单词 | 第一版 |
释义 | 〔hooker〕In hisPersonal Memoirs Ulysses S. Grant described Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker as "a dangerous man . . . not subordinate to his superiors.” Hooker had his faults, of course.He may indeed have been insubordinate;undoubtedly he was an erratic leader.But there is one thing of which he is often accused that "Fighting Joe" Hooker certainly did not do:he did not give his name to prostitutes.According to a popular story,the men under Hooker's command during the Civil War were a particularly wild bunch.When his troops were on leave,we are told, they spent much of their time in brothels.For this reason, as the story goes,prostitutes came to be known ashookers. It is not difficult to understand how such a theory might have originated.The major general's name differs from the wordhooker only in the capital letter that begins it. And it is true that Hooker's men were at times ill-disciplined (although it seems that liquor, not women, was the main source of their difficulties with the provost marshal).However attractive this theory may be,it cannot be true.The wordhooker, with the sense "prostitute,” is in fact older than the Civil War. It appeared in the second edition (although not in the first) of John Russell Bartlett'sDictionary of Americanisms, published in 1859.Bartlett definedhooker as "a strumpet, a sailor's trull.” He also said that the word was derived from Corlear's Hook,a district in New York City,but this was only a guess.There is no evidence that the term originated in New York.Norman Ellsworth Eliason has traced this use ofhooker back to 1845 in North Carolina. He reported the usage inTarheel Talk; an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860, published in 1956. The fact that we have no earlier written evidence does not mean thathooker was never used to mean "prostitute" before 1845. The history ofhooker is, quite simply, murky; we do not know when or where it was first used,but we can be very certain that it did not begin with Joseph Hooker.Also, we have no firm evidence that it came from Corlear's Hook.Scholarly evidence or lack thereof notwithstanding,the late Bruce Catton, the Civil War historian, did not go so far as to exonerate completely the Union general.Although "the term ‘hooker’ did not originate during the Civil War,”wrote Catton, "it certainly became popular then.During these war years, Washington developed a large [red-light district] somewhere south of Constitution Avenue.This became known as Hooker's Division in tribute to the proclivities of General Joseph Hookerand the name has stuck ever since.”If the termhooker was derived neither from Joseph Hooker nor from Corlear's Hook, what is its derivation?It is most likely that thishooker is, etymologically, simply "one who hooks.” The term portrays a prostitute as a person who hooks, or snares, clients.尤利西斯·S·格兰特在他的个人回忆录 中把陆军少将约瑟夫·胡克描写成“一个危险人物…从不服从于他的顶头上司”。 胡克当然有他的缺点。他也许曾是一个难以屈服的人;但他无疑是一个怪癖的军官。但是“好战的乔”,胡克却因为一件他肯定没有干过的事情而屡遭指责;他从不对妓女透露他的姓名。根据一个流行故事,内战中胡克的手下有一伙特别狂野的人们。当他的队伍即将离开时,据说他们总在妓院里消磨时日。故事还说正因为如此,妓女开始被叫做hookers。 我们不难理解这样一个故事的起源的推测。这个将军的名字和hooker 只差开头的一个大写字母。 而且胡克的手下在当时确实纪律涣散(尽管看来是酒而非女人才导致了他们与宪兵司令之间的矛盾)。不管这个故事多么诱人,它不可能是真实的。事实上hooker 一词作为“妓女”的意思比内战的历史还要早。 它出现于约翰·罗素·巴特利特编纂的美国俗语词典 的第二版(尽管第一版中没有), 出版于1859年。巴特利特把hooker 定义为“一个妓女,水手的妓女”。 他还说这个词来源于科利尔的胡克,纽约市的一个地区,但这只是一个猜想。没有证据证明这一说法源于纽约。诺曼·爱尔斯华斯·艾利森把hooker 的用法追溯到1845年的北卡罗来纳州。 他在1956年出版的北卡罗来纳州闲话; 1860年前北卡罗来纳英语历史研究 中说明了这一用法。 缺乏早期书面证据这一事实并不意味着在1845年之前hooker 没有被用作“妓女”一义。 很简单,hooker 的历史隐晦难知; 我们不知道它在何时何地被首次使用,但我们可以肯定它并不始于约瑟夫·胡克。而且我们没有确凿证据证明它来源于科利尔的胡克。不管有无学术性的证据,已故的内战历史学家布鲁斯·卡通并没有做到为联邦将军彻底开脱的地步。