POLAND. A 25-year old man stole tools from a roadworks site, and while he was about it, nabbed the flashing warning sign, too. As he left the scene of the crime, he saw a police patrol car and quickly hid behind a bus stop, unaware that the flashing light was giving his whereabouts. （リーダーズダイジェスト、世界の間抜けな泥棒特集より）
今月の７日に "ham-handed" を採り上げましたが、３年前に同義語の "ham-fisted" を採り上げた時に一緒に覚えていなければいけない表現でした。何となく見た事のある表現だとは思いましたが、数年に一度程度見る表現は中々覚えられません。
ところで、今日は記憶と経験についての次の気に入った台詞を引用します。
"Memories makes you sentimental, experiences make you smart." Amit Kalantri, author
夏になったので植物の生育が速いので、昨日は出勤前の畑仕事に手間取りブログ投稿の時間が無くなりました。
さて、生物の多様性の保存が大切な事を説いたEdward O. Wilson著のThe Creationを読んでいます。次に引用する個所に出てくる動物 "wolverine" or "Gulo gulo" はWikipediaの写真で見ると熊の一種のように見える稀少動物です。
Its savage demeanor is not, however, why I want to avoid the wolverine. The reason is that I find Gulo gulo the embodiment of wildness, and I know there will still be untrammeled habitats on Earth if wolverines still roam there. I trust they will hold on in the vast subarctic forest, somewhere in North America or Eurasia, in places too far to be reached easily by vehicles or shank's mare.
私が気になったのは "shank's mare" で、"mare" に雌馬の意味があるので馬車の一種かと思いましたが、辞書で確認すると違いました。
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: Fig. travel on foot. You'll find that shank's mare is the quickest way to get across town. Is there a bus, or do I have to use shank's mare?
・Wiktionary: one's own legs, especially as a means of moving from one place to another: The only way we can get there is by shanks' mare.
徒歩のことですか。でも今度は何故これが徒歩の意味になったのか気になります。 後者の辞書には次の様に由来を記述しています。
The expression -- believed to be Scottish in origin -- derives from shanks' nag (shanks-naig 1774), referring to the use of shank to refer to the part of the human leg between the knee and ankle. One theory cites "shank's mare" derived from a horse-drawn lawn mower, manufactured by Shanks & Company Ltd. (founded 1853) which required that the human operator walk behind the device to guide the horse; however, references to the phrase in Scottish literature pre-date the existence of the Shanks lawn mower.
Shanks社製の芝刈り機語源説はもっともらしかったのですが、残念ながらXですね。
The Creationの著者は昆虫学者なので色々な昆虫が出てくるのは当然ですが、学名のような難しい名前は別として、英名を覚えておきたい昆虫も出てきました。
I realized upon seeing the ants and treehoppers at Concepcion de la Vega, lies in the scorched appearance of the dying crop plants. This is not an effect produced by any known ants, which very seldom consume plant material. But it does result from heavy infestations of sap-sucking homopterous insects, including aphids, scale insects--and tree hoppers. Fire ants are among the kinds of ants that protect these insects, and in exchange the homopterans provide them with liquid excrement rich in sugar and amino acids.
"homopterous insects" と "homopterans" は同じ昆虫類を指して、植物の液を吸う虫と説明がありますが、対応する日本語は知りません。しかし、"scale insects" の方は "scale" が付いているので鱗を備えた様な虫の様ですが何でしょう？ 辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A small insect with a protective shieldlike scale. It spends most of its life attached by its mouth to a single plant, sometimes occurring in such large numbers that it becomes a serious pest.
・Collins English Dictionary: any small homopterous insect of the family Coccidae and related families, which typically live and feed on plants and secrete a protective scale around themselves. Many species, such as the San Jose scale, are important pests.: A scale insect may colonise the reverse sides of leaves.
やはりこの手の虫は写真を見た方が早いですね。Wikipediaに掲載の写真を見るとどうもカイガラムシの類を指すようです。
一か月程前だと思いますが、NHKのドキュメンタリー番組で南米のツノゼミを知りました。そのツノゼミ（"treehopper"）が今読んでいるThe Creationに出てきました。
A lone sunlower grew on the barren surface of the open space. It was swarming with small dark brown ants. Huddled in the axils of its leaves were families of treehoppers, strange distant relatives of aphids with shark fin spines that protruded from their backs. When I pulled the leaves apart to collect specimens, the ants swarmed over my hands, biting and stinging them. Each sting burned like a match held too close, and most raised a small welt that itched for hours afterward. It was obvious that the ants were protecting the treehoppers.
