英語(yǔ)四六級(jí)詞匯復(fù)習(xí)技巧：8天攻克8000詞匯(六)

　　THRILL: to bore a hole in

　　The words thrill and nostril are close cousins. When you are thrilled about a play, for example, the play has actually “pierced” you with emotion, because the Middle English word thrillen meant, at first, “to pierce.” And, similarly, our word Nostril used to be spelled nosthirl, that is ,a hole drilled in the nose.

　　TOADY: first a toad-eater

　　When we use the verb toady, as” He toadied to the wealthy,” we are using a word with a somewhat comic history. You see it was once the custom of charlatans to have attendants who ate, or pretended to eat, toads. The toad was regarded for many years as poisonous, so, after the attendant had apparently swallowed the toad, the charlatan would appear to save his life by getting rid of the poison. The word toady originally stood for toadeater, but in modern usage it is applied to a flatterer who will do distasteful and nauseating things to please his patron. He will toady to people with great names and great wealth.

　　TORTURE: to twist

　　In the days of the Spanish Inquisition victims were tortured by twisting and stretching them on the rack. The word torture come from the Latin tortus, a derivation of torqueo which means “turn” or “twist”. A tortuous road is a “twisting” and winding one. When a robber or blackmailer extorts (Latin ex, “from”) money from persons, he “twists” or wrests it from them by physical or mental violence. If a face is distorted (Latin dis-, “away”), it is “twisted away” from its normal shape, and a contorted (Latin con-, “with”) body is “twisted with” or upon itself. While a retort (Latin re-, “back”), is a remark “twisted” or turned “back” upon the challenger. And even our word torch seems to have come from a “twisted” wick.

　　TRIVIAL: three ways

　　The Romans were human and they knew that where their road crossed would be the spot where the women would meet and gossip on the way back from market. The words for this in Latin would be tri-, “three,” and via, “way,” that is, trivia, which in our language means “trifles.” The word trivial comes straight from the Latin trivialis which means in translation “of the crossroads.” That is , crossroads small talk. Just gossip.

　　VILLAIN: only a farmer

　　The villain whom we used to hiss on the stage started as a quite honest son of the soil. The word villa in Latin stood for a farm Or house. This entered Old French as vilein and Middle English as vyleyn, and until that time this villain of ours was just a rustic fellow, half serf, and bound to the country estate or villa of some lord. Of course he was of low birth, and hence, to the aristocrats, was a person of low morals and villainy in general. Shakespeare employed the word villain in both its ancient and modern uses, but after him the bad sense of the term took over.

　　ZANY: began as a nickname

　　You have probably seen a group of people acting like fools at a cocktail party, If so , you could properly call them zanies. At its beginning the Italian word Zani was a Venetian dialect from equivalent to Gianni, a shortened form of the proper name Giovanni, which equals our “John.” It was a nickname applied to porters and other servants. Thus in the Commedia dell’ Arte a clowning servant was a Zani. His role was to mimic and make fun of his master. By the time zany reached the English language, it meant any silly person.

　　3. Romance Behind Business Terms

　　BUCKET SHOP: originally a bucket of beer

　　In the 1870’s this was applied to a low-down drinking establishment where patrons could come with a small bucket and carry away an evening’s supply of beer. About ten years later the name was transferred to a brokerage establishment that operates illegally, speculating against its customers, failing to execute their commands, and pocketing profits thus accrued. The Oxford English Dictionary claims that the first application of this term was in Chicago on the grain marker. In 1882, the Chicago Board of Trade refused to allow transactions of less than 5,000 bushels so an “Open” Board began to trade in small lots in an alley. If trade on the legitimate board was slack, members are supposed to have said, ”I’ll send down and get a bucketful pretty soon.”