英语单词大师：Jump the Couch

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: closing the dictionary on some words of 2005.

RS: Grant Barrett is project editor of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang at Oxford¹ University Press. We talked to him last week before the 16th annual words of the year vote by the American Dialect Society. A.D.S. is a small, scholarly group founded in 1889.

AA: We asked Grant Barrett what he thought those words might be. The first one that came to his mind was a word that stirred up debate in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

GRANT BARRETT: "I think one of the top candidates is going to be 'refugee.' In order to qualify for the A.D.S vote, a word doesn't have to be new, it only has to be very important for the last 12 months. And refugee was indeed that, not only because of the number of people who were forced to migrate out of the Gulf² Coast area, but because we discovered -- that is, we those people in the language business -- that the general public has a different idea of what refugee means than what is actually in the dictionaries.

"For many of them, it's pejorative³. It says things about you being poor or unable to take of yourself or unliked by your country or uncared for by your country. So people did not want to be called that. They chose evacuee⁴ or a variety of other terms."RS: "And other words?"GRANT BARRETT: "Well, there was a word that at Oxford University Press we have decided⁵ is the slang word of the year, and it's actually a slang term. It's called 'jump the couch.' Now this has been discussed ad nauseum, and I think there actually might be a backlash vote against it because it's been discussed so heavily."RS: "Jump the couch."GRANT BARRETT: "That's right. Jump the couch means to exhibit strange or frenetic behavior, and it stems from an appearance by Tom Cruise on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' in May where he was professing⁶ his love for Katie Holmes. And he did a sack dance -- you know, the little jig⁷ that the football players do when they score a touchdown. He was knuckle-wrestling Oprah. He had her hands in his hands, he was standing⁸ over her, it was like a test of strength. And then he leapt up on the guest couch next to her."OPRAH WINFREY: "We've never seen you behave this way before."TOM CRUISE: "I know."OPRAH WINFREY: "Have you ever felt this way before? [shrieks from audience]"RS: "How would you use jump the couch in a sentence?"GRANT BARRETT: "Well, actually, I should tell you a little bit more about the history of the word and then you'll understand why they're using it the way they're using it. Jump the couch comes from 'jump the shark,' which is a slightly older slang term which means to be past your peak of popularity or to kind of be over with, creatively, to not have any more new ideas in you.

"And that comes from an episode of 'Happy Days' where Fonzie water-skied over a shark, and many people feel that was the worst episode and the point of the downturn of that television show."AA: "Right, and so that led to a -- wasn't there a book by that title? It became 'jump the shark' a few years ago. And so now it's -- jump the shark has become jump the couch."GRANT BARRETT: "So if I were to say to you that Tom Cruise had jumped the couch, I mean that he is just doing whatever he can to get attention because he's kind of past his popular prime."RS: "Did you have a favorite this year?"GRANT BARRETT: "I did, and it's a very simple one, and it's very transparent⁹, and it's the word 'spokesweasel.'"RS: "Spokesweasel."GRANT BARRETT: "Do you know what a spokesweasel is?"RS: "No."GRANT BARRETT: "A spokesweasel is a spokesperson or a press person or a public relations person."AA: "So this is not a term of praise."GRANT BARRETT: "Oh, by no means. A weasel goes back, how far back into American history? A weasel has never been a desirable name for a human being. It's always been somebody who's a little slimy and smarmy¹⁰ and you can't respect them, and they have a tendency to fudge the truth or lie or to try to cheat you."RS: "So this is a spokesperson who is a little suspect."GRANT BARRETT: "Yeah, and let's face it, sometimes spokespersons are put in odd positions, aren't they? Because the people they represent do things that the spokesperson has to explain away, and it's a difficult task. So they are forced to kind of not answer the questions as they're asked or not answer them fully¹¹, or give an answer that's more of a misdirection than it is an explanation."AA: Grant Barrett, project editor of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, speaking from Albuquerque, New Mexico. So how did "jump the couch" do in the voting at the American Dialect Society meeting? It was selected as "Best Tom-Cruise-Related Word."RS: As for "refugee," all Katrina-related words came in second in the voting for Word of the Year. The winner was "truthiness." It's defined by the linguists¹² as "the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true."Truthiness comes from a show on the Comedy Central channel on cable television. "The Colbert Report" -- or as they say on the show, "kohl-BEAR re-POR" -- is a satire¹³ of the news.

AA: And that's the truth! That's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected], and all of our reports are at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

2 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。

3 pejorative   

adj.贬低的，轻蔑的

参考例句：

• In the context of ethnic tourism,commercialization often has a pejorative connotation.摘要在民族旅游语境中，商品化经常带有贬义色彩。
• But news organizations also should make every effort to keep the discussion civil and to discourage the dissemination of falsehoods or pejorat

4 evacuee   

n.被疏散的人员，被撤走的人员

参考例句：

• A woman sits motionless at an evacuee center for leaked radiation from the damaged fukushima nuclear facilities friday march 25 2011 in soma fukushima prefecture japan.2011年3月25日星期五，日本福岛县相马市，为福岛核设施泄露而设立的避难中心里，一位妇女一动不动地坐在那里。
• Not quite true,said Tom,a 42-year-old evacuee.但汤姆，一位42岁的避难者，说事实不尽然如此。

5 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。

6 professing   

声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉

参考例句：

• But( which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. 只要有善行。这才与自称是敬神的女人相宜。
• Professing Christianity, he had little compassion in his make-up. 他号称信奉基督教，却没有什么慈悲心肠。

7 jig   

n.快步舞（曲）；v.上下晃动；用夹具辅助加工；蹦蹦跳跳

参考例句：

• I went mad with joy and danced a little jig.我欣喜若狂，跳了几步吉格舞。
• He piped a jig so that we could dance.他用笛子吹奏格舞曲好让我们跳舞。

8 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

9 transparent   

adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的

参考例句：

• The water is so transparent that we can see the fishes swimming.水清澈透明，可以看到鱼儿游来游去。
• The window glass is transparent.窗玻璃是透明的。

10 smarmy   

adj.爱说奉承话的

参考例句：

• I hate his smarmy compliments.我痛恨他拍马屁的恭维。
• Rick is slightly smarmy and eager to impress.里克有些好奉承，急着要给人留下好印象。

11 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

12 linguists   

n.通晓数国语言的人( linguist的名词复数 )；语言学家

参考例句：

• The linguists went to study tribal languages in the field. 语言学家们去实地研究部落语言了。 来自辞典例句
• The linguists' main interest has been to analyze and describe languages. 语言学家的主要兴趣一直在于分析并描述语言。 来自辞典例句

13 satire   

n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品

参考例句：

• The movie is a clever satire on the advertising industry.那部影片是关于广告业的一部巧妙的讽刺作品。
• Satire is often a form of protest against injustice.讽刺往往是一种对不公正的抗议形式。