中文名: Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z
作者: John Ayto.
圖書分類: 外語
資源格式: PDF
版本: 文字版
出版社: A&C Black.
書號: 0713674989.
發(fā)行時間: 2005年
地區(qū): 美國
語言: 英文
內(nèi)容介紹:
The average contemporary English speaker knows 50,000 words. Yet stripped down to its origins, this apparently huge vocabulary is in reality much smaller, derived from Latin, French and the Germanic languages. It is estimated that every year, 800 neologisms are added to the English language: acronyms (nimby), blended words (motel), and those taken from foreign languages (savoir-faire). Laid out in an A-Z format with detailed cross references, and written in a style that is both authoritative and accessible, Word Origins is a valuable historical guide to the English language.
This in-depth exploration of the English language covers every nuance and curiosity of this constantly evolving linguistic pastiche. It is estimated that every year 800 neologisms are added to the English language, and include acronyms (NIMBY, Not In My Backyard), blended words (motel), and those taken from foreign languages (savoir-faire). Laid out in an a-to-z format with detailed cross-references and written to appeal equally to students, etymologists, and nonnative speakers, this historical guide is an invaluable resource for this truly global lingua franca.
該字典的涵蓋詞匯量比較少,但是簡單易懂,每個詞的介紹都是一片小的段落,邏輯性較強,詞義發(fā)展解讀的跳躍性不大,能比較清晰地了解每個詞的詞義以及變體怎么發(fā)展的,對初步建立詞源發(fā)展的思路有較好的幫助。
舉例如下:
See:English has two words see. The older is the verb, ‘perceive visually’ [OE]. Like its Germanic cousins, German sehen, Dutch zien, and Swedish and Danish se, it goes back to a prehistoric *sekhwan, which was descended from an Indo-European base *seq-. This may have been the same *seq- that produced Latin sequī ‘follow’ (source of English sequence, sue, etc), in which case see would denote etymologically ‘follow with the eyes’. See ‘diocese’ originally signified ‘bishop’s throne’. It came via Anglo-Norman se from Vulgar Latin *sedem ‘seat’, descendant of classical Latin sēdem, the accusative case of sēdes ‘seat’. This in turn went back to the Indo- European base *sed- ‘sit’, which also produced English sit.
SIGHT; SEAT, SIT
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