| 单词 | 牛津英语 |
| 释义 | 〔lonely〕Henry Bradley, one of the four editors of theOxford English Dictionary, said "It is a truth often overlooked, but not unimportant, that every addition to the resources of a language must in the first instance have been due to an act (though not necessarily to a voluntary or conscious act) of some one person.”In many casesthis one person may have been an author,since the first recorded instance of a word is often found in an author's work.Of course, as Bradley warns,this is the firstrecorded instance; it is possible that a given author picked up the word or sense somewhere elseor that these reside undiscovered in an earlier work.In any caseit might be a minor relief of our condition the next time we feel lonely to know that the first recorded instance of the wordlonely occurs in the works of Shakespeare. The passage appears inCoriolanus (1607-1608) in a speech by Coriolanus to his mother Volumnia:"My mother, you wot [know] well/My hazards still have been your solace, and/Believe't not lightly—though I go alone,/Like to alonely dragon, that his fen/Makes fear'd and talk'd of more than seen—your son/Will or exceed the common or be caught/With cautelous [crafty] baits and practice.” Lonely here, of course, has the sense "solitary.” The dragon does not feel dejected,or if he does,he does not seem to know how to reach out to others effectively.牛津英语词典 的四位编纂者之一亨利·布莱德雷说： “人们经常忽视这样一个现实，但它并非不重要，那就是对某种语言词汇的每一次添加都首先是由于某一个人的行为（尽管不一定是自愿的或有意识的行为）”。许多时候，这一个人可能是个作者，因为一个词有记载的首次使用往往出自一位作者的作品。当然，正如布莱德雷所提醒人们的，这是首次有记载的 的例子； 某个作者可能是从别处学到这个词或这个意思，或是这个词或意思在更早的作品中已经出现，只是未被人们发现。不管怎样，当我们知道lonely 这个词的有记载的首次使用出现在莎士比亚的作品中时，这些都不大能减轻我们的沮丧心情。 在卡里奥拉纳斯 （1607-1608年）中， 卡里奥拉纳斯对他母亲弗罗姆尼娅讲的一段话中有这样的文字：“我的母亲，你清楚地知道／我的冒险一直是你的安慰，而且／不要轻信——尽管我要只身前往，／就象去面对一条孤单的 龙，他的沼泽／令人谈而色变，尽管并未亲见——你的儿子／决意或是胜过凡人或是被狡猾的圈套和手段擒捉”。 Lonely 在这里的意思当然是“孤单的”。 龙不会感到沮丧，即便它感到沮丧，他也不太可能知道如何让别人体会到它的感情〔tarnation〕The noun and interjectiontarnation illustrate suffixation, the addition of a suffix to a word.Tarnation and darnation (the latter probably having come first) are both euphemistic forms ofdamnation. Tarnationseems to have been influenced by tarnal, another mild oath derived from (e ) ternal! TheOxford English Dictionary cites late-18th-century examples of tarnation from New England, indicating that it has been part of American speech since colonial days.既是名词又是感叹词的tarnation 阐明了加后缀的构词法， 即将一个后缀加到一个词的末尾。Tarnation 和 darnation （后者可能先出现） 都是damnstion这个词的委婉形式。 Tarnation看来是受了 tarnal 一词的影响， 后者是从（e ） ternal 派生出来的一个较温和的诅咒语。 牛津英语辞典 援引了18世纪后期新英格兰地区居民使用 tarnation 一词的例子， 以此说明自殖民地时期起它就是美国语言的一部分〔fizzle〕In Philemon Holland's 1601 translation of Pliny'sNatural History, we are surprised by the use of the wordfizzle in the statement that if asses eat a certain plant,"they will fall a fizling and farting.” Fizzle was first used in English to mean,in the decorous parlance of theOxford English Dictionary, "to break wind without noise.” During the 19th centuryfizzle took on a related but more respectable sense, "to hiss, as does a piece of fireworks,”illustrated