单词 | 字面意义 |
释义 | 〔boil〕 Seethe emphasizes in both senses the turbulence of steady boiling at high temperature: Seethe 字面意义及喻意均强调高温下持续煮而产生翻滚: 〔wit〕 Irony is a form of expression in which an intended meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning of the words used: Irony 是一种用相反的字面意义表达所要达到的意义的形式: 〔bewilder〕The wordbewilder is probably used much more commonly in its figurative sense "to confuse" than in its literal sense "to cause to lose one's bearings; disorient.” Yet the latter sense is most likely the clue to the original source of this word.Bewilder, first recorded in 1684, is made up of the prefix be-, here meaning "completely,” and the verb wilder, meaning "to cause to lose one's way,” first found in 1613. Wilder may in turn be a back-formation from wilderness, a much older word than wilder. Users of English might have erroneously thought thatwilderness was derived from an older verb wilder, which they then used with reference to the loss of one's way that can occur in a wilderness.单词bewilder 大概多用其比喻意义“使迷惑”,而少用其字面意义“使失去方向;使迷失方向”。 虽然后者更接近这个词的本意。Bewilder 一词于1684年首次有文字记载,由前缀 be- 这里意为“完全地”和1613年首次发现的意为“使迷路”的动词 wilder 组成。 Wilder 可能从 wilderness 反演而来,一个比 wilder 古老得多的词。 英语使用者可能误以为wilderness 是从更古老的动词 wilder 产生的, 于是他们把wilderness与可能发生在荒野中的迷路联系起来〔winter〕Winter, spring, summer, fall.It is not too difficult to see how the season namesspring and fall came into being, but without some background information it is impossible to tell what the origins of the wordswinter and summer are. Summer goes back to the Indo-European root .sem-, meaning "summer.” From a suffixed form of this root came the prehistoric Common Germanic word.sumaraz, the ancestor of Old Englishsumor and its descendant, Modern English summer. This is the only Indo-European root referring to a season that has survived in an English name for a season.Of the other three,.wesr-, "spring,” has produced words such as vernal; ghyem-, "winter,” has given us words such as hibernate; andesen-, "harvest, fall,” has yielded earn ( from the prehistoric Common Germanic word.aznōn, "to do harvest work, serve"). Winter does, however, go back to the Indo-European root wed-, "water, wet.” From the formwe-n-d- of this root with the nasal infix -n- was derived the Germanic word .wintruz, with the underlying meaning "wet season" and the literal meaning "winter.”The Germanic word is the source of Old Englishwinter, the ancestor of Modern English winter. 冬,春,夏,秋。说出季节名spring 和 fall 的来历不是很难, 但如果没有一些背景知识,不可能知道winter 和 summer 的词源。 Summer 可追溯到印欧语中的词根 sem- ,意思是“夏天”。 给这个词根加后缀后又转化为史前的普通日尔曼词sumaraz, 这是古英语中sumor 的前身,由此又发展来现代英语中的 summer。 这是印欧语中表季节的词根在英语中作为季节名保留下来的唯一一个。另外三个wesr- “春”产生了象 vernal这类的词; ghyem-“冬”又给了我们单词 hibernate; esen- “收获,秋天”衍生出 earn ( 从史前的普通日尔曼词aznon “做收获的工作,服务”而来)。 然而winter 得追溯到印欧词根 wed- “水,湿的”。 由这个词根的we-n-d 形式和鼻音中缀 -n- 衍生出日尔曼语词 wintruz, 其隐含的意思是“湿润的季节”和字面意义“冬天”。这个日尔曼词是古英语中winter 的前身,也是现代英语 winter 的前身 〔shyster〕The origin ofshyster was not known for certain until recently. According to one etymology,shyster comes from the surname of one Scheuster, a disreputable and almost certainly nonexistent mid-19th-century attorney.In his bookHuman Words, a collection of words formed from the names of people, Robert Hendrickson says that Dr. Henry Bosley Woolf and others "list the New York advocate as a possible source.”But the actual etymology, according to Gerald L. Cohen, a student of the word,is less flattering.According to this etymology,the word is derived from the German termscheisser, meaning literally "one who defecates,”from the verbscheissen, "to defecate,” with the English suffix-ster, "one who does,” substituted for the German suffix -er, meaning the same thing. Sheisser, which is chiefly a pejorative term, is the German equivalent of our English termsbastard and son of a bitch. Sheisser is generally thought to have been borrowed directly into English as the word shicer, which, among other things, is an Australian English term for an unproductive mine or claim,a sense that is also recorded for the wordshyster. shyster 一词的来源直到最近才能较确切地弄清楚。 根据词源,shyster 来自一个叫 Scheuster 的人的姓, 他是一位声名狼籍而且很可能并不存在的19世纪中期的律师。罗伯特·亨德里克森在他的人类词汇 (一本由人名组成的词汇集)一书中说, 亨利·博斯利·任尔夫博士和其他的人“将纽约的鼓吹者列为一种可能的出处”。但是据加兰德·L·科恩——一位研究词汇的学生看来,这个词的真正词源更令人不快。根据这种词源,这个词来自德语Scheisser, 字面意义为“大便的人”,是从动词scheissen “排泄”而来, 用一英语词缀-ster (做…的人)代替了表相同意义的德语词缀 -er 。 Sheisser 主要用作贬蔑语, 在德语中相当于我们英语中bastard 及 son of a bitch。 