尽管“‘hooker’这一词语并不是来源于内战,”卡通写道,“在那之后它肯定流行了起来。在战争年代,华盛顿在宪法大街南部某个地方发展了很大的[红灯区]。人们把这里称作胡克的辖区,作为对约瑟夫·胡克将军怪癖的献礼,这个名字从此便生根发芽”。如果hooker 这一词语既不是源于约瑟夫·胡克也不来自于科利尔的胡克, 那么它的词源究竟是什么呢?从词源学上来说hooker 很有可能仅仅是“引…上钩的人”。 这一词语把妓女描绘成一个勾引或引诱客人的人〔internecine〕In the first edition of theAmerican Heritage Dictionary 91 percent of the Usage Panel approved the use ofinternecine relating to internal struggle within a nation or organization that did not necessarily imply fatal or destructive conflict.The objection that had been overcome for most of the Panel was thatinternecine should imply such destruction because it came from the Latin wordinternecīnus, a variant ofinternecīvus, "fought to the death, murderous,” ultimately derived fromnecāre, "to kill.” Inter- in this compound is simply an intensive, supplying the notion of "all the way to" in the sense "fought to the death.”Internecine in English, first recorded in 1663, indeed meant "deadly, destructive,”but Samuel Johnson, inserting the word in his dictionary of 1755,thought thatinter- meant "mutual" and so defined it as "endeavoring mutual destruction.”This definition set the word incorrectly on its present course,and wheninternecine was further extended simply to mean "relating to internal struggle,” the original error was compounded.However, the point is that the meaning of words can be changed by mistakes and that mistaken meanings adhere to words.Only an occasional etymologist points out that the emperor's new clothes are patched.在美国经典辞书 第一版中, 百分之九十一的用法专题使用小组成员赞同internecine 与一个国家或组织内部的斗争有关, 但并不一定是致命的或有破坏性的冲突。为大多数小组成员说服的反对意见为internecine 应该暗指这种破坏, 因为它来源于拉丁词internecinus , 是internecivus 的变体,意为“战至死亡的,谋杀的”, 它最终来源于意为“杀害”的necare 。 在这个复合词中inter- 只是简单的一个强调成分, 在“战至死亡的”这个意义上加上“一直”这个概念。在英语中internecine 最早记载于1663年, 确实意味着“致死的,破坏性的”,但是塞缪尔·约翰逊在其1755年的字典中插入此词,认为inter- 意为“共同的”, 并且将它定义为“竭力造成共同破坏的”。这个定义造成此词今日用法的不准确,而且当internecine 更进一步被简单地引申为“关于内部斗争的”时, 其起源的错误就加重了。但是,重要的是词的意思被错误改变并且为错误意思所追随。只有偶尔的一个词源学家指出“皇帝的新衣服打满补丁”〔rattle〕A large proportion (86 percent) of the Usage Panel approved the use of the verbrattle in the sense "to unnerve" in the first edition ofThe American Heritage Dictionary, published in 1969. But we may ask how the verbrattle came to have such a sense. The earliest use of the word is found in a name,Johannes Ratellebagg, recorded in a document of around 1273; the earliest use of the word as a common noun (in the sense "to flap, used of a banner") is found in a work written about 1300and copied in manuscript around 1330.It is thought that the word probably comes from Middle Dutchratelen, which may be imitative in origin. In any case,the wordratelen was used mainly in intransitive senses such as "to make a rattling sound.”Already in Middle English, however, the transitive sense "to babble something" existed,and other transitive senses,as in "to make something rattle,” "to stir up, rouse,” "to drive in a rapid, rattling manner,” came into existence from the 16th century on.The transitive sense "to unnerve,”that is, "to make somebody rattle,” is first found in an American work of 1869.词语用法专题小组中有相当一部分人(百分之八十六)都同意rattle 这个词有“使人不安”的意思, 1969年出版的美国经典辞书 第一版收录了这一意思。 但人们不禁要问动词rattle 为何有了这个意思。 该词最早的使用发现于1273年前后记载的一个文件中的Johannes Ratellebagg 这个名字中; 1300年这个词第一次被用作普通名词(意为“飘扬,用于旗帜”),1330年又见于手抄的印本中。人们认为这个词可能来自原来可能是拟声词的中古德语ratelen 。 不过无论怎样,ratelen 这个词本来只是作为不及物动词来使用, 如发出嘎嘎声等意思。在中古英语中,“含糊不清地说出”这一及物动词的意思就已存在,该词其它的及物意思,如“使发出嘎嘎声”、“激起,唤醒”“嘎嘎响地急速向前拖”从16世纪开始就形成了。