by a quotation from the November 7, 1881, issue of theLondon Daily News: "unambitious rockets which fizzle doggedly downwards.”In the same centuryfizzle also took on figurative senses, one of which seems to have been popular at Yale.TheYale Literary Magazine for 1849 helpfully defines the word as follows: “Fizzle, to rise with modest reluctance, to hesitate often, to decline finally; generally, to misunderstand the question.”The figurative sense offizzle that has caught on is the one with which we are most familiar today, "to fail or die out.”在腓利门荷兰1601年对普林尼的博物志 中， 我们对fizzle 一词的用法感到很惊讶， 它说如果驴吃了某种植物，“他们就会放屁。” Fizzle 首先在英语中指“无声地放屁，”是在牛津英语字典 的高雅用语中出现的。 在19世纪，fizzle 有了一个相关的但更文雅的含义， “发嘶嘶声，如同烟火那样，”这个词义是通过1881年11月7日的伦敦每日新闻 的引文说明的： “抱负不大的火箭，它们顽固地嘶嘶下坠。”同一世纪，fizzle 还赋与了比喻义， 其中的一个比喻义似乎在耶鲁大学很流行。1849年的耶鲁文学杂志 给这个词下了一个有益的定义： “Fizzle， 不十分情愿地上升，常犹豫不决，最终放弃； 通常是弄错问题。”人们已接受的fizzle 的比喻义， 即今天我们最为熟悉的“失败或消失”〔surly〕The fact that the wordsurly means "churlish" nicely indicates its fall in status. Churlish derives from the word churl, which in its Old English form ceorl meant "a man without rank, a member of the lowest rank of freemen,” as well as "peasant" in general. In Old Englishceorl may have been a term of contempt; it certainly became one in Middle English,wherecherl meant "base fellow, boor,” with churlish descending in meaning accordingly. Surly, on the other hand, started its life at the top of the scale but fell just as far. Looking at instances of this word in Middle English and Early Modern English,we see thatsurly was only one spelling for this word, another spelling beingsirly, which makes it clear that it came from the word sir, the term of honor for a knight or for a person of rank or importance in general. Thussirly, the form under which the early spellings of the word are entered in the Oxford English Dictionary, first meant "lordly.” Surly, entered as a separate word in the OED and first recorded in 1566, meant perhaps "lordly, majestic,” in its earliest use,subsequently being used in the sense "masterful, imperious, arrogant.” As the gloss "arrogant" makes clear, the wordsirly could have a negative sense, and it is this area of meaning that is responsible for the current "churlish" sense of the word.surly 意为“粗野的”事实生动地说明了这个词的地位下降。 Churlish 是 churl 的派生词，其古英文形式 ceorl 的意思是“没有爵位的男人，或者是自由民中最低等级的男人”，大概象“农民”一样。 古英语中ceorl 可能含有贬意； 中古英语中肯定是贬意，其cherl 的意思是“卑贱的人，粗野的人”，相应地 churlish 的意思也下降了。 另一方面，Surly 开始是个高尚的字，后来地位同样下降。 从中古英语和早期现代英语中的实例，我们可以看到，surly 的拼法只有一个， 另一个是sirly ，它清楚地表明这个字来自 sir （给于骑士或有等级或有身份的人的尊称）。 因此，sirly 这个字的最初形式记载在 牛津英语词典 中，开始的意思为（有威严的，高傲的）。 Surly 作为另一个字最初于1566年记录在 OED 中， 最初的意思是“老爷的、尊贵的”，以后的意思为“老爷般的、命令式的、傲慢的”。