样西传，从以下可得到明证，如波斯语中的narang 和阿拉伯语中的 naranj。 阿拉伯人把第一批桔子带到西班牙后，这种水果又迅速传遍整个欧洲。我们现时所用的这个词的发展期中重要的一词便是古意大利语melarancio ，源于 mela， “水果”及 arancio， “桔树”， 来源于阿拉伯语naranj。 古意大利语melarancio 翻译成古法语为 pume orenge， o 变换为 a 是因为受奥伦奇城名的影响， 桔子即由此地进入法国北部。这一单词长途跋涉的最后一站是它由古法语orenge 进入英语词汇。 我们所用的这一词汇最初载入中世纪英语是在大约1380年左右的一份文本当中，早于桔子进入新大陆的时间〔indirect〕His explanation was circuitous and puzzling.他的解释在兜圈子，让人费解。 |
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