| 单词 | 不足为奇 |
| 释义 | 〔hardly〕The use ofhardly with a negative is avoided in Standard English. Some critics have been puzzled that adverbs such ashardly, rarely, and scarcely should be treated as negatives in the traditional strictures against double negation, which tars sentences likeI couldn't hardly see him with the same brush as I didn't get none. After all, they argue, the sentenceMary hardly laughed entails that Mary did laugh, not that she didn't,and therefore does not express a negative proposition.Buthardly and scarcely occur with other negative expressions in a number of ways. For one thing, they combine with items such asany and at all, which are characteristically associated with negative contexts: we sayI hardly saw him at all or I never saw him at all but notI occasionally saw him at all; we sayI hardly had any time or I didn't have any time but notI had any time, and so on. Like other negative adverbs,hardly triggers inversion of the subject and auxiliary when it begins a sentence. Thus we sayHardly had I arrived when she left, on the pattern of Never have I read such a book or At no time has he condemned the movement. Such inversion is not used with other adverbs:we would not sayOccasionally has he addressed this question or To a slight degree have they changed their position. The fact is that adverbs such ashardly are semantically negative in that they qualify a state or an event relative to the limiting case of nonoccurrence.Thus the meaning ofhardly is, roughly, "almost not at all"; the meaning ofrarely is "practically never"; and so forth. These adverbs are felt to have a negative component in their meaning,and it should not be surprising that grammarians have reacted to combinations ofhardly with negatives in the same way that they have reacted to combinations of pairs of negatives such as not and none. See Usage Note at double negative ,rarely ,scarcely Hardly 和一个否定词在一起的用法在标准英语中应尽量避免， 一些批评学家一直怀疑象hardly，rarely 和 scarcely 这样的副词在传统的双重否定的句中应被视为否定词， 这样的词使句子象I couldn't hardly see him 和 I didn't get none 一样被弄糟了， 他们争论说，毕竟句子Mary hardly laughed 的意思是玛丽的确笑了， 而不是她没笑，所以不表示否定的建议。但是hardly 和 scarcely 和其他的否定表示一起在许多方面出现， 举例说，他们和象any 和 at all 这样独特的和否定上下文联系的条目组合在一起， 我们说I hardly saw him at all 或 I never saw him at all , 但并不是I occasionally saw him at all； 我们说I hardly had any time 或 I didn't have any time 但不是I had any time 等。 象其它否定副词，hardly 在句子开头时引起主语和助动词的倒装， 于是我们说Hardly had I arrived when she left， 和 Never have I read such a book 或 At no time has he condemned the movement. 等同样的句型。 别的副词并不用这样的倒装：我们不能说Occasionally has he addressed this question 或 To a slight degree have they changed their position 。 事实是象hardly 这样的副词语义上是否定的， 他们限定修饰了与不发生有关的状态或事件。于是hardly 的意思大概是“几乎根本不”； rarely 的意思大概是“实际上没有”；等等。 这些副词在他们的意思里留有否定的成分，语法学家们对hardly 和否定词组合的反应和对一对否定词如 not 和 none组合的反应一样是不足为奇的 参见 double negative,rarely,scarcely〔reek〕Reek is a word that can be said to have been degraded by the company that it has kept. The Old English wordrēocan, one of two ancestors of our word, meant "to emit vapor, steam, or smoke,” while the other Old English ancestor,rēcan, meant "to fumigate, expose to smoke,” or "to cause to emit smoke, burn incense.”Burning incense and fumigating are certainly a far cry from the sort of thing now denoted by the verbreek. But at least in one case Old Englishrēocan did mean "to stink,” hardly a surprise when one considers how bad some smoke smells. Middle Englishreken, the descendant of these two Old English words, never meant "to stink,” but it could refer to a stench while meaning "to rise, ascend.”It would seem that the various exhalations of heated persons and animals, of freshly shed blood, and of smoke referred to by Middle Englishreken and its Modern English descendantreek eventually overwhelmed the word, so that as far as concrete senses are concerned, we largely think of it as meaning "to stink.”Reek 这个词可以说是近墨者黑的典型。 意为“散发出蒸气或烟”的古英语单词是reocan 的两个词源之一， 而另一个古英语词源是recan ， 意为“熏，与烟接触，”或“使散发烟，焚香”。焚香和熏的义项与今天使用的动词reek 的意义已相差甚远。 但至少古英语中reocan 确有“发出恶臭”之意，想到烟有多难闻，生出这一意思也就不足为奇了。 中古英语reken 是这两个古英语词的后代， 但却从无“发出恶臭”之意，在表示“上升，登高”之意时可以指臭气。