“傲慢”这个字条清楚地说明sirly 可能有过否定的意思， 也正是在这层意义上，它和目前“粗野的”意义有关〔quark〕"Three quarks for Muster Mark! / Sure he hasn't got much of a bark / And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.” This passage of James Joyce'sFinnegans Wake is part of a scurrilous 13-line poem directed against King Mark,the cuckolded husband in the Tristan legend.The poem and the accompanying prose are packed with names of birds and words suggestive of birds,and the poem is a squawk,like the cawing of a crow, against King Mark.Thus, Joyce uses the wordquark, which comes from the standard English verbquark, meaning "to caw, croak,” and also from the dialectal verb quawk, meaning"to caw, screech like a bird.” But Joyce'squark was not what it has become: "any of a group of hypothetical subatomic particles proposed as the fundamental units of matter.”Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist who proposed these particles, in a private letter of June 27, 1978, to the editor of theOxford English Dictionary, said that he had actually been influenced by Joyce's word in naming the particle,although the influence was subconscious at first.Gell-Mann was thinking of using the pronunciation (kwôrk) for the particle,possibly something he had picked up fromFinnegans Wake, which he "had perused from time to time since it appeared in 1939. . . . The allusion to three quarks seemed perfect" (originally there were only three subatomic quarks).Gell-Mann, however, wanted to pronounce the word with (ô) not (ä), as Joyce seemed to indicate by rhyming words in the vicinity such asMark. Gell-Mann got around that "by supposing that one ingredient of the line ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark’was a cry of ‘Three quarts for Mister . . . ’ heard in H.C. Earwicker's pub.”冲马克王呱叫三声! / 很显然一声狗吠对他还不够 / 很显然他所有的一切都和盛名无关。 这一段出自詹姆斯·乔伊斯的为芬尼根守灵 ， 是对马克王进行侮辱谩骂的一首十三行诗中的一部分。马克王是特里斯特拉姆传奇故事中被戴了绿帽子的丈夫。这首诗和随同的叙述中充斥着鸟类的名字和暗示鸟类的词。这首诗是对马克王的粗声抗诉，就象乌鸦的啼叫。所以乔伊斯用了quark 一词， 它来源于标准英语动词quark （意思为“呱呱地叫，乌鸦叫”）和方言中的动词 quawk （意思为“象鸟一样呱呱地叫、尖叫”）。 乔伊斯笔下的quark 一词并不是现在形成的意思： “任何一组假想的亚原子粒子，被认为是物质的基本单位”。这些粒子的提出者——物理学家默里·基尔曼在1978年6月27日写给牛津英语词典 编者的一封私人信件中说, 他给这种粒子命名时确实受到了乔伊斯这个词的影响，虽然这种影响起初只是潜意识的。基尔曼本想用(kwôrk)这个发音来代表这种粒子，可能也是从为芬尼根守灵 一书中汲取出来的。 自从1939年这书出版以来，他曾时常精读…关于三声呱叫的暗示看上去很完满（最初只有三种亚原子夸克）。但是基尔曼想让这个词发音为(o)而不是(a)——乔伊斯将韵押为与Mark 相近的音好象表明该发这个音。 基尔曼认为这行诗中的一部分“对马克王呱叫三声”，实际上是在酒店中听到的“给这位先生来三夸脱酒”叫喊声〔poke〕Apig in a poke is concealed in a sack from the buyer. The nounpoke —meaning a bag or sack—dates from the 14th century in English. In many parts of Scotlandpoke means a little paper bag for carrying purchases or a cone-shaped piece of paper for an ice-cream cone. TheOxford English Dictionary gives similar forms in other languages: Icelandicpoki, Gaelic poc or poca, and French poche. Pouchand pocket are undoubtedly cognates. 一只袋子里的猪 被藏于一只麻袋中而不让买主看到。 poke 这个名词——意为一个包或袋子——在英语中可追溯到14世纪。 在苏格兰的许多地方，poke 指用来携带商品的一个小纸包或用来包冰淇淋卷的一张锥形纸片。 牛津英语词典 给出了该词在其它语言中的近似形式： 冰岛语中的poki ，盖耳语中的 poc 或 poca 和法语中的 poche。 Pouch和 pocket 无疑是同源词 〔film〕One indication of the gulf between us and our Victorian predecessorsis that theOxford English Dictionary fascicle containing the word film, published in 1896, does not have the sense "a motion picture.” The one hint of the future to be found among still familiar older senses of the word,such as "a thin skin or membranous coating" or "an abnormal thin coating on the cornea,”is the sense offilm used in photography, a sense referring to a coating of material, such as gelatin,that could substitute for a photographic plate or be used on a plate or on photographic paper.Thus a word that has been with us since Old English times took on this new use,first recorded in 1845,which has since developed and now refers to an art form,a sense first recorded in 1920.