单词 | 谈到 |
释义 | 〔compleat〕"The compleat speechwriter . . . comes to anonymity from Harvard Law"(Israel Shenker)“这位学识渊博的演讲撰稿人…从哈佛的法律谈到无名氏问题”(伊斯雪尔·申克)〔smack〕"We were smack in the middle of another controversy about a public man's personal life"(Ellen Goodman)“我们正好谈到一个关于公众人物私生活的有争论的问题”(埃伦·古德曼)〔talk〕Voltaire talks about London in this book.伏尔泰在这本书中谈到了他对伦敦的看法〔honorable〕Used in the House of Commons as a title of respect when speaking of another member.阁下:在下议院中谈到另一个成员时所用的尊称〔note〕noted the lateness of their arrival.谈到他们的迟到的事〔gerrymander〕"An official statement of the returns of voters for senators give[s] twenty nine friends of peace, and eleven gerrymanders.”So reported the May 12, 1813, edition of theMassachusetts Spy. A gerrymander sounds like a strange political beast,which in fact it is, considered from a historical perspective.This beast was named by combining the wordsalamander, "a small lizardlike amphibian,” with the last name of Elbridge Gerry, a former governor of Massachusetts— a state noted for its varied, often colorful political fauna.Gerry (whose name, incidentally, was pronounced with a hardg, though gerrymander is now commonly pronounced with a soft g ) was immortalized in this way because an election district created by members of his party in 1812 looked like a salamander.According to one version of howgerrymander was coined, the shape of the district attracted the eye of the painter Gilbert Stuart,who noticed it on a map hanging in a newspaper editor's office.Stuart decorated the map with a head, wings, and clawsand then said to the editor, "That will do for a salamander!”"Gerrymander!” came the reply.A new political beast was created then and there.The word is first recorded in April 1812 with respect to the creature or its caricature,but it soon came to mean not only "the action of shaping a district to gain political advantage"but also "any representative elected from such a district by that method.”Within the same yeargerrymander was also recorded as a verb. “一份答复参议员选举人的官方声明宣布了二十九个和平伙伴和十一个不公正划分的选区。”在1813年3月12日的一期马萨诸塞州观察报 上有如上报导。 一个不公正划分选区听起来象是一个奇怪的政治怪兽,事实上它是来自历史上的观点。这个怪兽是由两个词合并而命名的,即salamander “一种蜥蜴状的两栖动物,”及马萨诸塞州州长埃尔布里奇·格里的姓。 而马萨诸萨州以其多变的、通常多姿多彩的政治动物群而闻名。格里(他的名字碰巧发重音g, 尽管 gerrymander 现在普遍发轻音 g, )以此种方式而垂名史册, 因为1812年由他所在党成员组建的选举区就象一只蝾螈。根据一种gerrymander 如何被创造的观点, 该区的形状吸引了一位画家基尔伯特·斯图亚特,他在一家报纸的主编办公室里挂在墙上的地图中发现了它。斯图尔特又画上头、翅膀和爪子,然后对主编说,“那就象只蝾螈了!”"Gerrymander!”主编回答道。此时此地一个新的政治怪兽产生了。这个词于1812年4月首次被记录是在谈到这种牲畜或讽刺的画中,但很快,它就不仅意味“为赢得政治优势的改变区划的行动”,而且有“用此种方法选出的任何代表”的意思。同年gerrymander 也被作为一个动词而记载下来 〔slapstick〕When we talk about slapstick,we probably do not think of two sticks slapping together,yet the word has its origin in a device that was made of two flat pieces of wood fastened at one end.This device made a loud sound if one struck someone with it,a much louder sound than a single piece would have made.Such a sound and such a blow were the stuff of comedy,albeit the comedy of farce and pantomine in which this device was originally used (the word is first recorded in 1896).Through its use with other nouns,such ascomedy, slapstick developed an abstract sense that encompassed far more than its original literal meaning.Slapstick by itself (first recorded in 1926) could now refer to the whole genre of comedy in which the literal slapstick played a role. 