英语单词大师：'Hot-Button Word

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: our guest is Wayne Glowka, an English professor at Georgia College and State University.

RS: He also chairs the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society, which publishes the quarterly journal American Speech. Members of the society voted earlier this monoth for their seventeenth annual Word of the Year.

WAYNE GLOWKA: "The word of the year was 'pluto¹,' the verb, as in 'I've been plutoed.' There's quite a bit of surprise in people's eyes when you tell them that Pluto is now a verb."RS: "Now how did Pluto become a verb? Tell us the story here."WAYNE GLOWKA: "Well, last year, the International Astronomical² Union decided³ that Pluto did not have the qualifications it needed to be a planet like the other planets, and demoted it to something else. And so some clever person somewhere looked upon this situation and said, 'Well, Pluto's been plutoed, and if I'm demoted or rejected or scorned, then I'm plutoed, too.'"RS: "Now it went against the phrase 'climate canary.' Tell us about that one."WAYNE GLOWKA: "Well, a climate canary is an organism or a species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe⁴ on the horizon. The species cited was the polar bear. The polar bears hunt seals by walking around on Arctic floating ice -- in the Arctic Ocean, and as this ice breaks up, the polar bears find it very difficult to get out on the ocean in order to get the seals they need to eat."AA: "And climate canary, in the end, was, I see, voted Most Useful. Now, under the Word of the Year nominees⁵ was the term 'surge,' which is of course very much in the news now, in terms of the president's move to increase the troops in Iraq. I'm surprised that in the runoff you had fifty-seven votes for pluto, forty-three for climate canary, but only four for surge. Were you surprised by that result?"WAYNE GLOWKA: "No. I mean, a lot of this has to do with the political leanings of the people who are there and their worldview, and a good number of these people live in urban areas and are very concerned about climate change. I mean, this is my own personal observation, that people who live in cities worry about that kind of thing more than people who live in the middle of a big forest, the way I do.

"Surge, however, had a little bit of support in the beginning. But the problem with surge is, it showed up so late in the year, it didn't sound all that new to some people -- because, you know, we do talk about a 'surge in statistics,' 'surge in applications' and things like that. And someone argued that the word is more likely to be more important in two thousand seven than in two thousand six."AA: "Most of the time, when we see it in the newspaper, it's in quotation⁶ marks. Can you explain why that is?"WAYNE GLOWKA: "The general feeling is, if you're against the surge, the general feeling is that the word is somehow marked, that it's a euphemism⁷ for something else ugly like 'escalation⁸,' which is a Vietnam term which actually was an attempt at euphemism too, to make the increase in troops sound better.

"So, to a lot of people, it still sounds like jargon⁹ from the Pentagon or it sounds like sort of political manipulation. But if you're on the other side of the political spectrum¹⁰, then it sounds like a perfectly¹¹ normal way of talking. But I had a very interesting day with two sets of re -- two reporters, one who didn't understand what the fuss was about, and the other who was very concerned about the surge and asked me question after question, almost like a prosecutor¹², trying to get me to say things about surge that he wanted me to say.

"So the word is very loaded at the moment. I've been noticing in the last week or two that the Democrats¹³ in Congress have been using escalation and I noticed that Bush avoided using surge when even he talked about it on that special night."AA: "You're talking [about] his speech explaining his plan."WAYNE GLOWKA: "Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of a hot-button word and I imagine that editors feel uncomfortable with it, and so would put it in quotation marks."RS: Professor Wayne Glowka at Georgia College and State University, and the head of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society.

AA: And that's Wordmaster for this week. To find out more about American English, check out our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster.

RS: And our e-mail address is [email protected]. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

1 Pluto   

n.冥王星

参考例句：

• Pluto is the furthest planet from the sun.冥王星是离太阳最远的行星。
• Pluto has an elliptic orbit.冥王星的轨道是椭圆形的。

2 astronomical   

adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的

参考例句：

• He was an expert on ancient Chinese astronomical literature.他是研究中国古代天文学文献的专家。
• Houses in the village are selling for astronomical prices.乡村的房价正在飙升。

3 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。

4 catastrophe   

n.大灾难，大祸

参考例句：

• I owe it to you that I survived the catastrophe.亏得你我才大难不死。
• This is a catastrophe beyond human control.这是一场人类无法控制的灾难。

5 nominees   

n.被提名者，被任命者( nominee的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She's one of the nominees. 她是被提名者之一。 来自超越目标英语 第2册
• A startling number of his nominees for senior positions have imploded. 他所提名的高级官员被否决的数目令人震惊。 来自互联网

6 quotation   

n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情

参考例句：

• He finished his speech with a quotation from Shakespeare.他讲话结束时引用了莎士比亚的语录。
• The quotation is omitted here.此处引文从略。

7 euphemism   

n.婉言，委婉的说法

参考例句：

• Language reflects culture and euphemism is a mirror of culture.语言反映文化,而婉语则是各种文化的一面镜子。
• Euphemism is a very common and complicated linguistic phenomenon.委婉语是一种十分常见而又非常复杂的语言现象。

8 escalation   

n.扩大，增加

参考例句：

• The threat of nuclear escalation remains. 核升级的威胁仍旧存在。 来自辞典例句
• Escalation is thus an aspect of deterrence and of crisis management. 因此逐步升级是威慑和危机处理的一个方面。 来自辞典例句

9 jargon   

n.术语，行话

参考例句：

• They will not hear critics with their horrible jargon.他们不愿意听到评论家们那些可怕的行话。
• It is important not to be overawed by the mathematical jargon.要紧的是不要被数学的术语所吓倒.

10 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

11 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

12 prosecutor   

n.起诉人；检察官，公诉人

参考例句：

• The defender argued down the prosecutor at the court.辩护人在法庭上驳倒了起诉人。
• The prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces.检查官会把你的证言驳得体无完肤。

13 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》