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| 释义 | 〔midwife〕The wordmidwife is the sort of word whose etymology is perfectly clear until one tries to figure it out.Wife would seem to refer to the woman giving birth, who is usually a wife,butmid ? A knowledge of older senses of words helps us with this puzzle.Wife in its earlier history meant "woman,” as it still did when the compoundmidwife was formed in Middle English (first recorded around 1300). Mid is probably a preposition, meaning "together with.”Thus amidwife was literally a "with woman" or "a woman who assists other women in childbirth.” Even though obstetrics has been rather resistant to midwifery until fairly recently,the etymology ofobstetric is rather similar, going back to the Latin wordobstetrīx, "a midwife,” from the verbobstāre, "to stand in front of,” and the feminine suffix -trix; theobstetrīx would thus literally stand in front of the baby. 单词midwife 属于那类语源看起来相当明了的词， 可当人们试着搞清楚时，才发现并不那么简单。Wife 似乎是指临产的妇女， 通常都身为人妇，但是mid 指的是什么呢？ 通过了解词语原有的含义我们可以解开这个谜。Wife 早期时意指“妇女”， 当midwife 这个复合词在中古英语中形成的时候它仍然有此含义（首次记载于1300年前后）。 Mid 有可能是个介词， 意为“与…在一起”。这样midwife 字面上的意思就是“与妇女在一起”或者“帮助临产妇女生产的妇女”。 虽然直到近期产科学还一直抵制助产术一词，但是obstetric 的语源却与其很相似。 它可以上溯到拉丁词语obstetrix 意为“接生者”， 该词由动词obstare “站在…的前面”再加上阴性后缀 -trix 构成； 于是obstetrix 这个词字面上的意思是站在婴儿前面的人 〔dynamite〕The same man who gave us dynamite gave us the Nobel Peace Prize,an irony that was surely not lost on the pacifistic Alfred Nobel himself.It is perhaps less well known that Nobel also contributed the worddynamite. Coined in Swedish in the formdynamit, the word was taken from Greekdunamis, "power,” and the Swedish suffix-it, which corresponds to our suffix-ite used in various scientific fields. Greekdunamis also gave us words such as dynamic and dynamo and itself probably goes back to the verbdunasthai, "to be able,” from which comesdynasty. 正是那个为我们制造炸药的人建立了诺贝尔和平奖，这种反语在阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔，这个和平主义者身上反映出来。而鲜为人知的是诺贝尔还创造了dunamite 这个词。 该词以瑞典语dynamit 形式创造， 取自希腊文dunamis ，意为“力量”， 再加上瑞典语的后缀-it， 相当于英文用于各种科学领域的后缀-ite。 希腊词dunamis 还向我们提供了其他词，如 dynamic 和 dynamo ， 而后者本身可能追源到动词dunasthai ， 由此又产生了dynasty 〔rarely〕Strictly speaking,the use ofever after rarely and seldom is redundant; 严格地说，在rarely 和 seldom 后面再加上 ever 是一种重复： 〔hopefully〕And though this use ofhopefully may have been a vogue word when it first gained currency 30 years ago, it has long since lost any taint of jargon or pretentiousness for the general reader.The well-attested acceptance of the usage reflects an implicit popular recognition of its usefulness;there is no precise substitute.Someone who saysHopefully, the treaty will be ratified makes a hopeful prediction about the fate of the treaty,whereas someone who saysI hope (or We hope or It is hoped ) the treaty will be ratified expresses a bald statement about what is desired. Only the latter could be continued with a clause such asbut it isn't likely. · It might have been expected, then, that the initial flurry of objections tohopefully would have subsided once the usage became well established. Instead, increased currency of the usage appears only to have made the critics more adamant.In the 1969 Usage Panel survey the usage was acceptable to 44 percent of the Panel;in the most recent survey it was acceptable to only 27 percent.(By contrast, 60 percent accepted the analogous use ofmercifully in the sentence Mercifully, the game ended before the opponents could add another touchdown to the lopsided score. ) Yet the Panel has not shown any signs of becoming generally more conservative:in the very same survey panelists were disposed to accept once-vilified usagessuch as the employment ofcontact and host as verbs. · It seems that this use ofhopefully has been made a litmus test, which distinguishes writers who take an active interest in questions of grammar or usage from the great mass of people who keep their own linguistic counsel.No one can be blamed who useshopefully in blithe ignorance of the critics' disdain for it, since the rule could not be derived from any general concern for clarity or precision.But writers who are aware of the critical controversy face a more delicate decision.Some will simply flout the rule,seeing no reason that they should be deprived of a useful construction.Others may choose to avoid the usage,whether they are motivated by discretion or civility. ·Like other sentence adverbs such asbluntly and happily, hopefully may occasionally be ambiguous. In the sentenceHopefully, the company has launched a new venture, the word hopefully might be construed as describing the point of view of either the speaker or the subject. Such ambiguities can be resolved either by repositioning the adverb (as inThe company has launched the new venture hopefully ) or by choosing a paraphrase ( One may hope that the company has launched the new venture ). 