为什么学习经济学英文（为什么英语中有意思完全相反的）

原文标题：JohnsonComprise and compromiseConfusingly, some words have two opposite meanings. Why?约翰逊“包含”与妥协令人感到困惑的是，有些词有两种截然相反的含义，这是为什么呢?This column comprises the answers—or is it the other way round?这一专栏涵盖了答案——还是相反？

[Paragraph 1] FANS OF ANCIENT history may have thrilled to the news in the New York Times that a mystery was solved: “A Long-Lost Branch of the Nile Helped in Building Egypt’s Pyramids.”《纽约时报》报道了一个谜团被解开的消息，这可能会令古代历史的粉丝们兴奋不已：“一条消失已久的尼罗河支流在建造埃及金字塔时起到了帮助作用。”A new study, the subheading said, “confirms a long-held theory that builders used the river to transport the heavy blocks that comprise the ancient wonders.”副标题称，一项新的研究 “证实了一个长期以来的理论，即建筑者利用了河流来运输那些包含了古代奇观的巨型石块。”

But usage grumps may have scowled.然而，词语的使用可能已经引发牢骚，令人不快了。Indeed, the line was soon changed: in the revised version, the wise old theory was “that builders used the river to transport the heavy blocks that make up the ancient wonders.”的确，标题很快就改了：在修改过的版本中，这个富有道理的旧理论说的是“建筑者利用河流运输那些构成古代奇观的巨型石块。”

[Paragraph 2]The traditional rule is that “the whole comprises the parts, and the parts compose the whole”.一般的用法是“整体包含部分，部分组成整体”。The pyramid comprises the blocks, not the other way round; by the same reasoning, “comprised of ” is wrong too.金字塔包含了石块，而非相反；同样的道理，“comprised of”这个用法也是不对的。

But if you do not know this rule, you are hardly alone.不过，不知道这个规则的也并非个例。It was a favourite of Theodore Bernstein, a longtime copy guru at the Times, who repeated it in usage books of 1958, 1965 and 1977.泰晤士报的长期文案大师西奥多·伯恩斯坦最喜欢这样用词，他在1958年、1965年和1977年的书中重复了使用了这个词义。After all that, it does not seem to have stuck with the paper’s editors, nor with many other competent writers.尽管如此，这似乎并没有为报纸编辑所接受，也没有被许多其他有水平的作者所接受。

[Paragraph 3]A word should not, in a perfect world, mean the opposite of itself; if galaxies comprise stars, surely stars cannot comprise galaxies.在一个完美的世界里，一个词的意思不应该与它本身意思相反；如果星系包含恒星，那么恒星当然不能反过来包含星系。

But in fact there are lots of words that are their own opposites, so many that they have not just one but several names: contronyms, auto-antonyms or, most poetically, “Janus words”, named for the two-faced Roman god who looks in opposite directions (and so gave his name to January, which faces back into the old year and forward to the new).但事实上，有很多词是它们自己的反义词，而且称呼多到不止一个而是好几种：反义词、自主反义词，或者最具诗意的“双面词”，这是以罗马人的双面神命名的，他能看向相反的方向（因此，一月也以他的名字命名，一面向旧的一年，一面向新的一年）。

[Paragraph 4]“Sanction”, for example, can mean both “to approve of” and “to lay a penalty upon”.例如，“sanctions”既可以表示“批准”，也可以表示“惩罚”。“Fast” can mean speedy or stuck in place.“fast”可以表示快速或原地不动。“Cleave” can mean to split, or to cling tightly.“Cleave”可以指劈开或紧紧地抓住。

“Fulsome” praise can be full-throated and genuine, or cloyingly insincere.“夸大其词”的赞美可以是响亮而真诚的，也可以是油腻的不真诚的。One class of Janus words is particularly troublesome: those that mean different things on opposite sides of the Atlantic.有一类双面词特别麻烦：大西洋两岸意思不同的单词。“Moot”, for instance, means “that which can be argued; debatable” in Britain; it means “not worthy of discussion” in America.例如，“Moot”在英国的意思是“可以争论的东西；有争议的”；在美国它的意思是“不值得讨论的”。

[Paragraph 5]Some of these oddities arise from mere coincidence.有些一反常规的用法仅仅是因为巧合。The two senses of “cleave” are actually different words that happen to be written the same way in modern English.“cleave”的两种意思实际上是不同的单词，只是在现代英语中恰巧书写方式相同而已。(That is why the “cutting” version has the past participle “cleft”, while the other does not.)（这就是为什么表示“劈开”的过去分词是“cleft”，而另一个意思的过去分词则不是这样的。）

[Paragraph 6]But others are the result of drift.但是其他单词则呈现出了词义的变迁。Look up almost any common word in a historical tome such as the Oxford English Dictionary, and the oldest meaning will often be surprisingly far from the current one.在牛津英语词典这样的历史大部头中，通过查找几乎所有的常用词会发现，最古老的含义往往与当代的含义相去甚远。(“Silly”, for example, is a distant cousin of “soul”, and once meant something like “holy”.)（比如，“愚蠢的”是“灵魂”的远亲，曾经有类似“圣洁的”的意思。)