...
Around 1518, a plague of ants irrupted at the fledging Spanish colony on Hispaniola.
和名はツノゼミですが、蝉とは全く似ていません。上の引用文にあるように "aphid"（アリマキ、アブラムシ） の遠い親戚と言われた方が納得できます。ところで覚えたい単語は "irrupted" です。 "irrupt" を辞書で調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: (Of a bird or other animal) migrate into an area in abnormally large numbers.: ‘But climate change, restoration, biotechnology, and irrupting species have forced ecologists to consider what was, in order to imagine what ought to be.’
・WordNet: increase rapidly and in an uncontrolled manner ("The island's rodent population irrupted")
"treehopper" 様々な形の種類があり、その中でも "brazilian treehopper" は特にユニークでその形も色々と異なる仲間がいます。
Edward O. WilsonのThe Creationを読んでいます。耳慣れない生物名が頻繁に出てきますが、小説とは異なり、話の進め方は理にかなっていて分かり易い。
Nature dies hard. Even in the parking lot extremum, notice the resilient little weed that peeps from a crack in the concrete, the tuft of grass holding on at the curb, the faint clorous span of the cyanobacterial colony plastered next to the ticket kiosk. Look closely for tiny creatures that thrive in their parsimonious midst: the mite, the nematode worm, the catapillar struggling to grow into a moth.
"parsimonious" とは何でしょう？
・Oxford English Dictionary: Unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal: 'parsimonious New Hampshire voters, who have a phobia about taxes’
・Cambridge English Dictionary: not willing to spend money or give something: She's too parsimonious to heat the house properly.: figurative I think that politicians are often rather parsimonious with the (= do not tell the complete) truth.
昨年 " parsimony" を取り上げたのを思い出しました。スペルの似ている "persimmon" は知っていますが、" parsimony" と "parsimonious" は中々覚えられません。柿の渋柿から渋ちん、そして "parsimony" を連想することにしよう。
Nature dies hard. Even in the parking lot extremum, notice the resilient little weed that peeps from a crack in the concrete, the tuft of grass holding on at the curb, the faint clorous span of the cyanobacterial colony plastered next to the ticket kiosk. Look closely for tiny creatures that thrive in their parsimonious midst: the mite, the nematode worm, the catapillar struggling to grow into a moth.
"parsimonious" とは何でしょう？
・Oxford English Dictionary: Unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal: 'parsimonious New Hampshire voters, who have a phobia about taxes’
・Cambridge English Dictionary: not willing to spend money or give something: She's too parsimonious to heat the house properly.: figurative I think that politicians are often rather parsimonious with the (= do not tell the complete) truth.
昨年 " parsimony" を取り上げたのを思い出しました。スペルの似ている "persimmon" は知っていますが、" parsimony" と "parsimonious" は中々覚えられません。柿の渋柿から渋ちん、そして "parsimony" を連想することにしよう。
私も中元や歳暮で何を贈ろうかよく迷いますが、誕生日のプレゼントに何を贈るか迷った人の話です。 Fresh out of gift ideas, a man buys his mother-in-law a large plot in an expensive cemetery. On her next birthday, he buys her nothing, and immediately she yells at him. "What are you complaining about?" he fires back. "You still haven't used the present I gave you last year."
今年は都合より私は休会していますが、ASJの４月例会は Prof. Robert Mortonによる源氏物語の "The Lady of the Cicada Shell: a Genji Heroine" と題された講演で、ASJのBulletin No.5に書かれていた講演の概要を読みました。今日はその中の一部の言葉についての個所を紹介します。
I think Murasaki Shikibu was writing for a very restricted group of people; it was an "in" group and they knew all the "in" stories, and you could imagine the women giggling as they listened to her read. [Here he was reminded of Woody Allen's moose joke involving the word "restricted", and some of the people in his audience wouldn't know that "restricted" meant "Jews aren't allowed." So a hundred or two hundred years later people would say "What does 'restricted' mean?" In the same way, a thousand years later people just didn't get the meaning in Genji.]
