cynosure

Isabella Birdの "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" を読んでいます。季節は梅雨に入ったようです。

The wind and rain were something fearful all that afternoon. I could not ride, so I tramped on foot for some miles under an avenue of pines, through water a foot deep, and with my paper waterproof soaked through, reached Toyoka half drowned and very cold, to shiver over a hibachi in a clean loft, hung with my dripping clothes, which had to be put on wet the next day. By 5 a.m. all Toyoka assembled, and while I took my breakfast, I was not only the "cynosure" of the eyes of all the people outside, but of those of about forty more who were standing in the doma, looking up the ladder. When asked to depart by the house-master, they said, “It’s neither fair nor neighbourly in you to keep this great sight to yourself, seeing that our lives may pass without again looking on a foreign woman;" so they were allowed to remain!

Birdが旅をしたのは明治１０年ですから、外国人しかも女性は非常に珍しく、どこへ行っても大勢の人が見に来ました。"cynosure" of the eyesの "cynosure" は見られる対象に違いないでしょうが、辞書の説明を見ます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: A person or thing that is the center of attention or admiration.: the Queen was the cynosure of all eyes
・Collins English Dictionary: a person or thing that attracts notice, esp because of its brilliance or beauty: Amid the lighter, pastel colors, she was a dramatic highlight; as intended, she was the cynosure of all eyes.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a person or thing that is so good or beautiful that it attracts a lot of attention: In this respect we hold a special position, because we are the cynosure of all eyes at all times.
この単語も2/23/2013に既に取り上げていました。

near-a-window position

窓際族にはなりたくない人の方が多いと思いますが、米国にはこんな人もいるそうです。
Reader's　Digest 4月号の記事 "All in a Day's WORK" から引用します。
When I worked at an employment agency, I was interviewing a candidate for an entry-level job. I read his application as we talked: name, address, year of graduation, and so on. Then I looked at what he had written next to the box that read "Position desired."
"Near a window," it said.

lionised me

Isabella Birdは秋田県の久保田を訪れています。
The public buildings, with their fine gardens, and the broad road near which they stand, with its stone-faced embankments, are very striking in such a far-off hen. Among the finest of the buildings is the Normal School, where I shortly afterwards presented myself, but I was not admitted till I had shown my passport and explained my objects in travelling. These preliminaries being settled, Mr. Tomatsu Aoki, the Chief Director, and Mr. Shude Kane Nigishi, the principal teacher, both looking more like monkeys than men in their European clothes, lionised me.

"lionise" は久しぶりに見る単語です。（8/13/2008）辞書で復習します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Give a lot of public attention and approval to (someone); treat as a celebrity.: modern athletes are lionized
・Collins English Dictionary: If someone is lionized, they are treated as if they are very important or special by a particular group of people, often when they do not really deserve to be.: The press began to lionize him enthusiastically.
・Cambridge English Dictionary:to make someone famous, or to treat someone as if they were famous: Soldiers had a chance to become heroes; but no refugee was lionized.

savoir fair

Isabella Birdが温泉宿に泊まった時の記述です。
This is a large yadoya, very full of strangers, and the house-mistress, a buxom and most prepossessing widow, has a truly exquisite hotel for bathers higher up the hill. She has eleven children, two or three of whom are tall, handsome, and graceful girls. One blushed deeply at my evident admiration, but was not displeased, and took me up the hill to see the temples, baths, and yadoyas of this very attractive place. I am much delighted with her grace and savoir faire. I asked the widow how long she had kept the inn, and she proudly answered, “ Three hundred years,” not an uncommon instance of the heredity of occupations.