我们同我们维多利亚时代祖先之间的巨大隔阂的表现，就是1896年出版的《牛津英语词典》 分册包含的 film 一词没有“电影”这个含义。 在当中发现的对未来的提示仍然同这个词的旧有意思相近，例如“一层薄的皮或覆盖的薄膜”或“角膜上一种不正常的薄的覆盖物”，就是film 用于摄影的含义， 意思指覆盖物，如胶，可以代替感光板或用于感光板上或在相纸之上。因此从古英语时代出现这个新用法开始，这个词已同我们在一起了，在1845年首次被记录，随着时代发展并指一门艺术形式，这个含义于1920年才首次记录〔powerful〕In the upper southern United States the wordspowerful and mighty are intensives used frequently like the adverb very : Your boy's grown powerful big.The new baby is mighty purty.Powerfulis used as an adjective in some expressions: The storm did a powerful lot of harm. In the same dialect regionthe nounpower has, in addition to its standard meaning, the sense of "a large number or amount.”This sense appears in theOxford English Dictionary as common in dialectal British English of the 18th and 19th centuries: "It has done a power of work" (Charles Dickens).All these derivative senses ofpower and might take advantage of the notion of strength inherent in these nouns, making them natural intensives. Colloquial English is always on the lookout for ways to make language more vivid with new intensives.We think of the upper southern part of the United States as linguistically conservative,but in fact it has preserved uses ofpower, powerful, and mighty that were innovative in their time. 在美国中南部powerful 及 mighty 这两个词用作强调词并与 very 一样用得很频繁： 你的儿子已长得很大了。新生儿非常干净。Powerful在有些表达中还用作形容词： 这暴风造成巨大灾害。 在同一方言区中，名词power 除了具有标准含义外， 还有“大的数字或数量”之意。该意义出现在牛津英语词典 中， 在18世纪及19世纪的英国英语方言中使用也十分普遍： “它已做了大量工作” （查尔斯·狄更斯）。所有power 及 might 的这些衍生意义都利用两个名词本身力量的含义而使它们成为强调词。 英语口语一直在寻求途径以运用新的强调词，使语言变得更为生动。我们认为美国中南部在语言的使用上是很保守的，但事实上，这部分地区却保留了在当时十分创新的power，powerful 及 mighty 的用法 〔party〕Party is unexceptionable when used to refer to a participant in a social arrangement, as inShe was not named as a party in the conspiracy. It is this sense that underlies the legal use of the term,as when one speaks of theparties to a contract. The legal use has in turn led to the presence of the word in many fixed expressions,such asinjured party and third party. Butparty is also widely used as a general substitute for person, as inWould all parties who left packages at the desk please reclaim their property. This usage has been established for many centuries,but in the Victorian era it came to be associated with the language of the semieducated(theOxford English Dictionary describes it as "shoppy"), and it has been the subject of many later criticisms.This use ofparty may have been reinforced by its modern adoption by telephone operators. In other contexts,when used in earnest,it may be perceived as a superfluous variant forperson. But the jocular use of the term is well established,particular in references such asa wise old party. Party 用作指一项社会活动的参与者是很常见的， 如她不是这一阴谋的参与者。 