Very democratic way to find the source of odd words(28868)-英语教育-(68)-21英语网

本文作者： 21ST

　　英国《牛津英语词典》的编者日前呼吁民众，协助其追寻和探究英语中许多表达用法究竟出自何处。书籍、报刊、信件、电影剧本和网络等均可成为追溯词语出处的资源。公众普遍接纳的词语渊源将被收入新版《牛津英语词典》。

　　WHO was Gordon Bennett? And did anyone wear stiletto heels before 1959? The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is asking the public to help trace the etymological roots of many common English language expressions.

　　Gordon Bennett was a famous media magnate, sportsman, and playboy in the early 1900s. This personal name has become attached to several expressions, of which the best known is the expletive "Gordon Bennett!". The earliest evidence as exclamation is 1967 from a script for "Till Death Us Do Part". Stiletto heel first entered the OED from a "New Statesman" article in 1959. But the dictionary's editors believe that it must have appeared in an earlier fashion publication.

　　The English language has 643,000 words, but the origins of some of our commonest phrases remain a matter of conjecture. Oxford University Press, the dictionary's publisher, is teaming up with "Balderdash & Piffle," a BBC television lexicology programme, to run down the origins of such British expressions as "wally" (a fool), "wazzock" (an idiot) and "whoopsie" (excrement). As far as the dictionary's 400-plus researchers have been able to make out, crazy people became "daft as a brush" in 1945 and "one sandwich short of a picnic"(mentally unstable) in 1993.

　　The OED's editors will revise the next edition of the dictionary if anyone can provide compelling and verifiable evidence of an alternative origin of a word or phrase. Suggestions will be debated on the new series of "Balderdash & Piffle".

　　"Words do have a real fascination," said Peter Gilliver, associate editor of the dictionary. "It's all knowledge, and it is worth tracking down."

　　The source of an earlier appearances of a word or phrase can be a book, magazine, film script, fanzine or even unpublished papers, letters or a post-marked postcard, the Internet or a sound recording. The most important thing is that it can be dated. Gilliver said viewers turned up uses of common phrases in those sources not available to the OED's researchers. As a result, he said, 35 entries in the dictionary were changed.

　　"Bog standard," which means the basic, no-frills model of something, had been listed as a term arising from the world of computers in the 1980s. But Gilliver said a British man found a 1968 automotive magazine in his garage. The magazine mentioned the term in relation to a model of a car. A "nit nurse" refers to a British nurse who travelled from school to school checking students for head lice. Gilliver said the term was thought to date from the mid-1980s, but last year a viewer found a reference from 1942.

　　"It's a very democratic process," Gilliver said, noting that the dictionary's editors have asked for public input since they started compiling the first volume in 1879.

　　