Isabella Birdはフランス語の表現をよく使うのですが "savoir faire" も外来語（多分フランス語）の様です。英英辞書に載っているでしょうか？　 "savoir faire" は見かけませんでしたが、ハイフンを入れた "savoir-faire" の説明はありました。
・Collins English Dictionary: Savoir-faire is the confidence and ability to do the appropriate thing in a social situation.: He was full of jocularity and savoir-faire.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: the ability to do and say the right thing in any social situation: She possesses great savoir-faire.
次の辞書にはニュアンスを含めた説明がありました。
・Vocabulary.com: social skill
Your savoir-faire is your social smoothness. It will serve you well at parties and on the first day at a new school.
As with so many French words that have English cousins, the French version somehow retains an edge of sophistication over its counterpart. The nearest English equivalent of savoir-faire is know-how. But while know-how pertains to nearly all skills, especially practical ones, savoir-faire usually refers specifically to skill in social and diplomatic situations.

beggary

私はこれまでに三十数か国の外国に行ったことがありますが、日本と違うなと感じた二つの点があります。一つは、外国の都会では昼間から酔いつぶれている人を見かけることが多いのと、もう一つは金をせびる乞食の存在です。酔っ払いは東京でも夜は見かけますが、昼間から地面に寝そべっているような酔っ払いはまず、いません。そして、余り多くはいませんが、ホームレスは確かにいます。しかし、日本のホームレスが人に金をせびるのは見たことも聞いたこともありません。Isabella Birdの "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" を読んでると、彼女が日本に乞食がいないことに気が付いたことが書かれていました。

Very few horses are kept here. Cows and coolies carry much of the merchandise, and women as well as men carry heavy loads. A baggage coolie carries about 50 lbs., but here merchants carrying their own goods from Yamagata actually carry from 90 to 140 lbs., and even more. It is sickening to meet these poor fellows struggling over the mountain passes in evident distress. Last night five of them were resting on the summit ridge of a pass gasping violently. Their eyes were starting out; all their muscles, rendered painfully visible by their leanness, were quivering; rills of blood from the bite of insects which they cannot drive away were literally running all over their naked bodies, washed away here and there by copious perspiration. Truly “in the sweat of their brows ” they were eating bread and earning an honest living for their families! Suffering and hard-worked as they were, they were quite independent. I have not seen a beggar or beggary in this strange country.

"beggary" も "beggar" に関係する単語と思いますが、辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A state of extreme poverty.: they have no benefits to stand between them and beggary
・Collins English Dictionary: 1. extreme poverty 2. the act of begging or state of being a beggar 3. beggars as a group: He wants the couple to marry, to be united in beggary.

sand spit

Isabella Birdの "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" を読んでいます。
雨、気温、虫に悩まされている様子が書かれています。
I HAVE spent over a week in Niigata, and leave it regretfully to-morrow, rather for the sake of the friends I have made than for its own interests. I never experienced a week of more abominable weather. The sun has been seen just once, the mountains, which are thirty miles off, not at all. The clouds are a brownish grey, the air moist and motionless, and the mercury has varied from 82° in the day to 80° at night. The household is afflicted with lassitude and loss of appetite. Evening does not bring coolness, but myriads of flying, creeping, jumping, running creatures, all with power to hurt, which replace the day mosquitoes, villains with spotted legs, which bite and poison one without the warning hum. The night mosquitoes are legion. There are no walks except in the streets and the public gardens, for Niigata is built on a sand spit, hot and bare. Neither can you get a view of it without climbing to the top of a wooden look-out.

"sand spit" の意味を調べます。　辞書により "sandspit" あるいは "spit" で説明がありました。

・Wikctionary: A small sandy point of land or a narrow shoal projecting into a body of water from the shore
spit
・Merriam-Wevstery: a small point of land especially of sand or gravel running into a body of water
sand spit
・Wikipediay: A spit or sandspit is a deposition bar or beach landform off coasts or lake shores. It develops in places where re-entrance occurs, such as at a cove's headlands, by the process of longshore drift by longshore currents. The drift occurs due to waves meeting the beach at an oblique angle, moving sediment down the beach in a zigzag pattern. This is complemented by longshore currents, which further transport sediment through the water alongside the beach. These currents are caused by the same waves that cause the drift.

singular intelligence

Isabella Birdの "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" を読んでいます。　旅先ではどこに行っても蚤に悩まされています。

At five Ito came and entreated me to leave, whimpering, “I’ve had no sleep; there are thousands and thousands of fleas! ”He has travelled by another route to the Tsugaru Strait through the interior, and says that he would not have believed that there was such a place in Japan, and that people in Yokohama will not believe it when he tells them of it and of the costume of the women. He is “ashamed for a foreigner to see such a place,” he says. His cleverness in travelling and his singular intelligence surprise me daily. He is very anxious to speak good English, as distinguished from “common” English, and to get new words with their correct pronunciation and spelling. Each day he puts down in his note-book all the words that I use that he does not quite understand, and in the evening brings them to me and puts down their meaning and spelling with their’Japanese equivalents.

