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So you're going to the beach. This is, we have been informed, a perfectly agreeable way to spend one's summer vacation. The beach is also, however, a place where not very much happens. If you have no dog-eared paperback that you have been planning to read, here's a parcel of words with which you may amuse yourself. 你这是要去海边啊。嗯，我们都知道，要过暑假，去海边是个超棒的消遣时间的方式。然而在海边你要做的事情并不是很多。如果你没在计划着到了海边，你要读些已翻旧了的书的话，看看以下这些单词--你会觉得挺有趣的。 Would you like to refer to your upcoming episode of sunburn and sand-sticking-in-unwelcome-places by another word? Inform people that you will be visiting plage ("the beach of a seaside resort"), a lido ("a fashionable beach resort"), or the praya ("beach, strand, waterfront"). 你跟别人讲你要去海边了，到时候你可能会被太阳晒伤，沙子会粘在你身上到处都是。你可以告诉他们，你去了plage(海滨沙滩胜地)，或者lido(时尚的海滨度假胜地)，又或是praya(沙滩，海岸，海滨)。 While you sit at the beach, amuse yourself by play the game "what's the word for that?" Our language is awash with words for things that most people never really thought about. We have words for "small waves"(ripple and riffle), and we also have an adjective, decuman, for describing a large wave. 当你坐在沙滩上时，玩玩“这个东西的英文称呼是什么”的游戏吧。英语词汇里充斥着很多人们没想到的日常事物的英文称谓。海面上的小波浪，我们可以用ripple和riffle来称呼。还有一个形容词decuman，来形容大波浪。 The sea spray that blows off the ocean is called the spindrift, a word that can also be used to describe sand or snow that is blown by the wind, and the rush of water from a breaking wave that comes onto the beach is referred to as a swash. Swash may also refer to the sound made by these waves as they break upon the shore. 我们可以用spindrift来称呼海浪拍打而起的飞沫。这个单词同样也能用来描述被风吹起的沙土或雪花。受海浪推力而冲上沙滩的海水叫swash。swash同时也可以用来指代海水冲上沙滩而发出的沙沙响声。 Lexicographers in the 17th century defined a great number of fanciful and fantastic words having to do with waves. Thomas Blount, in his 1656 Glossographia, and Elisha Coles, in his 1676 An English Dictionary, each included the words undisonant and fluctisonant, both of which mean "sounding or roaring like waves." Sadly, these specimens - and others such as fluctivagant "tossed by the waves"- are little used today, and tend to be found primarily in historical dictionaries. 17世纪的词典编纂者们定义了很多与海浪有关的单词，这些单词富于幻想，十分新颖。Thomas Blount(1618-1679)在1656年出版的《词集》和Elisha Coles(1640-1680)在1676年出版的《英语词典》中都收录了undisonant与fluctisonant，这两个词都指“像浪涛声的”。可惜的是，这些类型的词--还有诸如fluctivagant(被海浪抛起的)的单词--现在几乎没怎么被人使用了。这些词大概只能在历史词典里被发掘出来。 If you are actually one of those people who enjoys all things beachy and plans on basking in the sun, then you are a heliophile (“one attracted or adapted to sunlight”). And yes, there is a word for the rest of us, those for whom the idea of a day at a warm sunny beach elicits a cold sweat: we are heliophobes. 如果你喜欢海滩喜欢晒太阳的话，那么你就是heliophile。是的，对于另外一些不喜欢海边，听说要在温暖阳光的沙滩上呆上一整天就流出一身冷汗的人，也有个词来形容他们，他们是heliophobes。 |
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