| 单词 | 搞清楚 |
| 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 〔eureka〕Greek heurēka [I have found (it) (supposedly exclaimed by Archimedes upon discovering how to measure the volume of an irregular solid and thereby determine the purity of a gold object)] [first person perfect of] heuriskein [to find] 希腊语 heurēka [“我找到了！”，“我搞清楚了！”（源自希腊数学家和发明家阿基米德发现测量不规则固体体积的方法，并以此发现测定金子纯度的方法时的惊呼）] heuriskein的第一人称完成时 [找到] |
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