正是这一意义构成了这一词的法律用法，如人们说及 parties to a contract 。 这种法律用法反过来又使得这一词出现在许多固定的短语中，如injured party 和 third party。 但party 也被广泛地用于对 person 的泛称， 如在所有将包裹放在桌子上的人请来认领他们的东西。 这种用法已确立了许多个世纪，但在维多利亚时代，它开始与受过部分教育的人的语言联系起来（牛津英语词典 把它描述为“三句话不离本行的”）， 并且它已成为后来许多批判家批评的对象。Party 的这一用法由于话务员的经常采用而被强化了。 在其它的上下文中，当用于严肃的场合时，它可以被视作是person 不必要的变体。 但这一词诙谐的用法确立已久，尤其在提及如一个精明的老人 时 〔wanigan〕Wanigan is apparently borrowed from Ojibwa waanikaan, "storage pit,” from the verbwaanikkee-, "to dig a hole in the ground.” Nineteenth-century citations in theOxford English Dictionary indicate that the word was then associated chiefly with the speech of Maine. It denoted a storage chest containing small supplies for a lumber camp,a boat outfitted to carry such supplies,or, as in Algonquian, the camp equipment and provisions.In Alaska, on the western edge of the vast territory inhabited by Algonquian-speaking tribes,the same word was borrowed into English to indicate a little temporary hut, usually built on a log raft to be towed to wherever men were working. According to Russell Tabbert of the University of Alaska,wanigan is still used in the northernmost regions of Alaska to mean "a small house, bunkhouse, or shed mounted on skids" to be dragged along behind a tractor train as a place for a work crew to eat and sleep. However, Tabbert notes that in southeast Alaska, where mobile homes are a common option for housing,wanigan now means an addition built onto a trailer house for extra living or storage space. Classified advertisements for trailer homes frequently mentionwanigans. Wanigan 很显然是从奥吉布瓦语 waanikdan 而来， “储物处”从动词waanikkee （意为“在地上挖洞”）而来。 牛津英语词典 里的19世纪的引文表明，该词当时主要与缅因语相连。 它指示供应木料营地用的贮物箱，载有供应品的小船，或如在阿尔贡金语中所指的宿营装备或供应品。在阿拉斯加讲阿尔贡金语部族居住的广大土地西端，该词被借入到英语中，表示一个通常是建在木筏上的临时性小屋，每当人们搬迁的时候就将其拽走。根据阿拉斯加大学的拉塞尔·泰伯特所言，wanigan 仍然用于阿拉斯加最北部地区，意为用牵引车牵引着的供一工作组食宿的“建于轮子上的小房子、工房或工棚”。 但是泰伯特指出，在阿拉斯加东南部常选择活动房作为住所，wanigan 现在的意思是供额外居住或贮存用的一个活动房屋的附加物。 关于活动房屋的分类广告经常提到wanigans 〔appendicitis〕Even though the wordappendicitis was in use in 1885, the year in which theOxford English Dictionary published the section "Anta-Battening" that would have contained the word, the editor, James Murray, omitted this "crack-jaw medical and surgical word" on the advice of Oxford's Regius Professor of Medicine, Sir Henry Wentworth Acland.As K.M. Elisabeth Murray, the granddaughter and biographer of James Murray, points out,"The problem of what scientific words to include was a continuing one, and James Murray was always under pressure—from his advisers . . . who thought the emphasis should be on words from good literature and from those in the [Oxford University] Press who wanted to save cost and time—not to include scientific words of recent origin.”In 1902 no less a person than Edward VII had his appendix removed,and his coronation was postponed because of the operation.Appendicitis hence came into widespread use and has remained so, thereby pointing up the lexicographer's difficult task of selecting the new words that people will look for in their dictionaries.