密歇根新闻广播 thunderstorm如何解

 

Few things can shut down an outdoor swimming pool faster than a good old-fashioned summer thunderstorm.

English professor Anne Curzan is a longtime swimmer who swims in a master's program. Recently, one of her coaches emailed another swimmer about holding practice at an outdoor pool, as long as it wasn't thunderstorming.

The email program's spellchecker did not care for that and branded "thunderstorming" with a scarlet¹ underline. But why? We take all kinds of nouns and turn them into verbs. Why not thunderstorm?

Thunderstorm as a noun goes back to the 1600s. The verb, however, seems to be quite new. Curzan couldn't find it in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, or the Oxford² English Dictionary.

The oldest example Curzan has found so far comes from a 1972 linguistics³ book by James McCawley. In it, McCawley writes, We can say A thunderstorm began, but not so naturally, It is thunderstorming.

In other words, he doesn't think thunderstorm makes a great verb.

McCawley goes on to argue that general terms like rain and storm tend to be the type of nouns that become verbs. He gives the example, The thunderstorm began to rain down on us. Here, rain becomes the verb and thunderstorm remains⁴ the noun.

However, there are plenty of examples of people happily using the verb form, such as this 1991 example: The skies had gotten black and it was thunderstorming.

To thunderstorm may be more specific than to rain or to storm, but at some point, we as speakers decided⁵ it was an okay verb. Do you use thunderstorm this way?

1 scarlet   

n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的

参考例句：

• The scarlet leaves of the maples contrast well with the dark green of the pines.深红的枫叶和暗绿的松树形成了明显的对比。
• The glowing clouds are growing slowly pale,scarlet,bright red,and then light red.天空的霞光渐渐地淡下去了，深红的颜色变成了绯红，绯红又变为浅红。

2 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。

3 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。

4 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

5 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。