Notes of a word-watcher, Hanching Chung. A first port of call for English learning.
2020年1月7日 星期二
【#逐字學英文國際日報】95：bequest, dead zone, hypoxic, herring and red herring
This exhibition pays tribute to the life and legacy of Wilmarth S. Lewis (B.A., 1918) as a scholar-collector, on the 40th anniversary of his bequest of the Lewis Walpole Library to Yale. Drawing heavily on the recently cataloged Lewis archives, the exhibition shows how Lewis’s total dedication to collecting works by and about the 18th century writer Horace Walpole resulted in a collection of extraordinary range and depth, and expressed itself in some surprising ways. It also evolved into a monumental achievement of scholarship in the Yale-Walpole edition, transforming perceptions of Walpole and his age. The exhibit runs until Jan. 24. (Curated by Stephen Clarke.)
Excluded from the Affordable Care Act because of politics, thousands of poor Americans grapple with the toll — physical and psychological — of being uninsured.
The speed of delivery in our ever-accelerating post-Amazon world increases by the day, and photographer Henrik Spohler wants you to see the places behind the products. He stalks the little-seen realm of logistics, finding an alien beauty in the freight areas, container terminals, sea ports, private highways and warehouses of international haulage contractors
As the speed of delivery in our ever-accelerating post-Amazon world increases by the day, photographer Henrik Spohler wants you to see the places behind the products
THEGUARDIAN.COM
No-Take Zone Replenishes Scotland's Fish Stocks
The west coast of Scotland was once teeming with fish. But like so many other fisheries around the world, here too, years of over-fishing has all but wiped out the traditional catch. Now a small community on the island of Arran west of Glasgow say they have the solution to the problem: a no-take zone which they say would see the once plentiful cod and herring n. - 青魚, 鯡 stocks return.
Dead zones are hypoxic (low-oxygen) areas in the world's oceansand large lakes, caused by "excessive nutrient pollution from human activities coupled with other factors that deplete the oxygen required to support most marine life in bottom and near-bottom water. (NOAA)."[2
red herringnoun[C] 薫製ニシン n. - 青魚, 鯡; 人の注意をそらす物［道具，手段］. a fact, idea or subject that takes people's attention away from the central point being considered: The police investigated many clues, but they were all red herrings.
In the middle ages the Dutch developed a special treat known in English as soused herring.
Dutch street-side herring stall
Pickled herrings are also common in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, perhaps best known for forshmak salad known in English simply as "chopped herring".
Pickled herring can also be found in the cuisine of Hokkaido in Japan, where families traditionally preserved large quantities for winter.
The word Rollmops, borrowed from German, refers to a pickled herring fillet rolled (hence the name) into a cylindrical shape around a piece of pickled cucumber or an onion.
Fermented
In Sweden, Baltic herring is fermented to make surströmming.
Raw
Raw herring roe is often used for sushi or eaten by itself
A typical Dutch delicacy is raw herring (Hollandse Nieuwe). This is typically eaten with raw onions. Hollandse nieuwe is only available in Spring when the first seasonal catch of herring is brought in. This is celebrated in festivals such as the Vlaardingen Herring Festival. The new herring are frozen and enzyme-preserved for the remainder of the year.
Herring is also canned and exported by many countries. A sild is an immature herring that are canned as sardines in Norway or Denmark.
Very young herring are called whitebait and are eaten whole as a delicacy.
Red herring Meaning A deliberate misleading and diverting of attention from the real issue. Origin Red herrings are salted herrings that turn a reddish colour during the smoking process. They have come to be synonymous with the deliberate false trails that are the stock in trade of 'who done it' thrillers. The term has been used to refer to people as well as to fish for some centuries. John Heywood's 1546 glossary, A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue includes the expression:
She is nother fyshe nor fleshe, nor good red hearyng.
Fish was eaten by the clergy, flesh by the rich and the dried and smoked herrings by the poor. So this list of the foods eaten by all classes of society was a metaphor for 'encompassing all eventualities'. How do we move from the actual herrings in that expression to the figurative 'throwing off the scent' meaning? One theory has it that the meaning derives from the practice of using the oily and smelly herrings to lay false trails for hunting dogs. This practice is well documented from as far back as the late 1600s and Nicholas Cox's The Sportsman's Dictionary: Or The Gentleman's Companion, 1686 describes it:
"The trailing or dragging of a dead Cat, or Fox, (and in case of necessity a Red-Herring) three or four miles... and then laying the Dogs on the scent."
It seems implausible that people laid false 'fishy' trails in order to deceive hounds so that their prey would escape. After all, there was no hunt saboteur movement in 1686, and who would have a motive to do that? It's more likely that the use of red herrings was a training exercise, intended to put the hounds on the scent rather than to throw them off it. Nevertheless, the laying of a scent trail for dogs does establish the linguistic 'surrogate' meaning for 'red herring' and the further step to 'deliberate deceit' isn't a large one. Another theory is that the meaning derives from a trick played on one of his servants by the wealthy English clergyman Jasper Mayne. Mayne died in 1672 and willed large sums for the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and to the poor people of his parishes of Cassington and Pyrton. He also willed to a servant "Somewhat that would make him Drink after his Death", which was left in a large trunk. When the trunk was opened the servant was disappointed to find that the bequest turned out to be a salted herring. The will doesn't mention a 'red herring', but a report of the event in Jacob's Poetical Register, 1719, does, so we can date the 'false representation' meaning to that date at the latest. Of the two theories, the Mayne story seems the more compelling. It introduces the idea of a deliberate misdirection, which, unless we are to believe that people deliberately misdirected hounds, the other lacks. Whatever the source, the figurative usage of the phrase was well established in UK by the early 1800s and had migrated to the USA by the middle of the century, as in this example from The New York Times, in May 1864:
But when the Emperor found that England would not join him in a war, he cleverly started the "red herring" of the Congress which he knew well enough was out of the question, but which has admirably answered his purpose of creating a diversion.
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Red herrings are salted herrings that turn a reddish colour during the smoking process. They have come to be synonymous with the deliberate false trails that are the stock in trade of 'who done it' thrillers. 
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