英语听力精选进阶版 11229

 

Euro 

No named part of the world has introduced more new words 

into English than Europe. It's all happened of course in the last 10 

or 20 years, and it's this 'euro' prefix¹ that's caused all the 

attention to be focussed upon the area of Europe.  

The euro of course is the most obvious thing: the actual unit of 

money which became so popular in Europe a few years ago. And 

now everybody talks about it. But, it's not just that. It's the prefix 

'euro' being used as a blend word along with all sorts of other 

things.  

I mean early on, for instance, people talked about 'euro-currency' 

and 'euro-money', and then the 'euro-fighter' came along, the 

Defence Establishment's development.  

And now, everything has a 'euro' possibility and so one of the commonest ways of 

creating new words in English these days is take a perfectly² ordinary word and just 

shove³ 'euro' in front of it. So, you can have 'euro-butter' for regulations to do with 

butter and 'euro-eggs' and 'euro-chickens' and 'euro-fireworks' and 'euro - 

anything you like really!' 

1 prefix   

n.前缀；vt.加…作为前缀；置于前面

参考例句：

• We prefix "Mr."to a man's name.我们在男士的姓名前加“先生”。
• In the word "unimportant ","un-" is a prefix.在单词“unimportant”中“un”是前缀。

2 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

3 shove   

vt.乱推，乱塞；vi.用力推，挤；n.猛推

参考例句：

• She will not shove the heavy load onto others.她不愿意把重担推给别人。
• Help me shove this furniture aside.帮我把这家具推到一边去。