单词 | 科学术语 |
释义 | 〔rent〕When young people talk about theirrents, that is, their parents, they are using a slang term that is of interest to language historians, if not necessarily thrilling for parents themselves. The term is a prime example of one of the fundamental characteristics of slang, which continually creates novel ways of expressing what are often rather ordinary things (if parents may be considered ordinary things). Slang has recently produced two expressions for "parents" that have gained wide currency— rents and parental units. Both expressions demonstrate slang's use of unusual or creative linguistic means to achieve novelty of expression. While there are many slang terms, such as bod for body or rad for radical, that result from the clipping of unstressed syllables, rents is a clipping that drops a stressed syllable, much like the similar term za, "pizza.” The desire to coin new ways of referring to things also leads speakers of slang to use circumlocutions like knuckle sandwich for "punch.” Parental units falls into this category. It plays on the jargon of bureaucrats and social science, in which the world is viewed as so much data waiting to be quantified. The appearance of terms such as rents and parental units also shows that all available styles and levels of language can be grist for slang's mill—so long as the material is perceived as irreverent, funny, or just plain cool. 年轻人谈论他们的rents (即父母)时,即使肯定不会令他们的父母感到兴奋,他们却使用了一个令语言历史学家很感兴趣的俚语。Rents是俚语一个基本特色的典范,这一基本特色就是不断创造新颖词汇来表示通常极为普通的事物(如果父母会被认为是普通事物的话)。最近俚语中产生了两个"父(母)亲"的词语并被普遍使用── rents 和 parental units 。这两个词语表明俚语用不同寻常的或创造性的语言工具来获取表达上的新颖。虽然因省略非重读音节产生了许多俚语词汇,如用 bod 指body、用 rad 指radical,但 rents 却是省略重读音节后的部分,非常类似相近词汇 za "pizza(比萨饼)"。期望创造指代事物的新词也使得满口俚语的人运用赘语,如用 knuckle sandwich 指"punch(用拳击)"。 Parental units 也属于赘语的范围。它用作官僚主义者的行话以及科学术语,因为对于官僚主义者和科学工作者来讲世界就是等待量化的大量数据。诸如 rents 和 parental units 这些俚语的出现也表明语言现有的全部风格和水平都是俚语的有益补充──只要认为内容是不敬的、有趣的或者纯粹扮酷的 〔telephone〕When one telephones someone else,one never gives a second thought to the linguistic and etymological processes illustrated by the wordtelephone. To begin with,the nountelephone is one of a class of technological and scientific words that are made up of combining forms, in this casetele- and -phone. These forms are derived from classical languages:tele- is from the Greek combining form tēle- or tēl-, a form of tēle, meaning "afar, far off,” while-phone is from Greek phōnē, "sound, voice.” Such words derived from classical languages can be put together in French or German,for example, as well as in English.Which language actually gave birth to them cannot always be determined.In this case Frenchtelephone (about 1830) seems to have priority. The word was used for an acoustic apparatus, as it originally was in English (1844).Alexander Graham Bell appropriated the word for his invention in 1876,and in 1877 we have the first instance of the verbtelephone meaning "to speak to by telephone.” The verb is an example of a linguistic process called functional shift.This occurs when we use a noun as a verb,an adjective as a noun, or a noun as an adjective.Thus, we are changing the syntactic function of the word,just as we do when wetelephone a friend. 