及物意思“使不安,”即“使某人惊慌”首先出现于1869年的美国作品中〔alligator〕InThe Travailes of an Englishman, published in 1568, Job Hortop says that "in this river we killed a monstrous Lagarto or Crocodile.”This killing gives rise to the first recorded instance ofalligator in English, obviously in a different form from the one familiar to modern speakers.Alligator, which comes to us from Spanish el lagarto, "the lizard,” was modified in pronunciation and form in several ways before taking on the formalligator. Such changes, referred to by linguists as taboo deformation,are not uncommon in a name for something that is feared and include,for example, the change in sequence of ther and t that occurred between el lagarto and alligator. An interesting parallel case iscrocodile, which appears in Spanish, for example, ascocodrilo, with a similar difference in the sequence of the r. The earliest recorded form ofalligator that is similar to ours appears in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (First Folio, 1623): "In his needie shop a tortoyrs hung,/An Allegater stuft.”在出版于1568年的英国人的劳作 一书中, 约伯·霍特普说“在这条河里我们杀死过一只巨大的蜥蜴或鳄鱼。”这次捕杀导致alligator 作为首次载入英语的实例, 和现代人所熟悉的词形明显不同。Alligator 来源于西班牙语 ellagarto, 意思是“蜥蜴,” 在采用alligator 这个词之前,其发音和词形经过了好几种变化。 这些变化,语言学家们称作禁忌变形,在人们惧怕的某种事物的名称里是常见的,而且还包括r 和 t 在以下两个单词 ellagarto 和 alligator 间依次的变化。 一个同样有趣的例子是crocodile, 在西班牙语里是cocodrilo, 区别在于排列顺序不同的 r 上。 最早记载的alligator 其词形接近我们所使用的词形,出现于莎士比亚的 罗密欧与朱丽叶 中,(1623年第一版对开本): “在他的日用品店中挂着一个玩具,一只布做的鳄鱼。”〔hectic〕In the Usage Panel survey done for the first edition of theAmerican Heritage Dictionary (1969), 92 percent of the Panel approved of the use ofhectic in its most familiar sense, "characterized by feverish activity, confusion, or haste.”The question was put to the Panelbecause in earlier usage that sense was sometimes deprecated as a loose extension of the term's meaning in medicine.Unless one has some medical knowledgeone probably does not know the older medical uses of the term,for example, "relating to an undulating fever, such as those accompanying tuberculosis,”and unless one has some acquaintance with Middle Englishone would not recognize the first recorded instance of the word,etik, in a text written before 1398. The Middle English term comes from the Old French development of the Late Latin wordhecticus, whose form helped reshape our word in the 16th century.Late Latinhecticus in turn comes from Greek hektikos, "formed by habit or forming habit" and "consumptive,” developing the last sense because of the chronic nature of tuberculous fevers.Thus a word that once simply meant "habitual"eventually had an English descendant used to refer to circumstances that would be undesirable if they were habitual.在针对美国经典辞书 (1969年)第一版对用法专题使用小组的调查中, 92%的成员赞成hectic 一词最常用的意思, “以紧张的活动、忙乱或慌忙为特征的”。之所以要向这些成员提这个问题,是因为作为该词医学含义的模糊延伸,这个意义有时不为人们所接受。除非某人有医学方面的知识,否则他就很可能不知道这个词在医学方面的古老用法,比如“和起伏不定的热病有关的,如肺结核的伴随症”。另外,除非某人对中古英语有一度程度的了解,否则他也认不出1398年以前的一个文本中该词的首例etik 。 这个中古英语单词是由古法语经后期拉丁语hecticus 一词的发展而来的, 其形式在16世纪帮助重新形成了这个单词。而后期拉丁语中的这个词hecticus 又是由希腊语中的 hektikos 一词而来,这个词在希腊语中意指“由习惯形成的或形成习惯的”及“患肺痨的,肺痨的”, 之所以得到最后的意思,是出于肺痨病的特性。这样一来,原来只是表示“习惯性的”这个词,传到英语中最后竟变成了指一旦成为习惯则不被人所喜爱的情形〔Beach〕American bookseller. From 1919 to 1941 her shop in Paris, Shakespeare and Company, was a gathering place for authors such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. She published the first edition of James Joyce'sUlysses in 1922. 比奇,塞尔维亚·伍德布里奇:(1887-1962) 美国书商,从1919年到1941年她在巴黎、莎士比亚和公司的书店是作家们如海明威和菲茨杰拉德的聚集地。她在1922年出版了詹姆斯·乔伊斯的第一版《尤利西斯》 〔Hecht〕American writer of short stories, novels, such asErik Dorn (1921), dramas, including The Front Page (1928), written with Charles MacArthur, and screenplays, such as Gunga Din (1938). 赫克特,本:(1894-1964) 美国短篇小说家,小说家,剧作家,电影编剧,其小说有《埃里克·多恩》 (1921年),戏剧包括与查尔斯·麦克阿瑟合著的 《第一版新闻》 (1928年),电影剧本,如 《根嘉丁》 (1938年) |
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