单词 | 走下坡路 |
释义 | 〔descent〕from descendre [to descend] * see descend 源自 descendre [下降,走下坡路,传下] * 参见 descend〔patient〕With patient industry, she revived the failing business and made it thrive.她以极大的坚忍和辛苦,使走下坡路的事业重振昔日风采〔vulgar〕The wordvulgar brings to mind off-color jokes, but this was not always so.Ironically the wordvulgar is itself an example of pejoration, the process by which the semantic status of a word changes for the worse over a period of time.The ancestor ofvulgar, the Latin word vulgāris (from vulgus, "the common people"), meant "of or belonging to the common people, everyday,”as well as "belonging to or associated with the lower orders.”Vulgāris also meant "ordinary,” "common (of vocabulary, for example),” and "shared by all.” Its only sense of the sort we might expect was related to the notion of general sharing, that is, "sexually promiscuous.”Our word, first recorded in a work composed in 1391,entered English during the Middle English period,and in Middle English and later English we find not only the senses mentioned above but also related senses.What is common can be seen as debased,and in the 17th century we begin to find instances ofvulgar that made very explicit what was already implicit. Vulgar now meant "deficient in taste, delicacy, or refinement.” From such usevulgar has gone downhill, and at present "crudely indecent" is probably one of the first senses ofvulgar that occurs to many when the word is used. Vulgar 这个词使人想起下流的玩笑, 但这并不尽然。具有讽刺意味的是vulgar 这个词本身就是一个贬义词, 是一个词的语义经过一段时间变为贬义的过程。Vulgar 的语源,拉丁词 vulgaris (来自于 vulgrs, “普通人”), 意思是平常人的、属于平常人的或日常的,”也意味着“属于低等阶级的,与低阶级有关的。”Vulgaris 也意味着“平常的”,“普通的(如词汇表的)”,和“大家共有的。” 我们可能会想到的这一类的唯一意思与“大家共有的”的意思是有关,即“滥交的。”这个词,首先记载于1391年编的一部书里,在中古英语期间进入英语,在中古英语和后期的英语中我们不仅发现它有上述的意思,也有其它相关的意思。普通的可以被看作是低下的,在17世纪我们开始发现vulgar 把含蓄的意思变得很明显的例子。 现在vulgar 指“品味、格调或教养不高的。” 以这个意思vulgar 开始走下坡路, 现在当人们使用vulgar 时,对许多人来讲“粗野下流的”可能是第一个意思 |
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