当某人打电话给别人时,他决不会再想一想单词Telephone 所说明的语言学的和词源学的发展历程。 开始时,名词telephone 是由复合形式构成的一类技术和科学术语中的一个, 在这个例子中是tele- 和 -phone 。 这些形式来自于古典语言:tele- 来自于希腊语的复合形式 tele- 或 tel- ( tele 的形式,意为“在远处,遥远地”), 而-phone 则来自希腊语 phone (“声音,嗓音”)。 这些来自古典语言的词可以在法语或德语中放在一起,例如,同英语一样。这些词到底诞生于哪一种语言通常无法确认。在这个例子中,法语telephone (大约于1830年)看起来出现较早。 这个单词正如它最初出现在英语中(1844年)的意思一样,在法语中它用于指声音设备。亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔在1876年用这个词指代他的发明物,1877年我们有了第一个意为“用电话与…交谈”的动词telephone 的实例。 这个动词是称为功能转移的语言学进程的一个例子。这种情况在我们将名词作为动词,将形容词作为名词或将名词作为形容词使用时就发生。这样,我们正在改变单词的句法功能,正如在我们打电话给 一位朋友时所做的一样 〔larva〕The wordlarva referring to the newly hatched form of insects before they undergo metamorphosis comes from the Latin wordlārva, meaning "evil spirit, demon, devil.”To understand why this should be so,we need to know that the Latin word also was used for a terrifying mask,and it is this sense of the word that has come down to us.In Medieval Latinlarva could mean "mask or visor.” Larva is therefore an appropriate term for that stage of an insect's life during which its final form was still hidden or masked, and New Latinlārva was thus applied by Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who originated our system of classifying plants and animals.The wordlarva is first recorded in English in its scientific sense in 1768, although it had been used in its "spirit" sense in 1651 and in a way that foreshadowed the usage by Linnaeus in 1691. larva 一词指昆虫在变形前刚孵化出来的幼虫, 来源于拉丁词larva , 意为“邪恶的精灵,鬼怪,恶魔”。为了了解为什么,我们需要知道这个拉丁词语还用于指一种令人恐惧的面具,而且正是该词的这一层含义流传了下来。在中世纪的拉丁语中,larva 有“面具或面甲”的意思。 Larva 在形容昆虫成熟之前被隐藏或遮盖的这一段时期的时候,成为一个适合的名称, 这样新拉丁语的larva 一词首先由瑞典植物学家卡罗拉斯里纽斯赋予以上含义, 卡罗拉斯是首创动植物分类系统的第一人。虽然larva 一词在1651年曾经以其“精灵”一层意思被使用并在一定程度上预示了于1691年出现的里纽斯的用法,但是于1768年才以科学术语的形式首先在英语中出现的 〔gorilla〕Two traditions of exploration come together in the history of the wordgorilla, which also illustrates how knowledge of the classics has influenced scientific terminology.Dr. Thomas S. Savage, an American missionary to western Africa,first described the gorilla in 1847, giving it the New Latin nameTroglodytes gorilla. In doing so he was using his knowledge of Greek literature,in which there exists a fourth-centuryb.c. translation of a report written by Hanno, another visitor to western Africa. This Carthaginian navigator,who voyaged before 480b.c. , went as far as Sierra Leone in his explorations.In the Greek translation of his reporthe tells of seeingGorillai, the name of which he allegedly learned from local informantsand which he thought were members of a tribe of hairy women.In fact they were probably the same creatures that Thomas Savage described about 24 centuries later.在涉及到gorilla 这个词的历史时,传说中的两次探险可以联系在一起, 这同样也证明了古典文学对科学术语命名的影响。汤姆斯·S·萨维奇医生,到西非传教的美国传教士,在1847年第一次描述了大猩猩并给它起了个新拉丁语名字Troglodytes gorilla 。 在命名时他就用了希腊文学知识,这个命名也同样出现在一本公元前 4世纪安诺写的见闻译本里,安诺也到过西非。 这位迦太基航海家,公元前 480年之前开始出航, 在他的探险过程中,最远到达过塞拉利昂。在他写见闻的希腊译本里,他说他见到了Gorillai , 据他自己声称他是从当地向导那儿学到这个名字的,并认为它是指多毛女人部落的成员。实际上他们可能是大约24世纪以后汤姆斯·萨奇所描述的同样的动物〔proteid〕A protein. No longer in scientific use.蛋白质,已不再作科学术语使用 |
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