英语单词大师：Still Fresh

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti, with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- the catch of the day, terms from the sea.

Lots of nautical¹ expressions have washed ashore² into everyday English. Alan Hartley researches them for the Oxford³ English Dictionary -- that is, when he's not supervising the loading of grain onto foreign ships in the Great Lakes. We called him at his office in Minnesota, and immediately made headway.

HARTLEY: When you make 'headway,' you're making progress forward. 'Way' is usually the forward motion of a ship. It could also be rearward motion, and that was called 'sternway.' But there are a lot of analogous⁴ terms in English that never made it into the general vocabulary. 'Headway' and 'sternway' are a good example of a pair, one of which made it and the other didn't.'

AA: Maritime⁵ metaphors⁶ lend themselves to all kinds of situations on land. Let's say you're making headway on that big project at work, going full steam ahead. It's all smooth sailing toward that big promotion⁷. Or so it seems.

All of a sudden you're weathering a storm. You reach the end of your rope (anchor rope, that is). You look for safe harbor. You go overboard to make things better. The last thing you want is to scuttle⁸ your career and wind up on the rocks, all because you've run afoul of the boss.

HARTLEY: If you encountered another ship accidentally, you got too close to it, maybe you got tangled⁹ in its anchor cable, in that case you have 'run afoul' of the other ship and had an accident, essentially¹⁰.

AA: And today we might talk about to 'run afoul of the law.'

HARTLEY: Sure, exactly. It's a very typical case of the extension into everyday English. And it shows that, you know, the word would be kicking around in nautical use for a few decades and gradually it would be picked up in general use.

RS: Some of these words I find interesting because I didn't even know that they were maritime words.

HARTLEY: Same for me. 'High and dry,' for instance, is something you say all the time. A ship got stuck on the mud flats or on a reef, the tide went out and the ship was left high and dry.

RS: Well, here's an expression I never associated with the seas, usually associated with my doctor. When I go to the doctor I really like to come out with a 'clean bill of health.'

HARTLEY: Everybody does. And the crew of an old sailing ship would have felt the same way. It didn't mean quite the same thing then, but a ship on arriving at a port would have to be cleared by the local port authorities as having no communicable disease on board. And once they were cleared they got a 'clean bill of health.' Sometimes that took a long time. They would be in quarantine, which was a forty-day period. That's where the 'quarant' comes from.

RS: Do you have a favorite maritime expression?

HARTLEY: The one that's maybe most striking to me is that phrase we use nowadays, the phrase 'to be taken aback.' A person is taken aback if he is surprised in a negative way, and that derives¹¹ from an old sailing term in which if the ship were headed too close to the direction of the wind, the wind would strike the sails on the forward surface instead of the after -- or rear -- surface.

So if the wind got around too much toward the bow, toward the front of the ship, it could stop you in your tracks. But also, if you were taken aback hard enough, you could break the entire mast that the sail was suspended from. So it was a very dangerous and startling situation.

AA: Nowadays, don't look to the sea for many new expressions. Alan Hartley points out that we're still using mostly terms from the days of sailing ships.

HARTLEY: A lot of the vocabulary that's developed since then is very technical, very specific to modern ships. It has very little application in everyday life.

AA: Alan Hartley is a ship-loading superintendent¹² in Minnesota and a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary. He's put together a list of nautical language for our Web site. That address is voanews.com/wordmaster. And our e-mail address is [email protected].

1 nautical   

adj.海上的，航海的，船员的

参考例句：

• A nautical mile is 1,852 meters.一海里等于1852米。
• It is 206 nautical miles from our present location.距离我们现在的位置有206海里。

2 ashore   

adv.在(向)岸上，上岸

参考例句：

• The children got ashore before the tide came in.涨潮前，孩子们就上岸了。
• He laid hold of the rope and pulled the boat ashore.他抓住绳子拉船靠岸。

3 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。

4 analogous   

adj.相似的；类似的

参考例句：

• The two situations are roughly analogous.两种情況大致相似。
• The company is in a position closely analogous to that of its main rival.该公司与主要竞争对手的处境极为相似。

5 maritime   

adj.海的，海事的，航海的，近海的，沿海的

参考例句：

• Many maritime people are fishermen.许多居于海滨的人是渔夫。
• The temperature change in winter is less in maritime areas.冬季沿海的温差较小。

6 metaphors   

隐喻( metaphor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I can only represent it to you by metaphors. 我只能用隐喻来向你描述它。
• Thus, She's an angel and He's a lion in battle are metaphors. 因此她是天使，他是雄狮都是比喻说法。

7 promotion   

n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传

参考例句：

• The teacher conferred with the principal about Dick's promotion.教师与校长商谈了迪克的升级问题。
• The clerk was given a promotion and an increase in salary.那个职员升了级，加了薪。

8 scuttle   

v.急赶，疾走，逃避；n.天窗；舷窗

参考例句：

• There was a general scuttle for shelter when the rain began to fall heavily.下大雨了，人们都飞跑着寻找躲雨的地方。
• The scuttle was open,and the good daylight shone in.明朗的亮光从敞开的小窗中照了进来。

9 tangled   

adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Your hair's so tangled that I can't comb it. 你的头发太乱了，我梳不动。
• A movement caught his eye in the tangled undergrowth. 乱灌木丛里的晃动引起了他的注意。

10 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

11 derives   

v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取

参考例句：

• English derives in the main from the common Germanic stock. 英语主要源于日耳曼语系。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He derives his income from freelance work. 他以自由职业获取收入。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 superintendent   

n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长

参考例句：

• He was soon promoted to the post of superintendent of Foreign Trade.他很快就被擢升为对外贸易总监。
• He decided to call the superintendent of the building.他决定给楼房管理员打电话。