当我们谈到闹剧时,我们可能不会想到两根木棍敲到一起,但这个词源于一种用两块一端绑在一起的平木板制成的装置。当一个人用这个装置打某人的时候,它会发出很大的声音,这种声音比一块木板所能发出的声音大得多。这种声音和打击是喜剧里的东西,尽管这种装置最初用于闹剧和哑剧中(这个词最早的有记载的使用是在1896年),通过与其它名词连用,如comedy, slapstick 发展到了抽象的含意, 包含了远比最初的字面意思要多的含意。Slapstick (最早的有记载的使用是在1926年)这个词本身现在指的是使用闹剧中的手法的一整类喜剧 〔undertow〕"As she talks nostalgically of her days of glory . . . a poignant undertow emerges"(Tina Brown)“当她怀旧地谈到她的光荣日子时…一阵痛苦的回潮涌现出来”(蒂娜·布朗)〔irrelevant〕mentioned several impertinent facts before finally coming to the point. relevant 在最后谈到要点之前先说了几个不相关的事实 relevant〔be〕Traditional grammar requires the nominative form of the pronoun in the predicate of the verbbe : It is I (not me ); That must be they (not them ), and so forth. Even literate speakers of Modern English have found the rule difficult to conform to,but the stigmatization ofIt is me is by now so deeply lodged among the canons of correctness that there is little likelihood that the construction will ever be entirely acceptable in formal writing.Adherence to the traditional rule in informal speech, however, has come to sound increasingly pedantic,and begins to sound absurd when the verb is contracted, as inIt's we. · The traditional rule creates particular problems when the pronoun followingbe also functions as the object of a verb or preposition in a relative clause, as in It is not them/they that we have in mind when we talk about "crime in the streets" nowadays, where the plural pronoun serves as both the predicate ofis and the object of have. In this example, 57 percent of the Usage Panel preferred the nominative formthey, 33 percent preferred the accusativethem, and 10 percent accepted both versions.But H.W. Fowler, like other authorities, argued that the use of the nominative here is an error caused by "the temptation . . . to assume, perhaps from hearingIt is me corrected to It is I, that a subjective [nominative] case cannot be wrong after the verb to be. ” Writers can usually find a way to avoid this problem: They are not the ones we have in mind, We have someone else in mind, and so on. See Usage Note at I 1we 传统语法要求系动词谓语中的代词用主格形式be : It is I (而不是 me ); That must be they (而不是 them ),等等。 即使现代英语有文化的人也发现很难遵守这个规则,而It is me 的烙印现在已深刻地印入了判断是否正确的准则之中, 以致很少有可能使这种用法在正式书面语中被完全接受。但是在非正式讲话中奉行传统规则已经日益变得象在卖弄学问。并且当系动词被缩减时,就象在It's we 中一样,听起来反而象是不合语法的。 当代词跟在be 后面做动词宾语或做关系从句中的介语宾语时,传统的规则就象在 当我们谈到当今“街上的犯罪”时,他们不是我们心中所想的那些人, 句中复数代词同时充当is 的宾语和 have 的宾语。 在这个例子中57%的用法使用小组更喜欢用主格形式they, 33%更喜欢用宾格形式them, 而10%则两种都接受。但是象其他的权威一样,H.W.福勒争论道,在这里用主格是一个错误,它之所以错是因为“多半听到了It is me 都被改正成 It is I 而拿不定主意,以为主格的情况在动词 to be 后面不可能错。” 