| 单词 | 牧羊狗 |
| 释义 | 〔echo〕One might think that our wordecho is from the name of the nymph Echo, whom Greek mythology associates with echoes.According to one version of her story,she was torn to pieces by shepherds driven to this act by the god Pan, who was hopelessly in love with her.Pieces of Echo hidden in the ground still respond to Pan's frenzied cries,producing the phenomena known as echoes.A second version of her tale has it that Echo, as a penalty for distracting Hera from observing Zeus's infidelities, lost all power of speech,except the ability to reply.This defect lost her the love of Narcissus,which caused Echo to pine away until only her voice was left.The hapless nymph, however, cannot even claim credit for echoesbecause the Greek wordēkhō, the source of Englishecho, existed with our common noun sense before any mention of Echo is found.Our wordecho is first recorded in Middle English in a work composed in 1340. 您可能想到echo 这个词来自仙女埃科的名字， 她在希腊神话中与回声有关。关于她的故事，有一种说法认为，神潘爱她无望，便指使牧羊狗将她撕成碎片。她的碎片藏在地下时仍在回答潘的疯狂叫喊，于是产生了回声。另一种说法是，埃科使得赫拉察觉不到宙斯的不忠，作为惩罚被剥夺了说话的能力，只能重复别人的话。这个缺陷使她失去了纳西色斯的爱情，于是埃科不断憔悴消损，最后只留下她的声音。可惜的是这位不幸的女神并不能因为制造了回声这个词而居功，因为希腊语ekho ， 即英语中echo 的来源， 早在任何关于埃科的故事之前就存在了。我们现在的词echo 最早是在1340年出现于中世纪英文作品中 〔mutt〕Clipping not of sheep but of a word having to do with sheep has given us our termmutt for a mongrel dog. Clipping or abbreviating words, a standard process of word formation,shearedmutt from muttonhead, a pejorative term meaning "a stupid person,”based on the notion that sheep are stupid.Mutt in its first recorded use in 1901 is used in the same senses asmuttonhead, but it is soon recorded (1904)as a term of contempt for a horseand then (1906) for a dog.We can be reasonably certain that theNew Yorker critic writing in 1970 that "The cast includes a Sheepdog . . . a Mutt Bitch,” had no awareness that a sheepdog would make the ideal mutt.不是对绵羊的修剪而是对与绵羊有关的一个词进行省略呈现给我们的专门名词mutt 指杂种狗。 简略或缩写单词，一项规范的造词过程，将mutt 从 muttonhead 缩略而得， 这个含贬义的词意为“笨蛋”，源于绵羊是蠢笨的说法。Mutt 最早记载于1901年， 被用作muttonhead 的同义词， 但不久(1904年）的记载中，该词表示对马的蔑称，然后(1906年）成为对狗的蔑称。我们有理由肯定1970年的New Yorker 一本批判性作品， 其评注“包括牧羊狗…狗杂种”就没有意识到牧羊狗也可以表示十足的狗杂种之意〔kelpie〕From Kelpie [the name of an early specimen of the breed] 源自 Kelpie [原为一只早期的澳大利亚牧羊狗的名字] |
| 随便看 |
|
学习网英语词汇栏目收词371507余条，连同派生词、复合词、词组和习语等。每个词条提供了音标、词性、释义、用法、搭配和同（近）义词等多项功能，对所收词汇进行全方位的解释和说明，内容丰富，功能全面。