Sheisser一般被认为是直接借入英语作为 Schicer 一词, 在澳式英语中指不再产出的矿山或没有结果的要求,这一意义也被记录在Shyster 这个词中 〔sterile〕These adjectives in literal usage mean not producing or unable to produce offspring; figuratively they suggest a lack of productiveness.To besterile is to be incapable of reproducing; by extension the term implies a lack of vitality, creativity, or effectiveness: 这些形容词字面意义是不育的或无能力生育的;比喻意义为不具备多产性的。Sterile 指无繁殖能力的, 其扩充涵义为缺乏生气、创造性或影响力的: 〔neighbor〕Loving one's neighbor as oneself would be much easier,or perhaps much more difficult,if the wordneighbor had kept to its etymological meaning. The source of our word,the assumed West Germanic form.nāhgabūr, was a compound of the words.nēhwiz, "near,” and .būram, "dweller, especially a farmer.” A neighbor, then, was a near dweller.Nēahgebūr, the Old English descendant of this West Germanic word, and its descendant in Middle English, neighebor, and our Modern English neighbor have all retained the literal notion,even though one can now have many neighbors whom one does not know,a situation that would have been highly unlikely in earlier times.The extension of this word to mean "fellow" is probably attributable to the Christian concern with the treatment of one's fellow human beings,as in the passage in Matthew 19:19 that urges love of one's neighbor.象爱自己一样爱邻居会更容易,也可能更难,如果neighbor 这个词保持其词源意义的话。 这个词的来源,假定在西日耳曼语中形式为nahgabur, 是nehwiz “附近的”和 buram “居住者,尤指农夫”的合成词。 那么邻居就是附近的居住者。Neahgebur 这个西日耳曼词发展的古英语形式, 中世纪英语形式nerghebor 及现代英语 neighbor 形式, 都保持了字面意义,即使现在一个可能有许多人都不认识的邻居,这是一种以前很不可能有的情况。这个词的引申意义“人”大概出自基督徒关心如何对待世人,比如在《马太19:19》中就有要求热爱自己邻居的篇章〔funky〕When asked which words in the English language are the most difficult to define precisely,a lexicographer would surely mentionfunky. The meaning offunky seems well captured by Geneva Smitherman in Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America, where she states that funky means “[related to] the blue notes or blue mood created in jazz, blues, and soul music generally, down-to-earth soulfully expressed sounds; by extension [related to] the real nitty-gritty or fundamental essence of life, soul to the max.”Be that as it may,funky is first recorded in 1784 in a reference to musty, old, moldy cheese. Funky then developed the sense "smelling strong or bad,” which could be used to describe body odor.Butfunky was applied to jazz, too—a usage explained in 1959 by one F. Newton inJazz Scene : "Critics are on the search for something a little more like the old, original, passion-laden blues: the trade-name which has been suggested for it is ‘funky’(literally: ‘smelly,’ i.e. symbolizing the return from the upper atmosphere to the physical, down-to-earth reality).” Funky comes from the earlier nounfunk, which meant "a strong smell or stink.” This noun can probably be traced back to the Latin wordfūmus, "smoke.” 当被问及英语中最难准确定义的是哪些词时,词典编纂者肯定会提到funky 这个词。 Funky 的含义似乎被热纳瓦·史密斯曼在 语言和证明: 美国黑人语言一节中解释得很清楚,她认为 funky 指“主要在爵士乐、布鲁斯歌曲、灵乐这些发自灵魂深处的音乐中创造出的音符式的忧郁; 由此延伸为与生命本质精髓有关的,表现美国黑人及其文化特点到极致的。”Funky 最早可能被记录于1784年,用于指发霉的、过期的奶酪。 后来,funky 引申到这层意思“闻起来强烈或有异味的,” 可以用来形容身体的气味。但funky 也用于指爵士乐方面, 这种用法于1959年在一位名叫F·牛顿的人的书爵士舞台 中有所解释: “批评家们正在找一种有些更象原始的、激情洋溢的老布鲁斯歌曲一样的东西:用来表现后的词就是‘有气息的’(字面意义:‘有气味的,’也就是说,从高高在上的格调降回到自然而率直的风格)。” Funky 一词来自较早出现的名词funk, 意为“一种刺鼻的气味或臭味”。 这个词可能可追溯到拉丁词fumus, “烟” 〔dungeon〕The worddungeon may have gone down in the world quite literally, if one etymology of the word is correct. Dungeon may go back to a Vulgar Latin word,domniō, meaning "the lord's tower,”which came from Latindominus, "master.” In Middle English,in which our word is first recorded in a work composed around the beginning of the 14th century,it meant "a fortress, castle,” and "the keep of a castle" as well as "a prison cell underneath the keep of the castle.”Dungeon can still mean "keep,” although the usual spelling for this sense is donjon, but the meaning most usually associated with it is certainly not elevated.It is also possible thatdungeon goes back to a Germanic word related to our word dung. This assumed Germanic word would have meant "an underground house constructed of dung.”If this etymology is correct, the worddungeon has ended up where it began. 单词dungeon 的一种词源是它以其字面意义流传下来, 如果这个单词其中的一种语源是正确的话。 Dungeon 可追溯到拉丁俗词domnio, 意为“领主的塔”,这一拉丁俗词又来自拉丁文dominus, 意为“主人”。 在中古英语时期,该词首次记录于作于14世纪初的一部作品,意为“要塞,城堡”,“城堡主楼”以及“城堡方楼下的地牢”。Dungeon 仍有城堡主楼的意思,但最常与之联系在一起的这一拼法为 donjon, 但最常与之联系在一起的这一意义显然流传不广。Dungeon 还可能上溯到与之相联系的日耳曼语词 dung。 这一假设的日耳曼语词可能曾意为“由粪建构的地下房屋“。假如这一词源正确,dungeon 一词结束于它起源的地方 〔connote〕To suggest or imply in addition to literal meaning:隐含:在字面意义之外显示或暗指的含义: |
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