通訳として雇ったIto青年は頑張っている様です。 "singular intelligence" の "singular" は7/8/2010に取り上げていましたが、忘れているので再度辞書を見ます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: Exceptionally good or great; remarkable.: the singular beauty of the desert
・Collins Dictionary: Singular means very great and remarkable.: ...a smile of singular sweetness.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: of an unusual quality or standard; noticeable: It was a building of singular grace and beauty.

spur

Isabella Birdの "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" を読んでいます。

To-day’s journey, though very rough, has been rather pleasant. The rain moderated at noon, and I left Fujihara on foot, wearing my American “mountain dress’and Wellington boots,--the only costume in which ladies can enjoy pedestrian or pack-horse travelling in this country,--with a light straw mat--the waterproof of the region--hanging over my shoulders, and so we plodded on with two baggage horses through the ankle-deep mud, till the rain cleared off, the mountains looked through the mist, the augmented Kinugawa thundered below, and enjoyment became possible, even in my half-fed condition. Eventually I mounted a pack-saddle, and we crossed a spur of Takadayama at a height of 2100 feet on a well-devised series of zigzags, eight of which in one place could be seen one below another.

"spur" は拍車しか知らないので、辞書を見ます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: A projection from a mountain or mountain range.: it's an easy walk up the spur that leads to the summit
・Collins Dictionary: a range or ridge projecting in a lateral direction from the main mass of a mountain or mountain range
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a high piece of land that sticks out from a mountain or a group of mountains: Several spurs of hills run west- east from the main upland massif, increasing local topographical complexity by more or less dividing the lowlands into a series of semi-enclosed coastal basins.

ablest

Isabella Birdが日光を訪れた箇所からの引用です。

In front is a stone table decorated with a bronze incense-burner, a vase with lotus blossoms and leaves in brass, and a bronze stork bearing a bronze candlestick in its mouth. A lofty stone wall, surmounted by a balustrade, surrounds the simple but stately enclosure, and cryptomeria of large size growing up the back of the hill create perpetual twilight round it. Slant rays of sunshine alone pass through them, no flower blooms or bird sings, only silence and mournfulness surround the grave of the ablest and greatest man that Japan has produced.

"able" は多くの場合 "be able to" の形で使われるので "can" と同じ感覚の印象があり、形容詞だということを忘れていました。

plies to Tokio

Isabella Birdの "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" を読んでいます。Isabella Birdが旅をしたのは明治の初期ですから、都会でも洋服を着ている人は少数で、ましてや田舎では皆無だったでしょう。

It is such a hindrance, even in walking, that most pedestrians have “ their loins girded up”by taking the middle of the hem at the bottom of the kimono and tucking it under the girdle. This, in the case of many, shows woven, tight-fitting, elastic, white cotton pantaloons, reaching to the ankles. After ferrying another river at a village from which a steamer plies to Tokio, the country became much more pleasing, the rice-fields fewer, the trees, houses, and barns larger, and, in the distance, high hills loomed faintly through the haze. Much of the wheat, of which they don’t make bread but vermicelli, is already being carried. You see wheat stacks ten feet high moving slowly, and while you are wondering, you become aware of four feet moving below them; for all the crop is carried on horses’ if not on human backs.

"ply" は多くの意味を持つ単語で上の引用箇所に出てきた　
"ply" は10年前（6/24/2011）に取り上げていましたが、すぐには思い出せなかったので復習です。
　
・Oxford English Dictionary: (of a vessel or vehicle) travel regularly over a route, typically for commercial purposes.: ferries ply across a strait to the island

・Collins Dictionary: If a ship, aircraft, or vehicle plies a route, it makes regular journeys along that route.: Eighteen boats plied the 1,000 miles of river along a trading route.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: When a boat, train, bus, etc. plies a particular route, it makes that journey regularly: High-speed trains regularly ply between Paris and Lyons.