8天攻克英语六级8000词汇(六)
2009-10-15来源:和谐英语
FOOL: tongue-wagger
Let those who talk too much take care, for the Latin word follis, which gave us fool, means “a windbag.” And yet there is a more innocent way than this to get the reputation of being foolish. The ancient Greeks called those who didn’t hold public office idiots, whence our word idiots, and this may be what our politicians think of us today.
FREE: once, beloved
The word free ties into the Old English freo, a close relative lf the German word frei which meant “loving” or “beloved.” In meant “agreeable” or “beloved.” In the ancient Sanskrit language priya-, diatantly related to free,meant “agreeable” or “beloved.”. If you had been a patrician in those olden days, your “loved ones” who would have been free ,and your slaves .Or if your should have been slaves enough, you would probably have bought his liberty and made him free too, so finally our Old English word fero evoluted into the modern word free, that is ,”not slave”; and freond ,”loving one”, grew into “friend”.
HERMAPHRODITE : originally a god’s name
Biologically ,today ,a hermaphrodite is a living being having both male and female organs. This highly technical word, however , has a romantic history .Hermaphroditos was the son of the Greed god Hermes and of Aphrodite, goddess of love ,and was supposed to have not only the names, but the beauty of both his parents. On a certain occasion, a susceptible nymph, Saimacis by name , saw the handsome son bathing in her pool and she immediately fell head over heels in love with him. To her horror he turned her down.. But she was a resourceful girl and prayed to the gods for an indissoluble union with him .The gods answered her prayer and arranged that the body of the nymph and the body of Hermaphroditos should grow together as one. Our biological name hermaphrodite was taken from this story and was applied quite logically to bisexual individuals.
HOTTENTOT: just gibberish
The musical comedy stage has made the savage Hottentots familiar to us. They were a native tribe of the Cape of Good Hope. When the Dutch landed there they couldn’t understand the native dialect at all since it was full of clicks and jerks and sounded like so much stammering .The only syllables that the Dutch sailors could understand were hot and tot, and so the mariners named the people just that : hot-en-tot ,for en is “and” in Dutch.
IMPEDE: putting your foot in it
When you are impeded ,that is ,when there are obstacles in your way that hinder you from doing what you wish ,it means that your “foot “ is “in” something ,from the Latin im-.”in” ,and pes, pedis ,”foot”. That is ,your “foot” is entangled “in” something and your can’t get it out. You have really “put your foot in it,” or more literally ,you have something “in the way of your foot.” That’s why we call heavy baggage impedimenta,it tangles up our feet. But when someone expedites matters for you (ex, “out,” and pes, pedis, foot”) he gets your “foot” “out” of its entanglement so that you can do what you want to without hindrance.
INCUBUS: once an obscene spirits
This word and its sister succubus have morbid and obscene origins. Incubus is from the Latin incubo,”lie upon,” and in the beginning referred to an evil spirit who would lie with the ladies when they were asleep and for no good purpose. A succubus ,Latin succumbo, “lie beneath,” was a female domon who, in turn ,was reputed to have sexual connection with men in their sleep . Both sexes, apparently, were well taken care of .In its later history the word incubus has come to mean a handi-happing burden of some sort,as ”His career was held back by the incubus of poverty.”A succubus,however,never changed and is still a strumpet.
INVESTIGATE:looking for footprints
When detectives investigate a murder,it is likely today that they will first look for fingerprints.And yet if the crime had been committed on a snowy night they would search for foot prints too.And here we have the sealed-in picture of investigate:Latin in,”in,”and vestigo,”follow a footprint,” from vestigium, “footprint.”This latter,of course,gives us our word vestige, as,”There is not a vestige of truth in the statement.”T hat is,not a trace or a footprint of truth.
LUNATIC: moonstruck
There are many people today who would feel uncomfortable if they had to sleep with the moon shining in their faces.They probably wouldn’t believe that this act would turn then into lunatics,but the shadow of that superstition still remains in the race .Down through the centuries there has been a widespread notion that madness is related to the moon,and that the violence of madness changes with the phases of the moon.In Roman mythology luna was the moon goddess,and it was her name that gave us lunatic because she was supposed to create this condition.
MAIM:knocking out a front tooth
An early statute says that you have maimed a man if you knock out his front tooth ,but that he is not maimed if you knock out one of his grinders,because with a front tooth he can bite and tear at the enemy,while with a grinder he can only masticate his food.Another amusing law in 1641 says that “The cutting off of an eare,or nose ,or breaking of the hinder teeth,or such like ,is no maihem.”Now ,of course, the words maim and mayhem apply to any willful mutilation.
MAROON:take to the wilds .
When pirates of old took a dislike to one of their fellow buccaneers,they would set him ashore,or maroon him,on some farlff island and simply sail away.In the beginning though, maroon was a moun, and maroons were the Negroes who lived in Dutch Guiana and the West Indies.The word is from the French term marron, a short form of the Spanish word cimarron,meaning wild and untamed.Later on maroon changed to mean “one left in the wilds .”
MOB:from a Latin phrase
The English have often accused us Americans of being lazy with our language.We won’t bother,they say,to call a man a baseball fanatic.We clip this to “a baseball fan.”But if we turn back the pages of history, we discover that the British had this same habit around the beginning of the 18th century.They,too were coining new words by snipping bits off old ones.The essayist, Joseph Addison,was quite haughty about it all. He refers to the practice as:”This Humour of speading no more than we needs must which has so miserably curtailed some of our Words”，and he cites the new vulgarism mob as an example.Before the reign of Charles II folks never said such a slang word as mob. They used the Latin phrase mobile vulgus,”the fickle crowd.”But to Addison’s horror they soon shortened this to mobile Then to the mob which we still have with us.
