| 单词 | 写道 |
| 释义 | 〔syphilis〕In 1530 Girolamo Fracastoro, a physician, astronomer, and poet of Verona,published a poem entitled "Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus,” translated as "Syphilis, or the French Disease.” In Fracastoro's poem the name of this dreaded venereal disease is an altered form of the hero's name,Syphilus. The hero, a shepherd, is supposed to have been the first victim of the disease. Where the nameSyphilus itself came from is not known for certain, but it has been suggested that Fracastoro borrowed the name from Ovid'sMetamorphoses. In Ovid's work Sipylus (spelledSiphylus in some manuscripts) is the oldest son of Niobe, who lived not far from Mount Sipylon in Asia Minor.Fracastoro's poem about Syphilus was modeled on the story of Niobe.Although the etymology involving Sipylus was known to the editors of theOxford English Dictionary, it was not accepted as their last word on the subject.C.T. Onions, one of the dictionary's editors, writing in theOxford Dictionary of English Etymology, says that “ Syphilus [the shepherd's name] is of unkn[own] origin.” Fracastoro went on to use the termsyphilis again in his medical treatise De Contagione, published in 1546. The word that Fracastoro used in Latin was eventually borrowed into English, being first recorded in 1718.1530年，吉罗拉莫·弗拉卡斯特罗，一位医生，天文学家，也是维罗纳的诗人，发表了名为"Syphius, sive Morbus Gallicus"的诗，译作“梅毒，或法国疾病”。在弗拉卡斯特罗的诗中，这种可怕的性病的名字是主人公名字 Syphilus（西弗乐斯） 的变体。 主人公是一名牧羊人，据认为是该病的第一个受害者。 Syphilus（西弗乐斯） 这一名字本身的来源并不明确， 但有人认为弗拉卡斯特罗是从奥维德的变形记 中借用的。 在奥维德的作品中，西皮卢斯（Sipylus）（有些版本写作Siphylus ）是尼俄柏的大儿子， 他住在小亚细亚的锡皮劳恩山附近。弗拉卡斯特罗的有关西弗乐斯的诗是以尼俄柏的故事为原型的。尽管牛津英语词典 的编者们知道有关西弗乐斯的词源， 这种词源解释还没有被最终确认下来。该词典的编者之一，C·T·奥尼恩斯在牛津英语词源 中写道“ 西弗乐斯 的词源不详”。 在弗拉卡斯特罗发表于1546年的医学论文传染病 中，他继续用 梅毒 这一词语。 弗拉卡斯特罗用的这一拉丁语词是终被借用进英语，其最早的记录出现于1718年〔aggravate〕It is sometimes claimed thataggravate should be used only to mean "to make worse" and not "to irritate.” Based on this view it would be appropriate to sayThe endless wait for luggage aggravates the misery of modern air travel, but not It's the endless wait for luggage that aggravates me the most. But the latter use dates back as far as the 17th century and is accepted by 68 percent of the Usage Panel. As H.W. Fowler wrote, "the extension from aggravating a person's temper to aggravating the person himself is slight and natural,and when we are told that Wackford Squeers [in Dickens'sNicholas Nickleby ] pinched the boys in aggravating places we may reasonably infer that his choice of places aggravated both the pinches and the boys.”有时认为aggravate 应当只被用来表示“加重；使恶化”的意思而不表示“使恼火；激怒”。 根据这种观点，The endless wait for luggage aggravates the misery of modern air travel（无休止地等待行李加重了现代飞机旅行的困难） 这个句子是正确的，而 It's the endless wait for luggage that aggravates me the most（无休止地等待行李最为令我恼火） 这一句则不正确。 但是后一种用法可以追溯到17世纪，并且被百分之六十八的用法使用小组成员所接受。正如H·W·福勒写道，“从使一个人的脾气变得更坏到使一个人恼火的延伸是微小和自然的，当我们看到威克福特·斯贵尔斯［出自狄更斯的小说尼古拉斯·尼克尔贝 ］往令人恼火的地方拧孩子们时， 我们可以合理地推断出他所选择的地方既加剧了拧的疼痛又令孩子们大为恼火。”〔write〕wrote that she was planning to visit.信里写道她打算拜访〔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〔permanent〕In this world of impermanenceit seems that we have tried to hold on to a few things at least by using the wordpermanent. Coming ultimately from the present participlepermanēns of Latin permanēre, "to endure,” Middle Englishpermanent (first recorded around 1425) also had to do with the enduring and the stable. When we consider some of the applications of this adjective,as inpermanent press, permanent tooth, we are struck by the relative evanescence of the so-called permanent.But perhaps never more so than in the case of the permanent wave.When asked what this phenomenon was,one journalist wrote in 1932,“(so far as my experience goes): a wave that is anything but permanent.”