上は、源氏物語の翻訳者（英訳した翻訳者のみならず、現代語に翻訳した谷崎潤一郎や瀬戸内寂聴なども含まれている）により色々と解釈が異なる個所があるのは何故かに対する質問に対する講師の説明です。私は高校生の時に古文は最も苦手とする科目でしたが、Prof. Mortonは谷崎や寂聴の源氏物語も日本語で読んでいる様なので恐れ入り谷の鬼子母神です。（ここは上の "restricted" の説明を読んで、何故か頭に浮かんだ表現です。東京人以外あるいは若い方には分からない表現の気がします。）
I think Murasaki Shikibu was writing for a very restricted group of people; it was an "in" group and they knew all the "in" stories, and you could imagine the women giggling as they listened to her read. [Here he was reminded of Woody Allen's moose joke involving the word "restricted", and some of the people in his audience wouldn't know that "restricted" meant "Jews aren't allowed." So a hundred or two hundred years later people would say "What does 'restricted' mean?" In the same way, a thousand years later people just didn't get the meaning in Genji.]
上は、源氏物語の翻訳者（英訳した翻訳者のみならず、現代語に翻訳した谷崎潤一郎や瀬戸内寂聴なども含まれている）により色々と解釈が異なる個所があるのは何故かに対する質問に対する講師の説明です。私は高校生の時に古文は最も苦手とする科目でしたが、Prof. Mortonは谷崎や寂聴の源氏物語も日本語で読んでいる様なので恐れ入り谷の鬼子母神です。（ここは上の "restricted" の説明を読んで、何故か頭に浮かんだ表現です。東京人以外あるいは若い方には分からない表現の気がします。）
小説を続けて読んだので今度はノンフィクションを読むことにしました。昆虫学者（entomologist）の書いた本で、タイトルはThe Creation。元キリスト教徒の著者が牧師に貴重な地球の生物を一緒に守りことをお願いをする形式で書かれていますが、もちろん牧師だけではなく人類全ての人に訴えている内容です。昆虫学者だけに取り上げている生物は小さな生物が多いようだ。
A suburban woodlot is obviously no longer a wilderness for mammals, birds, and trees. But it might be a "microwilderness" for small organisms. Many kinds of insects, mites, and other arthropods, mostly under ten millimeters in size, range freely there, their local domains untroubled by human hands, feet, or tools. Luckily, microwildernesses are not a trivial part of wild Nature. Quite the opposite: each cubic meter of soil and humus within it is a world swarming with hundreds of thousands of such creatures, representing hundreds of pecies.
"soil and humus" の "humus" は初めて目にする単語なので辞書を引きます。
・Collins Dictionary: a dark brown or black colloidal mass of partially decomposed organic matter in the soil. It improves the fertility and water retention of the soil and is therefore important for plant growth.: The ideal soil for parsley is rich in humus, deeply dug and friable to facilitate root penetration and development.
・Macmillan Dictionary: partially decomposed organic matter; the organic component of soil
区民農園を借りて野菜作りをしているので腐葉土の重要性は良く知っています。
世の中には人を騙して他人から大金を巻き上げる人間が幾らでもいるようで、Reader's Digest ５月号に米国での事件を取り上げている記事がありました。今日はその中にあった単語を覚えたい。
With her son dead and her divorce still on her mind, the quality of Deveraux's books deteriorated, the author admits. The amount of money left to take from her dwindled in lockstep, and Marks became harder to reach, Deveraux says.
早速 "lockstep" を辞書で調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Close adherence to and emulation of another’s actions: ‘they raised prices in lockstep with those of foreign competitors’
・Collins Dictionary: a standard procedure that is closely, often mindlessly, followed: Gold has largely moved in lockstep with the euro's performance against the dollar since early April.
この単語は元々軍隊の行進スタイルを表す意味があることも分かりました。
・Online Etymology: Lock-step. A mode of marching by a body of men going one after another as closely as possible, in which the leg of each moves at the same time with and closely follows the corresponding leg of the person directly before him.
With her son dead and her divorce still on her mind, the quality of Deveraux's books deteriorated, the author admits. The amount of money left to take from her dwindled in lockstep, and Marks became harder to reach, Deveraux says.
早速 "lockstep" を辞書で調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Close adherence to and emulation of another’s actions: ‘they raised prices in lockstep with those of foreign competitors’
・Collins Dictionary: a standard procedure that is closely, often mindlessly, followed: Gold has largely moved in lockstep with the euro's performance against the dollar since early April.
この単語は元々軍隊の行進スタイルを表す意味があることも分かりました。
・Online Etymology: Lock-step. A mode of marching by a body of men going one after another as closely as possible, in which the leg of each moves at the same time with and closely follows the corresponding leg of the person directly before him.
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