8天攻克英语六级8000词汇(六)

　 BASIN:a soldier's helmet
　　You dont't have to tell a soldier that his helmet is often his only wsbasin or soup bowl. This word basin started in Roman days with the Late Latin term bachinus,"an eating lowl."In the Middle Ages, the knights of Charlemagne, king of the Franks wore cone-shaped metal caps or helmets.This word for this helmet was bacin, actually ,"a bowl for the head." Bacin slipped into English,then became basin. These words of ours proiferate, and before long we had bassinet or"little basin," that beriboned crib in which we put babies.
　　BESIEGE:sitting by a towm
　　This word traces through the Old French sieger,"to sit,"ultimately from the Latin sedeo,plus the English prefix be-, "by."When the enemy besieges a town,it sits by"it until somebody sives up.Or it used to ,at least,in the days before atomic fission.The Lation roots sed,sid ,and sess,form sedeo, came to us directly,without the changes incurred by passing through the French language.Therefore we have the session of Congress during which our legislators "sit";and those sedate paople who "sit"gravely in their chairs. Then there is the sediment that "sits" on the bottom and the sedentary jobs of the clerks.Or a nice, fat subsidy that lets you "sit" for the test of your life.
　　BOOTY:your share
　　The modern word booty comes from the Middke Low German word bute which meant a distribution or a sharing .When bute entered our language it began to mean booty as we understand it,something takenillegally and then sharedin the fashion of the pirates and freebooters of those days.Its spelling was influenced by the English word boot which meant profit or advantage. This we now use in such an expression as:"He sold him his camera and then gave him a couple of films to bot";that is , something besides, or in addition to,the article bough.But the word boot that applies to the covring that yu wear on your foot is merely a corruption of the Hindustani word lut,meaning "something plundered."
　　8. Terms of Science and the Professions
　　ACADEMY: named for a Greek farmer?
　　This is a pleasant story about a Greek farmer. It seems that a Spartan maiden, named Helen, was kidnapped by the legendary hero Theseus. Her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, who are now in our heavens as two bright stars, searched for their sister without success until they met the farmer, Akademos, who seems to have given them some hint as to the whereabouts of the kidnapper and his victim. As a reward for his alertness the grove of Akademos was eternally watched over by the gods. It was in this grove that the great philosopher Plato held his classes. The grove was called Academeia, and for many years after his death his pupils and followers met in this same spot for their discussions. Plato never did verify the story of the farmer, but he gave us the word academy that now means a place of learning.
　　ALGEBRA: bone-setting
　　The ancients had to borrow a medical term to christen this branch of mathematics. They took the Arabic words al jebr, with the meanings al, “the,” and jebr, “reuniting what is broken.” Sometimes these words were used to mean “bone-setting.” Out of this they built a really impressive phrase for the new science, ilm al-jebr wa’l-mup-abalah, which meant “reduction and comparison by equations.” The Italians mercifully took the second and third words of this phrase and combined them to form algebra. Even as late as the 17th century the word algebra kept its original Arabic meaning and still referred to surgical treatment. For instance we read in the historian Halle: “This Araby worde Algebra sygnifyeth as well fractures of bones as sometime the restauration of the same.” But to the school-child today, it’s just a mathematical headache.
　　ANESTHESIA: no feeling
　　Sir Humphry Davy first accomplished artificial anesthesia in 1800 and in that period medical men would have had enough Greek to know that Plato used the word anaisthesia to mean “insensibility” from an-, “not,” and aesthesis, “feeling.”
　　CHEMISTRY: a search for gold
　　The early alchemists spent most lf their time trying to find a way to turn baser metals into gold; and atomic fission is showing Us that they weren’t as stupid as we thought . When the Arabs invaded Europe , they brought with them the idea for their type of research and also introduced the name of it , al-kimia , which eventually became alchemy . The word chemist was coined by shortening alchemist , and the term chemistry followed .
　　DEAN: he led ten
　　The dean of your university is a descendant of the Roman decanus who was a commander of a division of ten . Late on this became a church term and was the title of the ecclesiastic who was at the head of ten monks in a monastery . By the time the colleges borrowed the title decanus , it was spelled dean , and now he can be the head of as many as he wants . Decanus is derived from decem , the Latin word for ‘ten’ .
　　DISSECT: cut it apart
　　When a biologist dissects a frog he dis-, ‘apart,’ and seco , ‘cut,’ or ‘cuts’ it ‘apart .’ In geometry we bisect a circle ,or ‘cut’ it in ‘two .’ A road that intersects another ‘cuts’ ‘in between .’ And a section is something ‘cut off .’
　　ELECTRICITY: the beaming sun
　　The Greeks knew that when you rubbed amber, it would become magnetic and begin to draw feathers and strings and other light objects to it. Little more than this was known about electricity until comparatively recent times. The ancients used to make love amulets out of amber, and guaranteed that the wearing of one would attract a lover . Since friction can make amber give off sparks , the Greeks named it electron , from elektor, ‘the beaming sun.’ This word into Latin as electrum, was turned into the adjective electritcus, whence our electric and electricity.
