英語四六級詞匯復(fù)習技巧：8天攻克8000詞匯(六)

　　TROUBLE: full of commotion

　　When a person is in trouble, his mind is ill at ease. The Latin parent of the word trouble indicates just that, for turbo meant, “ disturb”. It came to us first with the spelling turble, then truble, finally trouble. This same Latin word turbo has given us turbulent,” full of commotion”; disturb,” throw into complete disorder”; and turbid, that is, a turbid stream which is “all muddied up.”

　　VIRILITY: for men only

　　All of the words deriving from the Latin word vir,”man,” are flattering. Virtus, in Latin meant strength, courage, excellence, all of which describe our word virility . And to be virtuous, of course, is to have the traits of a man. And should you be able

　　2. Sources of the Words of Attitudes and Emotions

　　AMUCK: murderous frenzy

　　The famous 18th-century British navigator,Captain Jamer Cook,who was certainly a traveled gentleman,claimed that when a man amuck it was all because of his jealousy of a woman,Whether this be true or not ,our exotix word is borrowed from the Malay.In the Malay language the term amoq,sometimes spelled amok,is the term for a mental disease similar morbid depression into a state of murderous frenzy in which he will attack anyone in his path.This description contains the sense in which we use our word amuck.

　　ASTONISH:thunderstruck

　　With changes in spelling from the French estoner,which is derived from the Latin ex,"out,"and tonare,"to thunder."When one is astonished,he is literally"thunderstruck."And a similar picture is behind our word "thunder,"which derives from the same source as thor,the god of Norse mythology called "the Thunderer,"who was supposed to hurl lighting bolts at the earth.In olden days when one was astonished,he was atunned as by a blow and in a trance."I astonysshe with a stroke upon thehead ,"writes a long-ago author.Nowadays astonished doesn not mean much more than surprised.

　　BEDLAM:is really "Bethlehem"

　　This is a British corruption of the word Bethlehem.The priory of St.Mary of Bethlehem was founded in 1242.But any londoner of this day would have called it,in his disalect,"St.Mary'of Bedlam."In 1402 the priory was turned into a hospital for the insane,and from the reign of Henry VIII it has been a royal foundation for lunatics.So when the Londoners spoke of the Holy City of Bethlehem they were careful to pronounce it the way we now do to distinguish it from the asylum,bedlam.But when our hourse is a perfect bedlam,it still sounds,with its noise and confusion,like the inside of old lunatic asylum.

　　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.