在这个无常的世界里，看起来我们已经试图保持一些事物，至少通过使用permanent 这个词来保持。 最终来自意为“持久，持续”的拉丁文permanere 的现在分词 permanens， 中世纪英语permanent （大约在1425年首次记录）也与持久和稳固的意思有关。 当我们考虑这个形容词的一些用法时，例如在句子耐久熨压,恒牙 中， 我们便会想到所谓永恒的相对的短暂性。但可能从不会因波浪式发型而想到此。当被问到这种现象是怎么回事时，一个新闻记者于1932年写道：“（以我的经验而言）：卷曲发型恰恰不是永恒的”〔guillotine〕"At half past 12 the guillotine severed her head from her body.”So reads the statementcontaining the first recorded use ofguillotine in English, found in theAnnual Register of 1793. The word occurs in a context clearly illustrating the function of theguillotine, "a machine with a heavy blade that falls freely between upright guides to behead a condemned person.” Ironically, the guillotine, which became the most notable symbol of the excesses of the French Revolution,was named for a humanitarian physician, Joseph Ignace Guillotin.Guillotin, a member of the French Constituent Assembly,recommended in a speech to that body on October 10, 1789,that executions be performed by a beheading device rather than by hanging, the method used for commoners, or by the sword, reserved for the nobility.He argued that beheading by machine was quicker and less painful than the work of the rope and the sword.In 1791 the Assembly did indeed adopt beheading by machine as the state's preferred method of execution.A beheading device designed by Dr. Antoine Louis, secretary of the College of Surgeons, was first used on April 25, 1792, to execute a highwayman named Pelletier or Peletier.The device was called alouisette or louison after its inventor's name,but because of Guillotin's famous speech,his name became irrevocably associated with the machine. After Guillotin's death in 1814,his children tried unsuccessfully to get the device's name changed.When their efforts failed,they were allowed to change their name instead.“十二点半，断头台斩落了他的头颅。”这句话如此写道。这是英语文章中第一次使用guillotine 这个词， 它出现在1793年的年度文摘 中。 该文中，该词清楚地体现了guillotine 的功用——“利用垂直向下砍落的重斧斩落犯人头颅的机器。” 令人啼笑皆非的是，这一成为法国大革命中恐怖暴行最显著标志的断头台，竟是因一个人文主义医生，约瑟夫·英格纳斯·吉约坦命名的。吉约坦是法国国民代表大会的成员，在1789年10月的一次发言中向大会提出，在处决犯人时以一种砍头的机器来代替处决普通犯人时所用的绞刑或是处决贵族时使用的宝剑。他认为用机器砍头比用绳子或宝剑快而且痛苦小。1791年，国民大会确实将用机器砍头定为国家处决犯人的方法。由外科医生院秘书长安东尼·路易医生设计的砍头装置在1792年4月25日处决拦路强盗佩尔蒂或佩尔捷时第一次使用。这个装置被称为路易塞特 或 路易森 ， 因由其发明者而得名。但是由于吉约坦那次著名的发言，他的名字不可避免地与这种机器联系在一起。1814年吉约坦死后，他的子孙试图为这种机器换个名字,但没有成功。当他们的努力失败后，他们得到允许，改换了自己的名字〔popcorn〕Popcorn is very much an American institution.Particularly enjoyed by people in the United States,it is grown as a native product and denoted by a word that is an Americanism,a word or expression that was first used in English in the United States.Popcorn, from the verb pop and the noun corn, fits these criteriabecause the first recorded use of the word is found inMemorable Days in America, an account written by the British traveler William Faux and published in London in 1823: "I crossed the Big Wabash . . . at La Valette's ferry,where is beautiful land . . . and two lonely families of naked-legged French settlersfrom whom I received two curious ears of poss corn.”Notice that either Faux misunderstood the termor the French settlers mispronounced it.This type of corn, introduced to the settlers by Native Americans,was long grown by them,little knowing that their benefaction would one day be consumed by countless moviegoers while watching Westerns.