单词 | prude |
释义 | prude[pru:d]n. 拘守礼仪的人, 故作正经的人 prude prude AHD: [pr›d] D.J. [pru8d]K.K. [prud]n.(名词)One who is excessively concerned with being or appearing to be proper, modest, or righteous.过分正经的人:一个过分关心自己是否是或显得得体、谦逊或正确的人语源:1. French 法语 2. short for prude femme [virtuous woman] prude femme的简写 [品质优秀的妇女] 3. Old French prude [feminine of] prud [virtuous] * see proud 古法语 prude [] prud的阴性词 [品质优秀的] *参见 proud4. French femme [woman] from Latin f¶mina * see feminine 法语 femme [女人] 源自 拉丁语 f¶mina *参见 feminine注释:Being a prude has never been widely considered a good thing,but if we dig further into the history of the wordprude, we will find that it had a noble past.The change for the worse took place in French.Frenchprude first had a good sense, “wise woman,” but apparentlya woman could be too wise or, in the eyes of some,too observant of decorum and propriety,and soprude took on the sense in French that was brought into English along with the word, first recorded in 1704.The French word first meant “wise woman”becauseprude was a shortened form of prude femme (earlier in Old Frenchprode femme ), a word that was modeled on earlierpreudomme, “a man of experience and integrity.” The second part of this word is, of course,homme, “man.” Old Frenchprod, meaning “wise, prudent,” is from Vulgar Latin pr½dis with the same sense. Pr½dis in turn comes from Late Latin pr½de, “advantageous,” derived from the verbprodesse, “to be good.” We can see that the history ofprude is filled with usefulness, profit, wisdom, and integrity, but in spite of all this,things did not turn out that well.人们从来没有普遍地认为做一个拘守礼仪的人是一件好事,但是如果我们深挖prude 这个词的历史, 我们会发现这个词有一个体面的过去。这个词变成贬义是在法语中发生的。法语词prude 开始时是褒义的,意为“明智或聪明的女人,” 但是很显然,女人可能会过于聪明或者在某些人的眼里,对仪表和行为的得体过分注重,这样法语词prude 就有了这个和词一起被引入英语的意思, 并最早记载于1704年。这个法语词开始时的意思之所以是“聪明的女人”,因为prude 是 prudefemme 的缩写形式 (更早的时候在古法语中为prodefemme ), 这个词模仿更早的一个词preudomme “一个富有经验而又正直的男人”而来。 这个词的第二部分当然是意为“男人”的homme。 意思是“聪明,谨慎”的古法语prod 由一个相同意思的俗拉丁词 prodis 而来。 Prodis 从后期拉丁语 prode 演变而来,意为“有利的”, 该词又从意思为“从善”的动词prudesse 衍生而来。 我们现在明白prude 的历史充满了有利、利益、智慧或忠诚的意思, 但尽管如此,事情并没有变得那么好 |
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