Some_Origin_of_English_Words.pptVIP

The Origin of some English Words 英语词源趣谈 Everything in the world is developed and changed by time, and languege is no exception. As was mentioned in our textbook, like human beings, words are born come to maturity, grow old and die, and sometimes they are even reborn in a new age. A word, from its birth to its death, is a process, not a static thing. The semantic change of words in English is more significant than that of the Chinese. Take the following paragragh for example, You may think there are a lot of mistakes in this paragragh, and you can not understand what it means. In order to get the meaning of this paragragh, I’d like to show you the orgin of several words in the paragragh. He was a happy and sad（1）girl（2）who lived in a town（3）forty miles from the closest neighbour．His unmarried sister，a wife（4）who was a vegetarian，ate meat（5）and drank liquor(6）three times a day．She was so fond of oatmeal(燕麦粉) bread made from the corn（7）her brother grew that she starved（8) from overeating． 1.sad means “experiencing or showing sorrow or unhappiness”now, but the origin meaning of it is “happy” . A man who is pleased with his present life would be more or less quiet and calm, and a quiet man can be often thoughtful, so the meaning of it swift to serious. And a serious man usually is of sorrow, so the meaning of sad then changed to sorrow. Sad. We can find that the change of the meaning is full of philosophy. Here I’d like to quote a expression “几分钟或者几天的快乐赚我们活了一世，忍受着许多痛苦”（钱钟书《论快乐》）。And from the explaination, the change of the meaning of the word “sad” is acceptable. 2.girl means young people in old English, but in the modern English it has narrowed to indicate the young people of female sex。 3.town means “an urban area with a fixed boundary that is smaller than a city”，但古代是作“农庄”讲的。有篱笆围住的 农庄散落于乡村中，后来好些农庄聚集一块，慢慢地形成了一个村庄，再进而成为城市了。 4.wife原意为“女子”（woman），后来词义渐缩小演变为“妻子” （married woman）。在housewife一词中，wife仍保留有原义。 5.meat原指“食物，特别是指固体食物”。随着时间的推移，仅用 来指“肉食（不包括鸡肉、鱼肉）”