尽管appendicitis 这个词于1885年就已使用， 在这一年出版的牛津英语词典 的“安塔族-增长论”这一分册应包括有这个词， 但在牛津皇家医学院教授亨利·温特华斯·阿克兰的建议下，主编詹姆斯·莫雷删掉了这个“拗口的医学和外科用词”。正如詹姆斯·莫雷的孙女和传记作者K·M·伊莉莎白·莫雷指出的那样， “应包括什么科学用语是一个长期以来的问题，詹姆斯·莫雷经常遇到来自他的顾问的压力…他们认为重点应放到从好文学作品中收来的词汇上，还受到来自出版社的压力，他们为了节约成本和时间而不愿收录新近的科学词汇”。1902年恰恰正是爱德华七世割除了阑尾，他的加冕典礼也因为这次手术而延迟。Appendicitis 一词因此得到了普遍的使用并保持至今， 这也表明了词典编纂者在选择人们要查找的新单词时所面临的艰难任务〔anesthesia〕The following passage, written on November 21, 1846, by Oliver Wendell Holmes,a physician-poet and the father of the Supreme Court justice of the same name,allows us to pinpoint the entry ofanesthesia and anesthetic into English: "Every body wants to have a hand in a great discovery. All I will do is to give you a hint or two as to names—or the name—to be applied to the state produced and the agent. The state should, I think, be called ‘Anaesthesia’ [from the Greek word anaisthēsia, "lack of sensation"]. This signifies insensibility . . . The adjective will be ‘Anaesthetic.’ Thus we might say the state of Anaesthesia, or the anaesthetic state.”This citation is taken from a letter to William Thomas Green Morton,who in October of that year had successfully demonstrated the use of ether at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.Althoughanaesthesia is recorded in Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary in 1721, it is clear that Holmes really was responsible for its entry into the language.TheOxford English Dictionary has several citations for anesthesia and anesthetic in 1847 and 1848, indicating that the words gained rapid acceptance.下面是奥立佛·万德·霍姆斯写于1846年11月21的一段话。作者是个诗人医生和与其同名的最高法庭法官的父亲。这段话能使我们断定anesthesia 和 anesthetic 进入英语的背景： “每个人都希望能够参与一次伟大的发现。我所要做的是告诉你一两个提示去命名，或能被应用于某种状态的名称。我认为这种状态应该被叫做Anaesthesia ［从希腊词anaisthesia “感觉缺失”发展而来］。 这个词表示无感觉…其形容词应该是‘Anaesthetic’。这样我们可以说感觉缺失的状态或感觉缺失”。这段话是从寄给威廉·托马斯·格林·莫顿的一封信上摘录下的，莫顿同年十月在波士顿的马萨诸塞总医院曾成功使用了醚。尽管南森·巴利于1721年把anaethesia 选入了 通用英语词源词典 ， 但是很显然是霍姆斯首先把这个词引入英语。牛津英语词典 上有几处引用了1847年和1848年有 anesthesia 和 anesthetic 的句子， 说明这两个词很快就被人们所接受〔posh〕"Oh yes, Mater, we had a posh time of it down there.”So inPunch for September 25, 1918, do we find the first recorded instance of that mysterious wordposh, meaning "smart and fashionable,”although in a 1903 book by P.G. Wodehouse,Tales of St. Austin's, there is a mention of a waistcoat that was "push.” The latter may be a different word,but in either case the dates of occurrence are importantbecause they are part of the objection to derivingposh from the initials of "Port Out, Starboard Home.” This was the cooler, and thus more expensive, side of ships traveling between England and India in the mid-19th century,and the acronymPOSH was supposedly stamped on the tickets of first-class passengers traveling on that side of ships owned by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. No evidence is definitely known to exist for this theory, however.TheOxford English Dictionary Supplement may have found a possible source or sources for posh. Another wordposh was 19th- and early 20th-century British slang for "money,” specifically "a halfpenny, cash of small value.”This word