英语听力精选进阶版 11223

Prenup 

Professor David Crystal 

We often abbreviate¹ words by dropping the endings. There's a 

technical term for it in linguistics² - they're called clippings. I 

suppose the word 'ad' is the most familiar, from advertisements.  

'Pram³' is another, from perambulator, and nobody uses that these 

days, really.  And now, we've got 'prenup' which came in in the 

1980s I suppose.   

It's short for pre-nuptial agreement.  In other words, it's two 

people who're coming together, and they're going to get married, 

they're going to have their nuptials⁴, they're going to get married - 

and because they think the marriage is not going to last for very 

long and there's going to be a messy divorce, where they're going 

to have to split all their worldly goods, they decide to have a 

prenup, which is an agreement, a pre-nuptial agreement, where 

they decide who's going to have what, and it's going to save a lot 

of mess in due course.  Funny idea really....but very popular amongst American film 

stars apparently⁵.   

Well, it isn't modern, actually. The earliest time I ever found any reference to it is 

1916.  So, it was very common in the United States during the 20th century and is 

increasing elsewhere.  But the clipping, the abbreviated⁶ form, is very recent - I've 

only heard that since the 1980s. How do you write it?  Well some people write it 

pre hyphen nup, but increasingly these days they've been dropping the hyphen, 

and the two elements are written solid, without any space or any hyphen in-between.  The words have come together....not so of course the people they refer 

1 abbreviate   

v.缩写，使...简略，缩短

参考例句：

• She had lost the power to abbreviate the remaining steps of the way.她丧失了缩短这最后几步路的能力。
• It is seldom acceptable to abbreviate words in formal writing.在正式的书面语中使用缩写语通常是不能接受的。

2 linguistics   

n.语言学

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。

3 pram   

n.婴儿车，童车

参考例句：

• She sat the baby up in the pram. 她把孩子放在婴儿车里坐着。
• She ran in chase of the pram. 她跑着追那婴儿车。

4 nuptials   

n.婚礼；婚礼( nuptial的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Their nuptials were performed by the local priest. 他们的婚礼由当地牧师主持。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• If he married, when the nuptials would take place, and under what circumstances? 如果他结婚，那么什么时候举行婚礼？在什么情况下举行婚礼？ 来自辞典例句

5 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

6 abbreviated   

adj. 简短的，省略的 动词abbreviate的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He abbreviated so much that it was hard to understand his article. 他的文章缩写词使用太多，令人费解。
• The United States of America is commonly abbreviated to U.S.A.. 美利坚合众国常被缩略为U.S.A.。