雙語早讀｜“fanboy/girl”，這些流行詞百年前就有了

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你以為這些流行語是最新發明的，但其實它們存在的時間比你想象的要長得多。

FRIEND, AS A VERB

當代年輕人的社交活動，讓人不禁感慨，“friend（成為好友）什么時候變成動詞了？”答案是：不晚于14世紀。Friend做動詞的例子最早出現在《牛津英語詞典》中，表示“交朋友”。你可以去一個地方，和那里的人交朋友。Friend還有幫助別人，成為朋友的意思，例如1698年的一個例子，“有報道說國王會幫助勞德代爾”。

A common lament in pieces about “kids these days and their social whatsawhozits” is “when did friend become a verb?” The answer is: Sometime in the 1400s, if not earlier. In the earliest examples of the verb friend from the OED, it just means "to make friends." You could go to a place, and friend some people there. It also had the meaning of helping someone out, being a friend to them, e.g., “Reports came that the King would friend Lauderdale,” an example from 1698.

UNFRIEND

如果能用friend表示“成為好友”，那么根據英語詞匯構成規則，自然也可以用unfriend表示“移除好友”。這個關于unfriend的例子出現在1659年：“先生，我希望我們不會因為已經存在的分歧而絕交。”

If you could friend someone, it was only natural, according to the productive rules of English word formation, that you could unfriend them, too. The word shows up in this example from 1659: “I Hope, Sir, that we are not mutually Un-friended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.”

HANG OUT

至少從19世紀30年代起，“hang out（閑逛）”就用作打發時間的動詞。查爾斯·狄更斯在《匹克威克外傳》（1837）中寫道：“我說，老家伙，你在哪里閑逛？”

Hang out has been used as a verb for passing the time since at least the 1830s. In the Pickwick Papers (1837), Charles Dickens wrote: "I say, old boy, where do you hang out?"

FUNKY

20世紀30年代，人們開始用funky（放克風格的）形容音樂，但早在那之前，funky就表示“強烈的氣味”相關的感覺。自17世紀以來，funk作為俚語，指煙草的陳腐氣味，并由此引申為任何有臭味的東西。奶酪、房間，尤其是船艙，都可以用funky（惡臭的）來形容。

The application of funky to music came around the 1930s, but the “strong smell” sense had been around long before that. Since the 1600s, funk was slang for the stale smell of tobacco smoke, and by extension, anything that stank. Cheeses, rooms, and especially ship’s quarters could be described as funky.

FANBOY AND FANGIRL

上世紀70年代，漫畫和科幻小說開始擁有“粉絲”，但在此之前已經出現體育粉，1919年，伊利諾伊州迪凱特的報紙報道，“辛辛那提擊敗芝加哥白襪隊時，男粉絲們感到震驚。”1934年，女粉絲（fangirl）第一次被引用：“瑪麗……不顧雨水迅速沖了出去，以至于只有兩個女粉絲發現了她。”

The application of fanboy to comics and science fiction had to wait until the "70s, but before that, there were sports fans, and in 1919 the paper in Decatur, Illinois, reported that, “it was a shock to the fan boys when Cincinnati ... beat the Chicago White Sox.” The first citation for fangirl is from 1934: “Mary ... dashed out through the rain so swiftly that only two of the fan-girls caught her.”

來源：中國日報網英語點津（編輯：董靜）

【來源：中國日報網】