什么词儿让你很不爽？

4次大中小

"What word do you hate and why?" is the intriguing question put to a selection of poets by the Ledbury festival. Philip Wells's reply is the winner for me - 'pulchritude' is certainly up there on my blacklist. He even explains his animosity in suitably poetic terms:

“什么词儿让你不爽？为什么？”

在莱博里诗会上，我们就这个有趣的问题向一干诗人提问。菲利普•威尔斯的回答我觉得是最绝的——“反正pulchritude（美丽）这个词肯定在我的黑名单上。” 他说道。他甚至把对这个词的反感写成了诗：

"it violates all the magical impulses of balanced onomatopoeic language - it of course means "beautiful", but its meaning is nothing of the sort, being stuffed to the brim with a brutally latinate cudgel of barbaric consonants. If consonants represent riverbanks and vowels the river's flow, this is the word equivalent of the bottomless abyss of dry bones, where demons gather to spit acid."

"它，冲散了所有音律的平衡美所带给人的神奇悸动——诚然，这个词的本意是‘美’，但这美，却被拉丁式棍棒一般粗暴的辅音挤到了角落。如果说辅音是河岸，元音是水流，那这个词仿佛堆满白骨的无底深渊，魔鬼聚集其中，射出毒液。”

For Geraldine Monk, "it's got to be 'redacted' which makes me feel totally sick. It's a brutish sounding word. It doesn't flow, it prods at you in a nasty manner."

而杰拉丁•默克说：“redacted(校订)这个词让我觉得恶心，这词听着很粗鲁，很呆滞，就像一个小刺儿，扎得你浑身难受。”

Both these poets understand that the key to words that make you feel nauseous is not the meaning - it's easy, after all, to hate the word 'torture' – but something else entirely. Something idiosyncratic, something about the way the word feels in your mouth as you say it. The horrors of 'membrane', for instance. Or the eccentricity of 'gusset'.

两个诗人都明白，一个词能让你觉得不爽的关键，不在于其含义。比如“折磨”这个词，好像易引人反感，但其实不然。关键在一些个人化的感受，就是那种当你口中念出这个词时的感觉。比如当你念到“membrane(薄膜)”时起的鸡皮疙瘩，或念到“gusset(三角片)时候的莫名其妙。”

Having said that, I'm still trying to get my head around Paul Batchelor's explanation that "I've always hated the word 'APPAL' (or 'appalled' or 'appalling') because I dislike hearing the sound of my name inside other words." I can't work out if there's a case of extreme ego or extreme self-hatred going on there.

好了，我的理论说完了。可我还是没想通Paul Batchelor的解释：他说，“我一直讨厌‘appal(惊骇)’这个词，你看我的名字的发音是这个词的一部分，这很烦。” 我不知道Paul是极度鄙视这个词还是极度鄙视自己。

And I can't help feeling that Ros Barber misses the point with her rather po-faced reply. "Words are to be loved. Their associations may be unpleasant but words themselves are full of poetry (and history, and geography)," she says. "Delicious vowel sounds and tongue-tickling consonants. There isn't a word in the English language that doesn't excite me if I think about it long enough."

我还老觉得Ros Barber颇为一本正经的回答没有抓住问题的关键所在。“词语可都是用来爱的。它们的含义可能让人不快，但是词语本身都充满诗意啊（还充满历史意义、地理意义呢）。” 她说道。“美味的元音们和让舌头发痒的辅音们啊，我只要闭上眼睛想一会儿，英语的语言世界里面没有一个词不让我浑身兴奋。”

Sorry, Ros, I can't agree. I'm with Rhian Edwards on 'chillax' - "the most unnecessary and obnoxious linguistic blend to have ever been coined". Except possibly for 'no-brainer'... 更多信息请访问：http://www.engbus.cn/

抱歉，Ros, 不敢苟同您的意见。我赞同Rhian Edward说的词“chillax(放松)”——“这是个最无聊最讨厌的合成词”。可能“no-brainer(易事)”也得算一个……

什么词儿让你很不爽？