| 单词 | hoi polloi |
| 释义 | hoi polloi hoi pol.loi AHD: [hoi” p…-loi“] D.J. [7h%! p*6l%!]K.K. [7h%! p*6l%!]n.（名词）The common people; the masses.民众；大众语源:1. Greek [the many] 希腊语 [大多数人] 2. hoi [nominative pl. of] ho [the] * see so- hoi [] ho的主格复数 [特指“这”或“那”] *参见 so- 3. polloi [nominative pl. of] polus [many] * see pel…- 1polloi [] polus的主格复数 [许多] *参见 pel…- 1注释:We hoi polloi may want to be careful in our use of the termhoi polloi because a few pitfalls lie in wait for those without a knowledge of its background.Hoi polloi is a borrowing of the Greek phrase hoi polloi, which is made up of the formhoi, meaning “the” and used before a plural, and polloi, the plural of polus, “many.” In Greekhoi polloi had a special sense, “the greater number, the people, the commonalty, the masses.”This is what the phrase has tended to express in English since its first recorded instance, in an 1837 work by James Fenimore Cooper.One pitfall in the use ofhoi polloi lies in the fact that hoi already expresses the sense “the,” so that technically one should not add anotherthe to the phrase, as inthe hoi polloi. But this technicality has not stopped many users of the phrase, including Cooper, from doing so.The other pitfall in the use of the phrase is the misuse of it to mean “the elite,”possibly brought about becausehoi in the phrase the hoi polloi is reminiscent of high as in high and mighty and also becausehoi polloi may recall hoity-toity. 我们普通大众得很小心地使用hoi polloi 这个词， 因为如果不理解这个词的背景知识我们会犯一些错误。Hoi polloi 源于希腊词组 hoi polloi ， 由两部分构成：hoi 表“定冠词the”并放在复数前， polloi 是 polus 的复数，表“许多”。 在希腊语中hoi polloi 有其特殊的意思， 表“更大多数的人、民众、老百姓、群众”。它首先在英语中使用是在詹姆士·费利莫尔·库柏的1837年的作品中出现的，当时的意思和在希腊词中一样。在使用hoi polloi 时人们会犯错误的原因就在于 hoi 本身就表达了 “定冠词the”的意思， 所以严格地讲就不应该再加一个the ， 如同在the hoi polloi 中一样。 但是这种要求并不能阻止包括库柏在内的许多使用者这样用。另一个可能易犯的错误在于误认为这个词表示“精英”，引起这种错误的原因可能在the hoi polloi 短语中， hoi 会使人联想起 high and mighty 中的 high ， 也有可能是因为hoi polloi 令人想到 hoity-toity |
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