词汇大师(Wordmaster)--What Does It Say

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: Anu Garg, creator of the A.Word.A.Day Web site and author of a new book called "Another Word A Day: An All-New Romp¹ Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing² Words in English."

RS: Some of those words are facinorous (fa-SIN-uhr-uhs) which means extremely wicked. There are some facinorous people, too.

ANU GARG: "F-a-c-i-n-o-r-o-u-s, facinorous."

AA: "If you said that to someone, they might look at you funny."

ANU GARG: "That's the idea. You insulted somebody and then of course they don't even know what it means."

RS: "What kind of context would you find that word in?"

ANU GARG: "Well, William Shakespeare used that word in 'All's Well That Ends Well.' The character is saying, 'and he is of a most facinorous spirit.'"

AA: "What are some other words for an opponent?"

ANU GARG: "One that I like is ventripotent. Ventri is a belly⁴ and potent³ is powerful. So you can say this fellow has a large belly, or he's a gluttonous⁵ person."

RS: "Could you spell that word too? I didn't quite get it."

ANU GARG: "V-e-n-t-r-i-p-o-t-e-n-t."

AA: One way to become ventripotent is to eat too much candy. No, you won't find a common word like candy in his new book. But Anu Garg mentioned it because he likes to talk about words borrowed from other languages.

ANU GARG: "This Halloween my daughter, she went trick-or-treating. So she collected lots of candy. And then she came back, she said 'Daddy, where did we get the word candy from?'" So I said 'Well, let's find out.' It turns out we got it from Sanskrit.

"In Sanskrit the word khanda, it means a piece. And of course the word khanda has a more specific sense also. It means a kind of raw sugar. So even today you can go into any grocery store in India and you can ask for khanda and they will give you this powdered brown sugar kind of thing."

AA: "Well, one of the words you use in your book is doppelganger, and it's interesting because that's a term I've been hearing for it seems like a few years. It seems like it's getting more popular. And recently one of our listeners in Iran used that term to describe a friend of his, and it's a great word -- and then, lo and behold⁶, I see it in your book. Can you explain doppelganger, and maybe start by spelling it."

ANU GARG: "The word is spelled as d-o-p-p-e-l-g-a-n-g-e-r. So we borrowed this word from German and it literally⁷ means a double goer. It's used to describe a ghostly double of a living person. You can as well use it metaphorically⁸.

"So let's say you have interest in words and radio broadcasting, and you attended a party and you met a woman and it turns out she also has a deep interest in words and languages, and she also had a radio show. So you might say 'Oh, I met my doppelganger' -- somebody who is, in a way, double of you."

RS: "You talk about words borrowed from other languages. Do you have any idea how many languages we've borrowed words from?"

ANU GARG: "If you speak English, you speak at least a part of more than a hundred languages. So we all know in English we have words from French, Latin, German, Spanish. But we have words from even these obscure languages like Tongan."

AA: "Which has given us the word ... "

ANU GARG: "Taboo⁹."

RS: "Which is something that we use all the time."

AA: "Something forbidden."

RS: "So you're saying that that came from -- you say there are not many words from that language. So there must have been some sort of contact, had to have been some sort of contact, to get the word into the language."

ANU GARG: "Exactly. I'm looking in the Oxford¹⁰ English Dictionary and it shows me a grand total of eleven words that came from Tongan."

RS: Anu Garg operates the free A.Word.A.Day e-mail service, with more than six hundred thousand subscribers, and the Web site wordsmith.org. His first book was called "A Word A Day," and now he has written "Another Word A Day."

AA: And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is...........And our segments are online at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

 

1 romp   

n.欢闹；v.嬉闹玩笑

参考例句：

• The child went for a romp in the forest.那个孩子去森林快活一把。
• Dogs and little children romped happily in the garden.狗和小孩子们在花园里嬉戏。

2 intriguing   

adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心

参考例句：

• These discoveries raise intriguing questions. 这些发现带来了非常有趣的问题。
• It all sounds very intriguing. 这些听起来都很有趣。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 potent   

adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的

参考例句：

• The medicine had a potent effect on your disease.这药物对你的病疗效很大。
• We must account of his potent influence.我们必须考虑他的强有力的影响。

4 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

5 gluttonous   

adj.贪吃的，贪婪的

参考例句：

• He is a gluttonous and lazy guy.他是个好吃懒做之徒。
• He is a selfish, gluttonous and lazy person.他是一个自私、贪婪又懒惰的人。

6 behold   

v.看，注视，看到

参考例句：

• The industry of these little ants is wonderful to behold.这些小蚂蚁辛勤劳动的样子看上去真令人惊叹。
• The sunrise at the seaside was quite a sight to behold.海滨日出真是个奇景。

7 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

8 metaphorically   

adv. 用比喻地

参考例句：

• It is context and convention that determine whether a term will be interpreted literally or metaphorically. 对一个词的理解是按字面意思还是隐喻的意思要视乎上下文和习惯。
• Metaphorically it implied a sort of admirable energy. 从比喻来讲，它含有一种令人赞许的能量的意思。

9 taboo   

n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止

参考例句：

• The rude words are taboo in ordinary conversation.这些粗野的字眼在日常谈话中是禁忌的。
• Is there a taboo against sex before marriage in your society?在你们的社会里，婚前的性行为犯禁吗？

10 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。