is borrowed from the common Romany wordpåšh, "half,” which was used in combinations such aspåšhera, "halfpenny.” Posh, also meaning "a dandy,” is recorded in two dictionaries of slang published in 1890 and 1902,although this particularposh may be still another word. This word or these words, however, are much more likely to be the source ofposh than "Port Out, Starboard Home,” although the latter source certainly has caught the public's etymological fancy.“哦是的，妈妈，我们在那里过着豪华的生活。”因此在1918年9月25日的punch 上， 我们看到了那个神秘单词posh 的首次记录， 意为“豪华的，时髦的，”虽然早在1903年P·G·伍德豪斯的名为圣·奥斯汀传说 的作品中就提及了意为"push"的马夹这个词。 后者也可能是另外一个不同的词，但在任何一种情况下两者被使用的时间都很重要，因为它们都反对posh 这个词源于"Port Out，Starboard Home。” 这是意指19世纪中期往来于英格兰及印度的船只中较凉爽、因而票价也就较为昂贵的一侧，而POSH 这个首字缩拼词据说就印在半岛——东方蒸汽船航运公司所拥有的船只上较为凉爽的一侧头等舱的票上。 然而对于这一说法并没有确凿的证据来加以证明。牛津英语词典增补本 也许为 posh 找到了一个或多个可能的词源。 另一个词posh 则是19世纪和20世纪初英国人用来表示“钱”的俚语， 尤指“半便士，小面值钱币。”这个词源于吉卜赛常用词på歨 ，意为“一半”， 用在诸如意为“半便士”的复合词på歨era 中。 Posh 也有“花花公子”之意， 这一用法记录于1890年及1902年出版的两本俚语词典中，尽管这个特有的posh 也有可能是另一个词。 然而这个词及上文提到的那些词比"Port Out，Starboard Home"更有可能是posh 这个词的词源， 虽然后者早被人们确认为这个词的词源〔vum〕A New Englander expressing surprise is liable to say,"Well, I vum!” This odd-sounding word is in fact an alteration of the verbvow that goes back to the days of the American Revolution.It is also heard simply as"Vum!” or as a sort of past participle: "I'll be vummed!” A southern equivalent isswanny, also meaning "swear": Now, I swanny! According to theOxford English Dictionary, the word swanny derives from the dialect of the North of England: Is' wan ye, "I shall warrant ye.” 一个新英格兰人表示惊讶时会说“嗯，我发誓!” 这个听起来有些古老的词实际上是vow 这个动词的变体， 它可以上溯到美国独立战争时期。也可以仅用"Vum!"（“发誓!”） 或作为过去分词： "I'll be vummed!"（“我可以发誓!”） 南方相同的词是Swanny， 也是“发誓”的意思： Now, I swanny!（现在，我起誓!） 按照牛津英语字典， swanny 一词由北英格兰方言派生而来： Is' wan ye， “我向你保证” 〔agin〕The spelling ofagin reflects both the raised vowel before a nasal consonant, typical of Southern dialects, and a reduced final consonant cluster, typical of several regional varieties.Agin has a wide spectrum of senses in the regional speech of those who pronounce it this way. Indeed, these regional senses are tied to the pronunciation,for standard Englishagainst does not quite capture the full implication of the assertion "I'm agin him" — that is, "opposed to him and all that he stands for.”Another regional sense recalls the original literal Old English sense of "facing; next to" (see the first four senses ofagainst in the Oxford English Dictionary), where standard English would haveby: Their house is agin the mountain.Agin may be used figuratively with regard to time chiefly in South Midland dialects,meaning "by or before (a specified time)”: "I'll be there agin daylight" (North Carolina informant in DARE).词汇agin 的拼写既反映了典型的南部方言──鼻辅音前的元音的提高， 又反映了压缩的后辅音群──几种典型的地方变体的特征。Agin 在它被如此发音的地方方言有广泛的意思。 确实，这些地域意义是和读音联系在一起的，因为标准英语中against 没有完全表达 "I'm agin him" 所隐含的意义── 即“反对他及他所代表的一切。”另外一个地域意义使人想起古英语中最初的文学用语“面对；紧靠着”（参阅《牛津英语词典》中against 的前四个释义）， 而在标准英语中应该用by： 傍山而建的房屋。Agin 主要在中南部方言中可以比喻地用来表示时间，意思是“到或在…（特定时间）前”： “天亮前我可到达” （美国区域英语词典的北卡罗来纳提供资料者）〔Bradley〕English lexicographer who was senior editor (1915-1923) of theOxford English Dictionary. 