韋氏詞典2016年度詞彙 不可思議的1年用它定義

Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large for Merriam Webster, believes people are drawn to the dictionary for intellectual comfort—that cathartic Moment when you find a definition that perfectly articulates something you have been wanting to express.

《韋氏詞典》專題編輯彼得·索科洛夫斯基認爲，人們之所以會去查詞典，是因爲它能讓自己的大腦感到很舒適——在你想要表達些什麼，而詞典上的某個定義又完美地詮釋了你心之所想時，你會瞬間有種暢快感。

In 2016, it appears that definition came under the heading of surreal for many people—a word that English speakers habitually turn to in unbelievable times, and Merriam-Webster’s choice for the "Word of the Year."

2016年，好像對很多人來說這個定義就寫在“surreal（超現實）”一詞後面——這個詞既是人們在這個不可思議的時代會習慣性使用的詞，也是《韋氏詞典》選出的“年度詞彙”。

surreal, adjective: marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream

surreal：形容詞，特指夢中才有的極度不合理的現實狀況

Modern dictionary makers have the ability to know what humanity is struggling to understand at any given moment, by tracking spikes in the words that are being looked up; we may turn to Google to search for anything, but we turn to the dictionary to search for meaning. A definition that fits just right, says Sokolowski "actually brings some kind of order to somebody's life in that moment," and surreal is a word people turn to when they're trying to bring order to "the chaos of the news."

通過追蹤查閱率大幅上升的詞彙，現代詞典編篡者可以得知人類在任何時刻正苦於思索些什麼；我們可能會用谷歌去搜索各種東西，但會用詞典去查找涵義。索科洛夫斯基說，一個恰如其分的定義，“實際上會在那時那刻爲某人的生活賦予某種秩序”，而人們想從“新聞中的混亂事件”裏找到秩序時，就會去查“surreal”這個詞。

Merriam-Webster's is the third of four major "Word of the Year" selections. The American Dialect Society, which basically invented this tradition, won't make its pick until January. But the other two that have been announced so far also reflect the tumult of 2016. Oxford chose post-truth to sum up "a year dominated by highly-charged political and social discourse" and marked by distrust. Dictionary.com chose xenophobia because there were so many fears raised about so many "others."

《韋氏詞典》選出的詞是四大“年度詞彙”中的第三個。大概是美國方言學會發起的這種傳統，但他們要到1月份纔會選詞。但另外兩家已經公佈的詞也反應了2016年的動盪。《牛津詞典》挑選“post-truth（後真相）”來總結“由政治和社會討論主宰的一年”，其特點是信任缺失。Dictionary.com挑選了“xenophobia（懼外症）”，因爲有那麼多的“其他人”引發了那麼多的恐慌。

Among runners-up for Merriam-Webster were bigly (which spiked because people misheard Donald Trump's repeated use of big-league), deplorable (thanks to one of Hillary Clinton's biggest gaffes of the election) and revenant (courtesy of Leonardo DiCaprio and a bear).

《韋氏詞典》選出的其它詞彙還包括“bigly”（因爲人們把唐納德•特朗普反覆使用的“big-league（大實話聯盟）”聽成了“bigly”，該詞的查閱率飛漲）、“deplorable（極其惡劣的）”（來自希拉里•克林頓選舉中最嚴重的無禮失言之一），還有“revenant（歸來者，也就是《荒野獵人》的片名）”（要感謝小李子和一頭熊）。

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