尽管hopefully 的这一用法在30年前首次通用的时候曾是个时兴词， 但对于广大读者来说它早已失去了俚语或矫饰的色彩。屡经证实的对这一用法的接受反映了对其实用性的普遍默认；而且并不存在其他精确的代用词。有人如果说但愿条约能被批准 ， 便是对条约的命运作了充满希望的预测，反之如果有人说我希望 （或 我们希望 或 希望 ) 条约将会被批准 则表达了对其期望之物的大胆声明。 只有后者可以接从句象但这不大可能 。 也许我们本可以期待当这一用法已变得根深蒂固之后， 对hopefully 的一片反对声可稍事平息。 然而，这一用法的流行似乎反而使批评家们更为坚定。在1969年用法调查使用小组的调查中44%的成员接受这一用法；在最近一次的调查中却只有27%的成员接受。（相比之下，60%的人接受mercifully 在句子 幸好，在对手能够给这一边倒的比分再加上一分之前，比赛就结束了 中的类似用法） 但是并没有任何迹象表明调查小组成员正在普遍变得更保守：在同一次调查中小组成员们倾向于接受被一度废除的某些用法，如把contact 和 host 用作动词看来。 似乎hopefully 的用法已经成了一块试金石， 它把对语法和用法怀有浓厚兴趣的作家和保留着他们自己的语言学顾问的广大民众区分开来。那些全然忽视批评家们的蔑视使用hopefully 的人不该受到指责， 因为规则并不来源于任何对清晰和精确的关注。但是意识到了批评界争议的作者们面对着一个更为微妙的决定。有些人干脆违反规则，他们认为没有理由要失去这么一个实用的结构。另外一些人则选择避免这一用法，无论其动机是出于谨慎还是出于礼貌。象许多其它句中副词如bluntly 和 happily一样，hopefully 经常出现歧义。 在下句 Hopefully, the company has launched a new venture 中， hopefully 一词可以解释为记述说话者的观点或者句中主语的观点。 这种歧义可以通过调换副词位置（如公司已经满怀希望地到办了一个新企业 )或选择另一种说法( 有人希望这个公司已经创办了一个新企业 )来消除 〔cushy〕Sincecushy has such an informal, breezy, American ring, it is difficult to believe that it is an import, as some etymologists claim.Members of the British army in India are supposed to have picked up the Anglo-Indian version of the Hindi word±hūush, meaning "pleasant,” to which the suffix-y, as in empty and sexy, was added, thus forming a new English word. Cushy, however, is actually first recorded in a letter from the European battlefront during World War I. This fact, in conjunction with our inability to find an Anglo-Indian source,casts some doubt on the Hindi or Anglo-Indian origin ofcushy. Two other possibilities are thatcushy is a shortening of cushion with the -y suffix or that it is a borrowing of Frenchcouchée, "lying down; a bed.” 既然cushy 一词具有如此非正式的、愉快的美国意义， 很难相信某些词源学者所认为的说它是一个外来词。驻印度的英国军队士兵被认为是选用了印度英语±hūush 的英语说法，意思是“愉悦的”， 并如同empty 和 sexy 等词在其上加了 -y 这个后缀，从而形成了一个新英语单词。 然而，事实上cushy 一词却最先被记录在第一次世界大战期间发自欧洲战斗前线的一封信里。 这一事实，再加上我们无法找到其印度英语的词源，使我们对于cushy 一词源于印地语或印度英语的说法产生了某些怀疑。 另两种可能性，一种是cushy ，它是 cushion 的缩略形式再加上后缀 -y ； 另一种是法语couchee “躺下；床”的外来语 〔camp〕"Camp is popularity plus vulgarity plus innocence"(Indra Jahalani)“夸张做作是通俗加上粗俗再加上无知”(因德拉·贾哈拉尼)〔plus〕Their strength plus their spirit makes them formidable. Intelligence plus wit makes for an interesting person.他们的力量再加上勇气使得他们难于战胜。智慧加上机智就会造就一个有趣的人〔scupper〕"The world oil glut combined with disastrous federal energy policies to scupper Alberta's economy"(Christian Science Monitor)“世界石油过剩再加上具有破坏性的联合能源政策使阿尔伯达的经济遭受破坏”(基督教科学箴言报)〔rhubarb〕The wordrhubarb may contain two hidden references to its origins. The first of these is in therhu- part of the word, which can be traced back to the Greek wordrha, meaning "rhubarb.”According to the Late Latin historian Ammianus Marcellinus,rhubarb was namedrha because it grew near the river namedRha, which we know as the Volga. The-barb part of rhubarb was actually added first to Late Latin rha, descended from Greek rha, in the form rhabarbarum, barbarum being the neuter form of barbarus, "foreign.” Another Greek word for rhubarb,rhēon, influenced the Late Latin word rhabarbarum, giving usreubarbarum, which yielded Old Frenchreubarbe. The Old French form gave us Middle Englishrubarbe, first recorded in a work written around 1390.In imitation of the way the Greek wordrha is spelled, anh was added, completing the long journey of this word into English from the banks of the Volga in classical times.单词rhubarb 可能包含两个关于其语源的隐藏的参考信息。 第一个是单词中的rhu- 部分， 它可追溯到希腊单词rha， 意为“大黄。”根据后期拉丁历史学家阿米亚诺斯·马塞勒斯的意见，大黄被命名为rha， 因为它生长在我们称之为伏尔加河的Rha 河附近。 Rhubarb 中的 -barb 实际上最初以 rhabarbarum 的形式加在由希腊语 rha 传下来的后期拉丁语 rha 上， barbarum作为 barbarus （“异族的”）的中性形式。 另一个表大黄的希腊单词rheon 影响了后期拉丁单词 rhabarbarum， 让我们得到单词reubarbarum， 并由此产生了古法语词reubarbe 。 该古法语形式产生了中世纪英语rubarbe， 首次记录在写于1390年左右的一本著作中。模仿希腊单词rha 拼写的方式， 再加上一个h， 从而完成了这个词从古代伏尔加河岸转变到英语的漫长历程 |
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