这周我们关注一下构词法。
That carless Sunday we made our circuit of churches, ending up, as usual, at white church.
这句话来自 Born a Crime Chapter 1。有些词典里恐怕查不到carless这个词，但即便不查词典，也不会影响理解carless就是 without a car。含-less后缀的这个词非常简洁。表达同样的意思，介词短语without a car也比较简洁，如果想不到介词短语，恐怕就会用一个句子或从句来表达了。
来个类似的例子，eggless baking recipes 不用鸡蛋的烘焙食谱，是不是很简洁？
再看看Harry Potter里的这句：
Mr. Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning.
如果carless有些词典收录，Owl-free 恐怕根本就没有了。德思礼一早被猫头鹰困扰，到了公司座位背对窗户，看不到天空中飞过的猫头鹰，所以是owl-free。
名词加上 -less 或 -free 就成了简洁的新形容词。还有更有趣的
Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be.
Harry Potter的例子用得多，是因为这几本小说我听的次数最多。
unDursleyish 是由姓氏加前缀 -un和后缀 -ish构成的。-ish 有个意思是typical of or like a particular type of person，unDursleyish 就是跟德思礼家的人截然相反，简洁不？
为什么强调简洁？因为好的英文写作必须简洁。
这周阅读，关注一下有没有让你眼前一亮的构词。