作家们常常能够找到一个办法来避免这个问题: 他们不是我们所想的人,我们脑子里想的是另一些人等等 参见 I1we〔equal〕It has been argued thatequal is an absolute term— two quantities either are or are not equal—and hence cannot be qualified as to degree.Therefore one cannot logically speak ofa more equal allocation of resources among the departments. However, this usage was accepted by 71 percent of the Usage Panel in an earlier survey.What is more, objection to the usage betrays a widespread but questionable assumptionthat it is in mathematics and logic that we find the model of accuracy most appropriate to the everyday use of language,a supposition that also underlies traditional grammatical discussions of words such asunique, parallel, and center. According to this account,the "precise" or "literal" meaning ofequal is realized in the use of the equal sign in an arithmetic expression such as 5 + 2 = 7; and the ordinary-language uses of the term,though they may be permissible,represent "loose" or "imprecise" extensions of that sense.But in fact the mathematical concept of equality is a poor model for using the wordequal to describe relations between things in the world. As applied to such things,statements of equality are always relative to an implicit standard of tolerance.When someone saysThe two boards are of equal length, we assume that the equality is reckoned to some order of approximation determined by the context;if we did not,we would be required always to usenearly equal when speaking of the dimensions of physical objects. What is more,we often want to predicate equality of things that do not admit of quantitative measurement,as when we sayThe college draft was introduced in an effort to make the teams in the National Football League as equal as possible, orThe candidates for the job should all be given equal consideration. In all such cases,equality is naturally a gradient notionand so is amenable to modification in degree.This much is evident from the existence of the wordunequal. The prefixun- attaches only to gradient adjectives: we sayunmanly but not unmale; and the worduneven can be applied to a surface (whose evenness may be a matter of degree) but not to a number (whose evenness is an either-or affair). ·The adverbequally is generally regarded as redundant when used in combination with as, and the following examples employingequally as were termed unacceptable by 63 percent of the Usage Panel in an earlier survey: 单词equal 一向被认为是一个很绝对的词语—— 两个数量要么相同要么不同——这样就不能有程度上的差别。所以,如果有人说在各部门间对资源更公平的分配 ,那么就不合逻辑了。 但是这种用法在早先的用法调查中被百分之七十一用法使用小组的人接受。而且,对这种用法的反对体现出了一种很流行但却值得怀疑的假设,那就是我们从数学和逻辑中得出适用于日常语言准确性的实例,而这种假设也可从我们对一些词,如unique,parallel 和 center 传统的语法讨论中体现出来。 根据这个解释,equal “准确”或“书面”的意思则是由在算术表达式,如5+2=7中所运用的相同的符号而表达清楚的; 而该词在日常语言中的用法,虽然被允许,但却代表了其含意“松散”或“不严谨”的引申。但是实际上用数学概念上的相等来运用equal 这个词描述世上各种事物之间的关系是一个很差劲的例子。 当该词应用于生活中的事物时,相等的观念往往与暗含的容忍相关联。当有人说两块木板同样长 时, 我们会认为由于上下文的关系,相等可以被看作大约近似;如果我们不这样想,那么当我们谈到物体的尺寸时,就要经常使用nearly equal 。 另外,我们常常会预测和数量无关的事物的相同性,比如我们会说,引入大学的要求是为了使全国足球联合会中的各队尽可能平等 , 或者应给予该项工作的应征者同等的考虑 。 在所有这些例子中,相等是个可变化的概念,所以可在程度有所不同。Unequal 这个词的存在就是很好的证明。 un- 这个前缀只附加于有程序变化的形容词, 我们说unmanly 但不说 unmale ; 而uneven 这个词只能用于某物的表面(其平坦可有程度上的差别), 而不能用于数目(数目只能说相等或不相等)。Equally 这一副词在与 as 连用时通常被认为是多余的, 在早先的用法调查中,以下这些使用equally as 的句子遭到百分之六十三使用小组的人反对: 〔this〕Used to refer to what is about to be said:这个:用于指即将谈到的事:〔synesthesia〕A sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain.牵连感觉:因对身体的某一部位的刺激而使身体的另一部位感到此种感觉,如在谈到痛苦时〔note〕To make mention of; remark:说起…;谈到:〔which〕that which he needed; the subject on which she spoke.那他所需要的;她谈到的话题 |
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