布拉德利，亨利：(1845-1923) 英国词典编辑者，是《牛津英语词典》 的高级编辑（1915-1923年） 〔Yankee〕Yankee is an excellent example of a widely known word whose origins cannot be determined. The best hypothesis is thatYankee comes from Dutch Janke, a nickname forJan, "John.” Evidence can be found in theOxford English Dictionary that the forms Yankey, Yanky, and Yankee were used as surnames or nicknames in the 17th century. The wordYankee is first found in one of our modern senses in 1758, the sense being "a New Englander.” The 17th-century nickname forJan was derisive, and the first instances of our word show the term being used derisively by the British for New Englanders.After the Battle of Lexington (1775) New Englanders dignified the name.The British were responsible for application of the term to all Americans (a use first recorded around 1784);and Southerners, for application of the term to Northerners (first recorded in 1817).Yankee 是一个广为人知但来源不明的单词的极好例证。 最好的假设是Yankee 来自于荷兰语 Janke, 是Jan “约翰”的浑名。 从《牛津英语字典》 可以找到证据证明 Yankey,Yanky 和 Yankee 这些形式在17世纪曾被用作姓氏或浑名。 Yankee 一词的第一个现代意义出现于1758年，即“新英格兰人”。 17世纪Jan 的浑名含有嘲弄意味， 该词的第一例用法也说明英国人用它来嘲弄新英格兰人。在莱克星顿战役(1775年）后，新英格兰人赋于了它尊严与荣誉。英国人用该词来指称所有美国人（首次出现于1784年）；美国南方人则用它指称北方人（首次出现于1817年）〔adage〕It is sometimes claimed that the expressionold adage is redundant, inasmuch as a saying must have a certain tradition behind it to count as anadage in the first place. But the word adage is first recorded by the OED in the phrase old adage, showing that this redundancy itself is very old.Such idiomatic redundancy is paralleled by similar phrases such asyoung whelp. 有时人们认为old adage 这种表达方式很累赘， 因为谚语首先必须具有一定的传统才能成为adage 。 但是adage 这个词首次是以 old adage 这个词组形式收录于 《牛津英语词典》， 由此可表明这种累赘本身就很古老。这种谚语上的累赘与类似的词组对等，如年轻的幼犬 〔Murray〕British philologist and the original lexicographer (1879-1915) of theOxford English Dictionary. 默里，詹姆斯·奥古斯都·亨利：(1837-1915) 英国文献学家以及《牛津英语词典》 的最早编纂者（1879-1915年） 〔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〔mill〕Tomill, in Western U.S. English, means "to halt a cattle stampede by turning the lead animals.”In theOxford English Dictionary we find this 19th-century example of the verb: "At last the cattle ran with less energy, and it was presently easy to ‘mill’ them into a circle and to turn them where it seemed most desirable" (Munsey's Magazine).This usage ofmill comes from the resemblance of the cattle's circular motion to the action of millstones. A related intransitive sense of the verb is better known in Standard English: A crowd milled around in the street. Originally this sense ofmill also meant "circular motion"; now it means "to move around in churning confusion"with no pattern in particular.Mill 这个词在美国西部所说的英语中， 意为“通过让领头牲畜绕圈子跑来制止牛群的惊跑”。在牛津英语词典 中， 我们可以找到该动词19世纪用法的例子： “最后牛群终于跑得快没劲儿了，这时候可以容易地驱赶头牛，把其它牛绕进圈子里，然后把它们赶到最合适的地方去” （芒西杂志）。Mill 的这种用法来自牛群绕圈跑与磨石运作的相似之处。 该词作不及物动词时所具有的与此相关的意义在标准英语中更为常见： 一群人在大街上兜圈子。 Mill 的这一含义本来亦指“旋转运动”； 现在它指“在旋涡般的混乱中到处移动”，不再有其它特指 |
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