The Janus words arise when a new meaning branches off, while the old one survives.当一个新的含义出现，而旧的含义也得以保留时，双面词就出现了。So the oldest version of “fast” means “fixed in place”, but at its branching moment, it came to be an adverb meaning to do something with a kind of intensity.所以“fast”最古老的意思是“固定在某地”，但在词义分化时，它变成了一个副词，意思是有强度地做某事。It is probably from that “intensity” sense that the “moving intensely”—that is, quickly—came about.可能正是由于“有强度”这个词义，才出现了“强烈地移动”，也就是“快速地移动”这个意思。

[Paragraph 7]That process of gradual change (while the old meaning endured) is also what happened to “fulsome” and “moot”.“fulsome”和“moot”的词义也经历了这个逐渐变化的过程（尽管旧的含义一直保留）。The oldest meaning of “fulsome” was merely “abundant, plentiful”, but this connotation underwent a process that linguists call “pejoration”: the literal meaning stays roughly the same, but the sense of “in a bad way” is added.“fulsome”最古老的含义仅仅是“丰富的，大量的”，但这一含义经历了一个语言学家称之为“语义转贬”的过程：字面意义基本保持不变，但增加了“一种表示不好的方式”的含义。

By 1602 Ben Jonson was using “fulsome” in the sense of cloying or overdone.到1602年，本·琼森开始使用“fulsome”来表示令人厌烦或过度的意思。And in the 19th century Americans began using “moot” to mean not just debatable, but debatable only theoretically, and so of no point.在19世纪，美国人不仅开始用“moot”来表示有争议的，而且还表示只在理论上有争议，因此这种变化没有意义。

[Paragraph 8]Finally, some Janus words come about through simple confusion.最后一点，有些双面词是通过简单的混淆而产生的。“Inflammable” has been used to mean both “able to be set on fire” and “unable to be set on fire”.“Inflammable”被用来表示“能够被点燃”和“不能被点燃”。

That first meaning is the older one, sharing a root with “inflame”.第一个意思较早，与“inflame”属同源词。But in- is also a common negating prefix, leading to the second interpretation.但是in-也是一个常见的否定前缀，于是引出了第二种释义。And so it is with “comprise”, which may have arisen in its more recent sense (the parts comprising the whole) through confusion with its cousin, “compose”.“comprise”一词也是如此，它的近义词（意为组成整体的部分）可能是由于与“compose”一词的混淆而产生的。

[Paragraph 9]It is tempting to think that such self-contained opposites cannot and should not survive.人们很容易认为，这种自相矛盾不可能也不应该存在。But the deprecated “the whole is comprised of the parts” usage has been around since the 16th century.但“整体由部分包含”这种用法被弃用的情况早在16世纪就已经出现了。

One Wikipedia editor has removed it from articles tens of thousands of times.维基百科的一位编辑已经把它从网页条文中删除了成千上万次。That, though, was because others (themselves, presumably, knowledgeable volunteer editors) had written it tens of thousands of times in the first place.然而，这是因为其他人先写就了成千上万次的这种用法（大概是这些知识渊博的志愿者编辑他们自己吧）。Whether all this is really a tolerable state of affairs may be moot in the British sense of the word.从英式英语来看，这一切是否真的可以接受可能仍需商榷。But “comprised of”, at least, seems to be here to stay, making it moot in the American one.但至少在美式英语中，“组成”的意思保留了下来。（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量约840左右）原文出自：2022年9月10日《The Economist》Culture版块。

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路

本文整理：Fei Min

本文编辑校对: Irene仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自网络）杰纳斯Janus是罗马神话中的天门神，头部前后各有一张面孔，故亦称两面神，司守门户和万物的始末。常常出现在杯子或餐具中，但实际上，杰纳斯的相貌多被描述成脸部多毛而粗犷，没有杯子上的形象那么漂亮。

维基百科（Wikipedia），总部位于美国，是一个基于维基技术的多语言百科全书式的协作计划，是用多种语言编写而成的网络百科全书。维基百科由非营利组织维基媒体基金会负责营运，维基百科接受捐赠。特点是自由内容、自由编辑。它是全球网络上最大且最受大众欢迎的参考工具书，名列全球十大最受欢迎的网站。Wikipedia是一个混成词，取自网站核心技术“wiki”和英文中百科全书之意的“encyclopedia”。

【重点句子】（3个）But usage grumps may have scowled.然而，词语的使用可能已经引发牢骚，令人不快了。The Janus words arise when a new meaning branches off, while the old one survives.当一个新的含义出现，而旧的含义也得以保留时，双面词就出现了。Whether all this is really a tolerable state of affairs may be moot in the British sense of the word.从英式英语来看，这一切是否真的可以接受可能仍需商榷。

自由英语之路