中古英语reken 一词可指发热的人和畜的各种呼气、刚流出的鲜血以及烟， 其现代英语传下的词reek 最终覆盖了此词的本来意义， 以致我们一般认为该词的具体意思是“发出难闻的气味”〔amateur〕When Mrs. T.W. Atkinson remarked in her 1863Recollections of the Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants, "I am no amateur of these melons,” she usedamateur in a sense unfamiliar to us. That sense, "a lover, an admirer,” is, however, clearly descended from the senses of the word's ultimate Latin source,amātor, "lover, devoted friend, devotee, enthusiastic pursuer of an objective,” and from its immediate Latin-derived French source,amateur, with a similar range of meanings. First recorded in English in 1784 with the sense in which Mrs. Atkinson used it,amateur is found in 1786 with a meaning more familiar to us, "a person who engages in an art, for example, as a pastime rather than as a profession,” a sense that had already developed in French.Given the limitations of doing something as an amateur,it is not surprising that the word is soon after recorded in the disparaging sensewe still use to refer to someone who lacks professional skill or ease in performance.当T.W.阿特金森夫人在她1863年出版的塔塔·史坦普和其居民回忆录， 中提到“我并不喜欢这些瓜果”时， 她使用的amateur 是我们所不熟悉的一个意思。 可是这种“爱好者，喜爱者，”的意思显然有其正宗拉丁语来源，amator, 意思是“爱人，忠实的朋友，奉献者，对某目标热情的追求者”， 还有由拉丁语直接派生出的法语来源，amateur, 具有相似的意思。 1784年记录在英语文字中出现的这个词正是阿特金森夫人使用的意思，1786年出现的amateur 有我们更为熟悉的意思， “如一个从事艺术，把它作为一项消遣，而不是一个职业的人，”法语的词早已发展了这种意思。如果把意思限定为从事业余活动的人，这个词被记录下来后不久就有了贬义含意，也就不足为奇了，我们用它来指在表演中缺乏专业技巧或缺乏得心应手的感觉〔plus〕Philosophers of mathematics have long debated the proper analysis of the relation denoted by the + sign in equations such as 2 + 2 = 4,so it is not surprising that the syntactic status of its natural language equivalent, the wordplus, should be similarly problematic— though to be sure, the questions are primarily of theoretical interest.When mathematical equations are pronounced as English sentences,the verb is usually in the singular:Two plus two is (or equals ) four. By the same token,subjects containing two noun phrases joined byplus are usually construed as singular: 数学哲学家们已就诸如2+2=4这类等式中的“+”号所表示的关系的正确分析进行了长期的辩论，所以这一符号的自然语言对应物——即单词plus 的语法地位应同样不确定也就不足为奇了—— 纵然可以确定，这些问题也主要是理论上的兴趣。当数学等式被转化为英语句子，动词通常用单数形式：Two plus two is（或 equals ） four。 通过同样的记号，包含两个由plus 联结的名词短语的主语通常被视为单数： 〔hubbub〕It has often been remarked that the Celtic inhabitants of Great Britain contributed very little to the stock of English words.Perhaps this should not be too surprising, given the difficult relations over the centuries between the people of Germanic stock and the people of Celtic stock in England and Ireland.It seems likely that a certain English contempt resides in the adoption of the wordhubbub from a Celtic source, which is probably related toub ub ubub, a Scots Gaelic interjection expressing contempt,or toabu, an ancient Irish war cry. In any case,hubbub was first recorded (1555) in the phrase Irish hubbub and meant "the confused shouting of a crowd.”In addition to the senses it has developed,hubbub was again used, possibly in a nonflattering way, by the New England colonists as a term for a rambunctious game played by Native Americans. 人们常说，居住在大不列颠的盖尔人对英语词汇没有多大贡献。如果考虑到几个世纪以来居住在英格兰与爱尔兰的日尔曼人与盖尔人之间的关系，那么这个情况就不足为奇了。英格兰人采用来自盖尔语的hubbub 这个词时，很可能是带有轻蔑之意的， 此词与ub ub ubub 有关， 是苏格兰盖尔语中用来表示轻蔑之意的感叹词；或者与古代爱尔兰语中的呐喊abus 有关。 无论怎样，hubbub 一词最早见于词组 Irish hubbub (1555年）中， 意为“人群发出的混乱吵闹声”。除了它本身就有的意思外，hubbub 一词又被新英格兰的殖民者用来指印第安人的一种野蛮的游戏，但这一用法可能不讨人喜欢 〔mammoth〕The mammoth was introduced to the English-speaking world after mammoth skeletons were discovered in Siberia,so it is no surprise that this creature's name is taken from Russian,even though the animal roamed over Eurasia and North America.The Russian word, nowmamant' but formerlymamot as well, was borrowed into English in variant spellings.It was first recorded in 1706in the formMammuth, but in 1763 we find the formmammon. It is said that the Russian word is a borrowing of an Ostyak word (the Ostyak people live in western Siberia),but this has not been proved.猛犸这个词是在西伯利亚发现猛犸骨骼之后才引入英语的，所以这种动物的名称起源于俄语也就不足为奇了，尽管这种动物曾在欧亚大陆和北美到处游荡。俄语中的这个词，现在是mamant' ， 但以前为mamot ， 被引入英文时出现了不同的拼写方法。最早的记载是1706年，其形式是Mammuth， 但在1763年，其形式就变成了mammon。 据说俄语这个词也是源于一个奥斯加克语中一个词（奥斯加克人居住于西伯利亚西部），但这种说法还没有得到证实 |
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