| 单词 | 现代形式 |
| 释义 | 〔crocodile〕The crocodile may owe its name to its resemblance to a much smaller creature, a lizard that lived in the stone walls of Ionia.This lizard's name,krokodilos, is thought to be a compound of krokē, "pebble, gravel,” and drilos, which is only attested as meaning "circumcised man" but is assumed to mean "worm" as well. According to Herodotus, Ionians in Egypt noted the resemblance, probably humorously, between basking crocodiles and their own "worm of the stones.”The modern form of Englishcrocodile represents a return to the Classical Latin spelling crocodīlus, Latin having borrowed the word from Greek.But other spellings occurred in Classical Greek and Latin, and one of these Latin spellings,cocodrillus, passed into Medieval Latin and Old French (cocodril ) and then into English, so that our earliest possible use of the word, in a work perhaps composed before 1300, is spelledcokedrille. It was not until the 16th century that the word came to have its present spelling.The various spellings met with in the history ofcrocodile reflect the same sort of variations that occurred in the history of alligator. 鳄鱼可能是因为与一种比它小得多的生物，即生长在爱奥尼亚的石墙中的蜥蜴外表相似而得名。这种蜥蜴的名字krokodilos 被认为是由 kroke （意为“卵石，砾石”）一词和 drilos 这一（只被证明有“受割的人”的意思但又被假定有“蠕虫”的意思的）词组成的复合词。 希罗多德认为，埃及境内的爱奥尼亚人可能出于幽默而记下了晒太阳的鳄鱼和他们本地的“石头中的蠕虫”之间的类似点。英语的crocodile 的现代形式反映了古拉丁语拼法 crocodilus 的回归， 拉丁语中的这个词是从希腊语中引入的。但是出现在古希腊语和古拉丁语中的其它拼法以及其中一种拉丁语拼法，cocodrillus ， 却进入到中世纪拉丁语和古法语(cocodril )中，然后又进入到英语中， 所以出现在可能写于1300年以前的一篇文章中的我们最早有可能使用该词时的拼法是cokedrille 。 直到16世纪，这个词才变成现在这种拼法。在crocodile 一词的演变历史中的多种拼法也反映了在 alligator 一词的演变历史中的相似变化 〔husband〕We gain an insight into the history of the wordhusband by considering the Old English word hūsbōnde, meaning "the mistress of a house.”Ifhūsbōnde had survived into Modern English, husband, its modern form, would have been very ambiguous.The fact thathūsbōnde could mean "mistress of a house" helps us see the elements that make up the Old English ancestor of our wordhusband. Hūscorresponds to house. The element-bōnde is the feminine form of -bōnda, the second element of Old Englishhūsbōnda. The entire Old English word is a borrowing of the Old Icelandic wordhūsbōndi, meaning "the master of a house.”The second element inhūsbōndi, bōndi, means "a man who has land and stock" and comes from the verbbūa, meaning "to live, dwell, have a household.” The master of the house was of course usually the spouse of a wife as well,and it would seem that our main current sense ofhusband arises from this overlap. 考察一下古英语中husbonde 这个词，我们就会对 husband 这个词的历史有一定了解， 意思是“房子的女主人”。假如husbonde 这个词能留存在现代英语中， 作为husbonde 的现代形式， 它的意思会变得很模糊。husbonde 的意思是“房子的女主人”， 这有助于我们找出那些构成古英语中我们今天的husband这个词的前身。 Hus对应 house 。 -bonde 是 -bonda 的阴性形式， 古英语中 husbonda 的第二个部分。 这个古英语中的词整体上借自冰岛语中的 husbondi ， 意思是“房子的男主人”。husbondi, bondi 第二部分的意思是“一个拥有土地和牲畜的男子”， 它来自动词 bua ，意思是“生活、居住、拥有一个家”。 一座房子的男主人当然通常也是妻子的配偶，看起来今天husband 这个词的中心意思源于这种重叠 |
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