| 单词 | 普通的事 |
| 释义 | 〔single〕"The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique" (Isaac Bashevis Singer).“艺术的伟大不是在于发现普通的事物，而是发现独一无二的东西” （艾萨克·巴什维斯·辛格）。〔commonplace〕Something that is ordinary or common.平常的或普通的事〔artichoke〕Those who have been warned to watch out for the sharp-tipped bracts toward the innermost part of an artichoke may have wondered whether the name of this vegetable has anything to do with choking.Originally it did not.Our word goes back to an Arabic word for the same plant,al-Caršūf. The Arabic word passed into Spanish,a not uncommon occurrence given the fact that Moslems ruled much of Spain for several centuries during the Middle Ages.The Old Spanish wordalcarchofa was variously modified as it passed through Italian, a Northern dialect form beingarticiocco, which looks more like artichoke than al-Caršūf. In English, where the word is first recorded in the early 16th century, a potpourri of spellings and explanations of it are found.For example, people who did not know the long history of the word explained it by the notion that the flower had a "choke,”that is, something that chokes, in its "heart.”那些被告知要当心这种朝鲜蓟的最内层部分的尖苞片的人，可能会猜想这种蔬菜与窒息有一些联系。最初并没有。这个词可以追溯到阿拉伯语言关于这种植物的名称，al-harsuf。 这个阿拉伯名称又传入了西班牙，这件极普通的事情指出，在中世纪时期穆斯林曾统治西班牙大部地区，长达几个世纪的事实。旧的西班牙词alcarchofa 又经历了不同的变化，如传入意大利， 北方方言的形式形成articicco， 这看起来更象 artichoke 而非 al-harsuf。 在英语中，这个词在16世纪初被记录下来时，有许多不同的拼法和解释。例如，不知道这个词的悠久历史的人解释这个词时依据的看法是花会令人“窒息”，也就是说，是一种在它“心中”窒息的东西。〔rent〕When young people talk about theirrents, that is, their parents, they are using a slang term that is of interest to language historians, if not necessarily thrilling for parents themselves. The term is a prime example of one of the fundamental characteristics of slang, which continually creates novel ways of expressing what are often rather ordinary things (if parents may be considered ordinary things). Slang has recently produced two expressions for "parents" that have gained wide currency— rents and parental units. Both expressions demonstrate slang's use of unusual or creative linguistic means to achieve novelty of expression. While there are many slang terms, such as bod for body or rad for radical, that result from the clipping of unstressed syllables, rents is a clipping that drops a stressed syllable, much like the similar term za, "pizza.” The desire to coin new ways of referring to things also leads speakers of slang to use circumlocutions like knuckle sandwich for "punch.” Parental units falls into this category. It plays on the jargon of bureaucrats and social science, in which the world is viewed as so much data waiting to be quantified. The appearance of terms such as rents and parental units also shows that all available styles and levels of language can be grist for slang's mill—so long as the material is perceived as irreverent, funny, or just plain cool. 年轻人谈论他们的rents （即父母）时，即使肯定不会令他们的父母感到兴奋，他们却使用了一个令语言历史学家很感兴趣的俚语。Rents是俚语一个基本特色的典范，这一基本特色就是不断创造新颖词汇来表示通常极为普通的事物（如果父母会被认为是普通事物的话）。最近俚语中产生了两个"父（母）亲"的词语并被普遍使用── rents 和 parental units 。这两个词语表明俚语用不同寻常的或创造性的语言工具来获取表达上的新颖。虽然因省略非重读音节产生了许多俚语词汇，如用 bod 指body、用 rad 指radical，但 rents 却是省略重读音节后的部分，非常类似相近词汇 za "pizza（比萨饼）"。期望创造指代事物的新词也使得满口俚语的人运用赘语，如用 knuckle sandwich 指"punch（用拳击）"。 Parental units 也属于赘语的范围。它用作官僚主义者的行话以及科学术语，因为对于官僚主义者和科学工作者来讲世界就是等待量化的大量数据。诸如 rents 和 parental units 这些俚语的出现也表明语言现有的全部风格和水平都是俚语的有益补充──只要认为内容是不敬的、有趣的或者纯粹扮酷的 |
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