　　ELIXIR: of magic powers
　　With us an elixir is usually a panacea or life-giving potion, as: ‘The book is full of a veritable elixir of spiritual vitality.’ In the earliest days, Eastern alchemists continually tried to turn base metals into gold.There was an imaginary substance that they thought would do the trick, and they called it al-iksir, literally ‘the dry power.’ This entered Medieval Latin as elixir,still a word of magic, for in medieval times the boys were looking for an elixir vitae or ‘elixir of life’ that would bring eternal youth . Ponce de Leon sought the elixir in Florida , and Faust searched for this imaginary cordial in his laboratory . Even today elixir retains a magic meaning .
　　ENTOMOLOGY: cut up
　　This is the branch of zoology that treats of insects. The word is based on the Greek entomos which means ‘cut up.’ If we examine an ant or a similar insect, we will see that their bodies are indented and appear to be ‘cut up’ in to sections. The word ‘insect’ from the Latin insectum, ‘cut up,’ is simply a Roman rendering of the Greek idea.
　　INOCULATE: a gardening term
　　When the doctor inoculates you, he ‘plants’ in your body a small seedling of the virus or germ that causes the disease in order to make your immune to attack. But at first the word inoculate was a purely horticultural term and meant to insert an eye or bud in a plant for propagation. It came form the Latin in, ‘into,’ and oculus, ‘eye.’ Its present use dates form the time of the first inoculate against smallpox.
　　LAW: something laid down
　　When we lay down the law to someone, we are almost saying the same thing twice over. In the early days of our language law was spelled lagu in the pural and lagu is so closelyrelated to the word ‘lay’ we can safely say the law was something ‘laid down.’ A statute, on the other hand ,is quite the opposite. The grandparent of this word is the Latin statutes which simply means something ‘set up.’ We ‘set up’ laws on the books.
　　NAUSEA: derived from a ship
　　In the dim and distant days folks weren’t any better sailors than we are . They , too, got that type of nausea that we call seasickness and that the French speak of as mal de mer , or ‘sickness of the sea .’The Greeks were the ones who invented the world nausia , and they took it straight from their word naus , ’ship ,’ the vehicle that produced the condition . The Roman satirist , Juvenal ,points out with some bitterness in his Legend of Bad Women , that wives are always seasick , but that a mistress remains healthy and good-tempered during the whole voyage .
　　This word nausea, that in those days meant seasickness, has taken on a broader meaning in English.
　　PANACEA: named from a goddness
　　A panacea is a cure for all ills, and comes by its meaning in all honesty. If you look at the front of a modern physician’s car, you will usually see a metal piece representing a serpent twined medicine . The serpent was taken to represent medicine because he is the symbol of the renewing of youth and eternal life from the fact that he gets a new skin every year. The mythical Asclepius had a daughter with the happy name of Panakecia, “the all-healing,” and from her name was derive our word panacea.
　　PEDAGOGUE: he led the children
　　An instructor of young people is a schoolmaster ,and the history of the word demands that he should be , for this term comes from the identical Greek word pedagogue, which divides into pais , paidos, “child ,” and ago, “lead.” Originally , and quite literally ,the slave who “led” the “child” to school and home again by the hand.. Little attention was paid to the education of girls in ancient Greek days , but the sons were taught by the pedagogues who were slaves in the families of the rich. A demagogue ,by the way ,leads the “people”(demos) in other directions.
　　PUPIL: just a doll
　　When we see a group of young pupils sitting in a classroom, they look a bit like little dolls , and that’s why the word pupil came from the Latin term pupilla ,” a little doll.” And then we have the other English word pupil , the pupil of your eye . When we look another person in the eye, we often see a minute image of ourself reflected there , and this miniature picture also reminded the Romans of a pupilla or “little doll.” And so pupilla contributed the word pupil to us with a second meaning , the pupil of your eye . And it is interesting to know that the Jews were drawn to this same figure of speech. The Hebrew word for the pupil of the eye were eshon ayin, or “little man of the eye.”
　　QUARANTINE: forty days
　　The length of time that a ship is now held in quarantine varies with the nature of the contagious disease that is suspected of being aboard ,but years ago the quarantine was for a flat forty days .The word quarantine comes eventually from the Latin quadraginta, “forty,” and this magic number forty has several uses in our language . Quarentena, for instance , was the Medieval Latin name giben to the desert where Christ fasted for forty days ,and in the early Rome Catholic Church a quarantine was a penance or fast lasting for the same period of time. Now it is an indulgence corresponding to such a penance. In common law, we have the “window’s quarantine” which permits the bereaved woman to live in her deceased husband’s house for a period of forty days after his death . It would seem that there is a bit of religious significance in this mystic number “forty”.