Let those who talk too much take care, for the Latin word follis, which gave us fool, means “a windbag.” And yet there is a more innocent way than this to get the reputation of being foolish. The ancient Greeks called those who didn’t hold public office idiots, whence our word idiots, and this may be what our politicians think of us today.
FREE: once, beloved
The word free ties into the Old English freo, a close relative lf the German word frei which meant “loving” or “beloved.” In meant “agreeable” or “beloved.” In the ancient Sanskrit language priya-, diatantly related to free,meant “agreeable” or “beloved.”. If you had been a patrician in those olden days, your “loved ones” who would have been free ,and your slaves .Or if your should have been slaves enough, you would probably have bought his liberty and made him free too, so finally our Old English word fero evoluted into the modern word free, that is ,”not slave”; and freond ,”loving one”, grew into “friend”.
HERMAPHRODITE : originally a god’s name
Biologically ,today ,a hermaphrodite is a living being having both male and female organs. This highly technical word, however , has a romantic history .Hermaphroditos was the son of the Greed god Hermes and of Aphrodite, goddess of love ,and was supposed to have not only the names, but the beauty of both his parents. On a certain occasion, a susceptible nymph, Saimacis by name , saw the handsome son bathing in her pool and she immediately fell head over heels in love with him. To her horror he turned her down.. But she was a resourceful girl and prayed to the gods for an indissoluble union with him .The gods answered her prayer and arranged that the body of the nymph and the body of Hermaphroditos should grow together as one. Our biological name hermaphrodite was taken from this story and was applied quite logically to bisexual individuals.
HOTTENTOT: just gibberish
The musical comedy stage has made the savage Hottentots familiar to us. They were a native tribe of the Cape of Good Hope. When the Dutch landed there they couldn’t understand the native dialect at all since it was full of clicks and jerks and sounded like so much stammering .The only syllables that the Dutch sailors could understand were hot and tot, and so the mariners named the people just that : hot-en-tot ,for en is “and” in Dutch.
IMPEDE: putting your foot in it
When you are impeded ,that is ,when there are obstacles in your way that hinder you from doing what you wish ,it means that your “foot “ is “in” something ,from the Latin im-.”in” ,and pes, pedis ,”foot”. That is ,your “foot” is entangled “in” something and your can’t get it out. You have really “put your foot in it,” or more literally ,you have something “in the way of your foot.” That’s why we call heavy baggage impedimenta,it tangles up our feet. But when someone expedites matters for you (ex, “out,” and pes, pedis, foot”) he gets your “foot” “out” of its entanglement so that you can do what you want to without hindrance.
INCUBUS: once an obscene spirits
This word and its sister succubus have morbid and obscene origins. Incubus is from the Latin incubo,”lie upon,” and in the beginning referred to an evil spirit who would lie with the ladies when they were asleep and for no good purpose. A succubus ,Latin succumbo, “lie beneath,” was a female domon who, in turn ,was reputed to have sexual connection with men in their sleep . Both sexes, apparently, were well taken care of .In its later history the word incubus has come to mean a handi-happing burden of some sort,as ”His career was held back by the incubus of poverty.”A succubus,however,never changed and is still a strumpet.
INVESTIGATE:looking for footprints
When detectives investigate a murder,it is likely today that they will first look for fingerprints.And yet if the crime had been committed on a snowy night they would search for foot prints too.And here we have the sealed-in picture of investigate:Latin in,”in,”and vestigo,”follow a footprint,” from vestigium, “footprint.”This latter,of course,gives us our word vestige, as,”There is not a vestige of truth in the statement.”T hat is,not a trace or a footprint of truth.
LUNATIC: moonstruck
There are many people today who would feel uncomfortable if they had to sleep with the moon shining in their faces.They probably wouldn’t believe that this act would turn then into lunatics,but the shadow of that superstition still remains in the race .Down through the centuries there has been a widespread notion that madness is related to the moon,and that the violence of madness changes with the phases of the moon.In Roman mythology luna was the moon goddess,and it was her name that gave us lunatic because she was supposed to create this condition.
MAIM:knocking out a front tooth
An early statute says that you have maimed a man if you knock out his front tooth ,but that he is not maimed if you knock out one of his grinders,because with a front tooth he can bite and tear at the enemy,while with a grinder he can only masticate his food.Another amusing law in 1641 says that “The cutting off of an eare,or nose ,or breaking of the hinder teeth,or such like ,is no maihem.”Now ,of course, the words maim and mayhem apply to any willful mutilation.
MAROON:take to the wilds .
When pirates of old took a dislike to one of their fellow buccaneers,they would set him ashore,or maroon him,on some farlff island and simply sail away.In the beginning though, maroon was a moun, and maroons were the Negroes who lived in Dutch Guiana and the West Indies.The word is from the French term marron, a short form of the Spanish word cimarron,meaning wild and untamed.Later on maroon changed to mean “one left in the wilds .”
MOB:from a Latin phrase
The English have often accused us Americans of being lazy with our language.We won’t bother,they say,to call a man a baseball fanatic.We clip this to “a baseball fan.”But if we turn back the pages of history, we discover that the British had this same habit around the beginning of the 18th century.They,too were coining new words by snipping bits off old ones.The essayist, Joseph Addison,was quite haughty about it all. He refers to the practice as:”This Humour of speading no more than we needs must which has so miserably curtailed some of our Words”，and he cites the new vulgarism mob as an example.Before the reign of Charles II folks never said such a slang word as mob. They used the Latin phrase mobile vulgus,”the fickle crowd.”But to Addison’s horror they soon shortened this to mobile Then to the mob which we still have with us.
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