8天攻克英语六级8000词汇(六)

　　BIGWIG:fine feathers
　　Even tody we occasionally speak of who ranks himself overimportantly as a bigwig.In the England of the 18th centrury a man of distinction was spotted by his large,powdered wig.An august judge bacame more august by this symbol of authority.There were nouns then,now unfamimilar to us,that were once a part of the language,like wiglomeration that meant the pomp
　　and fuss of legal proceedingd.In our times a bigwig is more apt to be a stuffed shirt.
　　BUGBEAR:a bogy
　　TO us a bugbear is a thing of appreciable dread.But in Wales it represented a phantom that was used to scare the naughty children,and the bug part is said to have come from the,to us, uNPRonounceable Welsh word bwg,"specter,"This word passed into English as bugge,then bug,and gave us bugbear,a goblin-animal of some kind.Our bogyman ,really a "goblin-man," is also to be Welsh .And bugaboo is probably just the same goblin with a frightening boo on the end.
　　DISMAL:merely bad days
　　The Egyptians believed in unluckly days,and apparently these so-called "Egyption days"came into Rome and then on into the Europe of the Middle Ages.In France two such days were marked on the calendar each month and were called the dis malfrom the Latin dies mali,"the evil days."Dis mal was transferred into Middle English as the adjective dismale which descriped these unluckly days when it was wise to be very careful,since misfortune lurked at every tune .Now dismal just means gloomy and depressing.
　　MAWKISH
　　meant simply “ without appetite,” “inclined to be sickly.” Now it’s something that makes you feel sick,like the actions of an over-sentimental and mawkish lover.
　　MELANCHOLY: black bile
　　The Greeks defined melancholia as “the black bile that produces temperament,” and they believed that it was the presence of too much black bile in the system-melas, “ black,” and chole, “bile-” that caused the blues. This notion went down through the centuries. The Elizabethans thought that sullen and gloomy people were suffering from this disease which was very fashionable at that time among the ultra-refined. The favorite dose for depressed and fainting females was melancholy-water.
　　MISOGAMIST: the hater
　　Many an old bachelor is a misogamist,a misogynist, and a misanthrope. The inspiration for the word misogamist is the Greek miso-, “hating,” and gamos, “marriage.” A misogynist is a hater of women, again miso-, “hate,” and gyne, “woman.” While the word misanthrope comes from the Greek word for hate plus anthropos which means “mankind,”so this chap hates everybody. Again in Greek, philo means “love,” and so a philanthropist for his part loves all people.
　　NAUGHTY :good-for-nothing
　　In the days of Miles Standish they spoke of “the naughty canoes,”and this gives an idea of the original meaning of the word :worthless; of bad quality; or just good-for-naught. This was merely a stronger way of saying naught which is derived from the Old English nawiht; that is, “no whit ” or “nothing”. Later on naughty came to signify evil or corrupt, as a naughty pack; that is, “a woman of bad character.” Not until fairly modern times did naughty come to describe a child’s mischief as it does now.
　　NICE : formerly meant ignorant
　　In the Middle Ages nice meant foolish or ignorant , for it comes from the Latin word nescio which is made up of ne, “not”, and scio, “to know.” Then , because ignorant people are often silent, its meaning changed to “shy” or “coy”. Sometimes shy folks get the reputation of being a little uppish because of their offish ways, so the meaning of the word shifted until it meant “hard to please.” “precise,” “ exacting.” We use it today in that sense when we say : “ That is a nice (exacting) problem.” Finally it became general in its meaning and is now applied to many things ,such as people of good taste and disposition.
　　ORDEAL: first with boiling water
　　When a girl says that her day of shopping was quite an ordeal, she is using the word in a somewhat softer sense than it originally had. In the England of another day this term, spelled ordal in Old English and meaning “judgment ,” was most often used in the phrase “trial by ordeal,” a phrase that recalls a legal practice of our ancestral British courts. If a degendant in this original ordeal could carry a red-hot iron without being burned, he was innocent. If he flinched at plunging his hand in boiling water, he was guilty. It was as simple as that,though the tests varied from time to time. And now an ordeal can be a severe test of character, or just a trying experience.
　　OSTRACIZE: reminiscent of Greek democracy
　　When society ostracizes a person today it is recalling one of the quainter aspects of Greek democracy. From time to time the Athenians would make up their minds that the influnence of a certain public man was dangerous and unwholesome. On such an occasion the citizens would assemble in the market place and vote as to whether fellow should be banished. They simply wrote the name of the undesirable man down on a tile or potsherd called an ostrakon. There was no special accusation before the vote, no redress after the votes were taken. If 6000 ostrakons were cast, the victim just kept out of the state for 5 or 10 year. That was all. From this custom and from the Greek term osirakon came our word ostracize with its present and somewhat less brutal significance.
　　ROUÉ: once a criminal
　　From the French word rouer that meant "to break on the wheel or "torture on the rack," this word came to us from the Duke of Orleans who was Regent of France around the turn of the 18th century while Louis XV was still a minor, and after whom our city of New Orleans was named. The Duke liked ribaldry and revelry, and so surrounded himself with dissolute and most disreputable people. And quite as in these days when a man will affectionately call another, "you old bastard, you," the Duke addressed these dissipated companions as his dear roues, there wasn’t one of them who shouldn’t have been jailed or stretched on the rack.
　　SAVAGE: forest dweller
　　We move from the Latin silva, “forest,” and silvaticus, also salvaticus, ”(man) of the forest,” through the Old French sauvage to our word savage. The dwellers in towns looked upon the “men of the woods” as wild men and so the word savage gradually took on its present-day meanings of brutality and cruelty.
　　SILLY: originally meant happy
　　When silly was spelled sœlig it meant “blessed” or “happy.” Then “innocent,” “plain,” “rustic,” “simple.” By the 17th century silly conveyed the notion that the person so-called was weak, harmless, and deserving pity, as “this silly, aged king.” And about this date we arrived at modern meaning “foolish.”
　　SKEPTIC: examine carefully
　　The Greek philosopher, Pyrrho, started a new school of thought some three or four centuries before Christ and he and his followers are regarded as the first skeptics. The epithet skeptic was innocent enough at the beginning. It was taken from the Greek word skeptomai which merely meant to “look at something carefully” and “examine” and “consider” it. Pyrrho felt that our physical senses were admittedly unreliable, and that we could, therefore, never know the true nature of things. With this in mind he taught his pupils to look out upon the world with an unruffled indifference, and to more or less permanently suspend judgment. With the passing of time the name skeptic was applied to anyone who questioned things too much, notably to anyone who had doubts about the Christian religion.