爆玉米是美洲人非常熟知的事物。尤其为美国人喜欢，这种作物被他们作为本地作物而大量种植并以一个美国单词来命名，这个词首先在美国被用于英语中。Popcorn 源于动词 pop 和名词 corn， 并且它适应这些标准，因为有关这个词的最早记录见于由英国旅行者威廉·福克斯所著的、1823年在伦敦出版的游记在美国的难忘日子 中，福克斯在其中写道： “我在瓦莱特码头渡过大沃巴什河，那儿有美丽的田地…及两个孤零零的法国家庭，他们都是赤脚的法国拓荒者，从他们那儿我得到了两根奇怪的玉米棒。”请注意，要么也许是福克斯误解了该词，要么也许是法国拓荒者发错了音。这种类型的玉米是美洲印第安人介绍给这些拓荒者的，且已被这些印第安人种植很久了，但他们几乎无法料到他们的施惠有一天会被无数电影观众一边嚼着一边看西部片。〔contact〕In 1966 Wilson Follett wrotethat "Persons old enough to have been repelled by the verbcontact . . . may as well make up their minds that there is no way to arrest or reverse the tide of its popularity.” His prophecy is proving correct:In 1969 only 34 percent of the Usage Panel accepted the use ofcontact as a verb, but in our most recent survey 65 percent of the Panel accepted the sentence 1966年威尔森·福莱特写道：“对contact 这个动词素有反感的年长者还不如趁早接受这一无法阻拦或逆转它日渐通用的趋势这个事实”。 他的预言证明是正确的，在1969年用法专题使用小组成员中只有34％的人接受将contact 作为动词的用法， 但在我们最近的调查中65％的用法小组成员接受以下句子： 〔ethnic〕When in a Middle English text written before 1400it is said that a part of a temple fell down and "mad a gret distruccione of ethnykis,”one wonders why ethnics were singled out for death.The wordethnic in this context, however, means "gentile,” coming as it does from the Greek adjectiveethnikos, meaning "national, foreign, gentile.”The adjective is derived from the nounethnos, "people, nation, foreign people,” that in the plural phraseta ethnē meant "foreign nations.” In translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek,this phrase was used for Hebrewgōyīm, "gentiles"; hence the sense of the noun in the Middle English quotation.The nounethnic in this sense or the related sense "heathen" is not recorded after 1728, although the related adjective sense is still used. But probably under the influence of other words going back to Greekethnos, such asethnography and ethnology, the adjectiveethnic broadened in meaning in the 19th century. After this broadeningthe noun sense "a member of a particular ethnic group,”first recorded in 1945, came into existence.在一篇1400年以前的中古英语文章中写道，一座神殿的一部分倒塌了并“导致一个种族的彻底毁灭”，人们想知道为什么一个种族单单被挑出去死。但是ethnic 在这个上下文中的意思是“异教徒”， 来自于希腊语的形容词ethnikos ， 意为“民族的，外来的，异教的”。该形容词源自名词ethnos， 意为“民族、种族、外来人”， 它的复数形式ta ethne， 意为“外来民族”。 在把希伯来圣经翻译成希腊语的过程中，这一词组被用作希伯来语中的goyim， 意为“异教徒”； 因此名词的含意在中世纪英语被引用。即使相关含意讲的名词ethnic 在1728年之后也未被收录，尽管这时相关的形容词含义已被应用， 但大概在那些可追溯到古希腊语ethnos 的词， 如ethnograthy 和 ethnology 的影响下， 形容词ethnic 在19世纪时对词义进行了扩充。 这次扩充后，名词词意为“某一特定的种族群体中的一员”，在1945年被首次收录并开始存在〔preacher〕River navigation in America has its own lexicon,including words for hazards encountered in riverboat travel.Large uprooted trees that had drifted down the river and become stuck in the riverbedwere sometimes known by their peculiar and dangerous characteristics.John McPhee writes for theNew Yorker : "One kind . . . known as asawyer, sawed up and down with the vagaries of the current . . .In the Yukon River, such logs—eternally bowing—are known aspreachers. In the Mississippi . . . they were allsnags. ” 在美国内河航运业有它自己的专门词汇，包括用于表示船只在航行中所遇危险的词。一些被连根拔起的大树沿河漂流而下并且固着在河床上，它们都因奇特及危险的特性而为人所知。约翰·麦克菲曾在纽约人 中写道： “有一种…被称为 sawyer （漂流木）， 随着水流的变化擦来擦去…在育空河里，这种整日里打躬的木头被叫做沉木 。 在密西西比河中…它们都被称为水中沉树 ” |
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