你注意过词义的褒贬吗?

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上次说过,意思相近的英语词汇常常带有不同的附加含义。除了注意附加含义,还要注意一下褒贬。

说到“胖”,你脑海中跳出来的第一个词是不是Fat?

其实表示“胖”的词有好几个,下面看几个例句:

“Excuse me,” Harry said to the plump woman. 这是Harry Potter 第一次去Hogwarts 找不到站台,向Mrs Weasley问路的情景。Plump 是稍微有些胖,而且是好看的胖,可以对应“丰满”。

“Pudgy Luo” is a middle-aged man who discusses everything from Chinese emperors to 3D printing on his talk-show. 这是《经济学人》描写得到创始人罗胖的一句话。

And so it was that the young woman stayed on in the house with her son, a chubby, computer-loving little boy whose name was Jimmy.

这是A Man Called Ove里面形容小时候的Jimmy的,chubby 常常用来形容小孩子,可以对应“胖嘟嘟”或“胖乎乎”。

为什么不用 “Fat”呢?这个词有贬义,直接跟别人说You’re fat. 就更不礼貌了。聊天的时候最好不要评论别人的身材,就酱。

Fat当然也是可以用的。

Kids still got teased and bullied, but it was over usual kid stuff: being fat or being skinny, being tall or being short, being smart or being dumb. 这是Born a Crime里面的一句话。

Fat和skinny在这个语境中放在一起对比还是很合适的。Skinny 有贬义,皮包骨头不好看的瘦。

Boggis was a chicken farmer. He kept thousands of chickens. He was enormously fat. 这是Fantastic Mr Fox里面形容Farmer Boggis 的。Boggis是故事里的三个坏人之一,必须用fat, 还用了Enormously形容fat,脑满肠肥的那种胖,哈哈。

知道一个词的褒贬,就能多体会出作者的一层意思。其它词性的词也会有褒贬之分,但咱们下周阅读的时候,先关注一下形容词。

同时尝试一下Thinking Routine Sentence-Phrase-Word。

读到的内容能用书中的一句话总结吗?一个短语呢?一个词呢?

Happy reading!

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