……密瓦德望著那些倒楣小山頂一帶閃爍著的可怕光忙,終於明白了那是什麼聲音。
冰河已再度來臨,…….
As he saw that deadly glitter along the crest of the doomed hills, Millward at last understand the sound.
Out of the north, their ancient home, returning to triumph to the lands they had once possessed, the glaciers had com again.
---- THE FORGOTTEN ENEMY by Arthur C. Clarke,
《讀者文摘‧遺忘了的敵人》1990年3月號,頁146-52
翻譯討論: doomed hills 翻譯成"倒楣小山頂"可能太有點人味--它是"注定被毀的"......
懸疑小說原文將主角冰河在末段的末尾亮相
翻譯則一開始就.....
glacial
Pronunciation: /ˈgleɪsɪəl, -ʃ(ə)l/
Definition of glacial
adjective
noun
Geology
Origin: mid 17th century: from French, or from Latin glacialis 'icy', from glacies 'ice'
moraine (muh-RAYN)
noun: An accumulation of boulders, gravel, or other debris carried and deposited by a glacier.
Etymology
From French moraine, from Savoy dialect morena (mound).
Usage
"Professor Shulmeister's team believes a large landslide dumped a huge volume of rock on top of the glacier, causing it to advance and, when the advance stopped, the moraine was created." — Angela Gregory; Glacial Find Pours Cold Water on World Theory; The New Zealand Herald (Auckland); Jun 30, 2008.
Definition of calve
verb
Origin:
Old English calfian, from cælf 'calf'
Definition of doomed
adjective
likely to have an unfortunate and inescapable outcome; ill-fated:the moving story of their doomed love affair
doom,
[名]
1 [U][C]運命;凶運, 悲運;破滅, 滅亡, 死
2 [U][C]((古))判決, (罪の)宣告.
━━[動](他)
doom and gloom/gloom and doom
((略式))希望のない状態, 暗い見通し.lugubrious
(lʊ-gū'brē-əs, -gyū'-)
adj.
Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree.
[From Latin lūgubris, from lūgēre, to mourn.]
lugubriously lu·gu'bri·ous·ly adv.
lugubriousness lu·gu'bri·ous·ness n.
- [lugjúːbriəs]
---
Harbinger of doom
MeaningA sign, warning of bad things to come.
Origin
We now use 'harbinger' in a metaphorical sense, meaning 'forerunner; announcer'. With that meaning, almost anything can be harbingered (the word has been used as a verb as well as a noun since the 17th century, although that usage is now rare). We sometimes hear of 'harbingers of Spring', or 'harbingers of day', but it is the 'harbingers of doom' that are by far the busiest in our present-day language.
The original meaning of harbinger was quite specific and had nothing to do with any of the above. In the 12th century, a harbinger was a lodging-house keeper. The word derives from 'harbourer' or, as they spelled it then, 'herberer' or 'herberger' , i.e. one who harbours people for the night. 'Herberer' derives from the French word for 'inn' - 'auberge'. 'Ye herbergers' are referred to (as common lodging-house keepers) in the Old English text The Lambeth Homilies, circa 1175.
By the 13th century, 'harbinger' had migrated from its original meaning of lodging keeper, to refer to a scout who went ahead of a military force or royal court to book lodgings for the oncoming hoard. This is the source of the 'advance messenger' meaning that we understand now. Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to record this meaning of 'harbinger', in The Man of Law's Tale, circa 1386:
The fame anon thurgh toun is bornIt was some centuries until the figurative usage, when people began to speak of the harbinger of things other than approaching royalty or house guests. The first usage was of our old friend 'doom', or as the Edinburgh Advertiser had it in September 1772, 'ruin':
How Alla kyng shal comen on pilgrymage,
By herbergeours that wenten hym biforn
[The news through all the town was carried,
How King Alla would come on pilgrimage,
By harbingers that went before him]
"The spirit of migration [from Scotland] is the infant harbinger of devoted ruin."It is rather appropriate to find that early usage coming from Scotland. The character of Private Frazer, in Dad's Army, a well-known (in the UK at least) BBC television series, was based on the perceived gloomy attitude of his race. John Laurie, who played the lugubrious Frazer, was the archetypal stage Scotsman and the show's line "We're all doomed, doomed I tell ye" became something of a catchphrase for him.
Those pessimistic harbingers of doom who first decided that 'the end of the world is nigh' lived in the 19th century. The earliest printed example of that phrase that I have found is from James Emerson Tennent's Letters from the Aegean, 1829:
"Achmet, our janissary, calculating from the decay of their empire and the daily fulfilment of the predictions of Mahomet with regard to the final resurrection, have come to a conclusion that the end of the world is nigh at hand."
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