unlucky的不同表達

1. Fey

Though fey is still used today to mean ‘giving an impression of vague unworldliness or mystery’, the adjective has a long, winding history. It’s earliest known uses relate to death, describing somebody who is fated to die or at the point of death. Unsurprisingly, this was considered pretty unlucky, and ‘unlucky’ is another sense of fey that dates to Old English. In the 19th century this became ‘disordered in mind like one about to die; possessing or displaying magicAl, fairylike, or unearthly qualities’.

儘管fey如今使用的意思是“留下模糊、超脫或神祕的印象”，這個形容詞有一個漫長、曲折的歷史。它最早的含義與死亡有關，描述人註定要死亡或垂死的。但這個詞這被認爲是非常不吉利的。老式英語中，“不幸”是fey的另一個含義。在19世紀演變爲“神祕的、怪異的”。

2. Unseely

Many synonyms for unlucky follow the pattern of negating prefix + word meaning lucky. Somebody unseely is unlucky – indeed, ‘unfortunate, unhappy, miserable, wretched’.

很多不幸的同義詞遵循的模式爲：否定前綴+詞義幸運。例如：unfortunate不幸, unhappy不開心, miserable悲慘的, wretched可憐的，同樣是“不幸的”。

3. Unsele

Similarly, you could also describe a person as unsele, an adjective driving from sele which was a noun meaning ‘happiness, prosperity, good fortune’. Sele could also be added to other words to designate a favourable or proper time for something, such as barley-sele being the season for sowing barley.

你可以用unsele來描述一個人，形容詞unsele由sele演變而來，sele爲名詞，表示“開心、好運”。Sele也可以添加到單詞之後來表示“該到……時間”，例如barley-sele表示“該播種小麥的時間”。

4. Wanspeedy

Also found in Old English, this obsolete adjective comes from the noun wanspeed (‘ill-success; adversity, poverty’) which, in turn, combines wan- (a prefix used to express negation, approximately equivalent to the modern un-) and speed, which, in its earliest uses, meant ‘abundance’.

這個老式的英文單詞來自名詞wanspeed（其含義爲：不幸，貧窮），由wan和speed組成，其中wan爲否定前綴（含義相當於un），speed最早有“富足”的含義。

5. Ungracious

You’ll be familiar with ungracious meaning ‘not polite or friendly’; it literally means ‘without grace’, and so the common contemporary definition applies to one definition of grace. In this instance, using another definition of grace, it can mean ‘without fortune or luck’.

對於ungracious，你熟知的含義可能爲“不禮貌的、不友好的”，grace常見的含義爲“優雅”，因此，ungracious的字面含義翻譯爲“不優雅的”。在這個情況中使用的是grace的另外一種含義，ungracious表示“不幸”。

6. Unhappy

While an unlucky person probably would feel quite unhappy (in the modern sense), this use dates back to the original sense of happy to mean ‘favoured by good fortune; lucky’.

不幸的人大多會感到很不開心，這個用法可以追溯到happy原始含義：好運的、幸運的。

7. Unured

To be unured is to be unfortunate; the noun it derives from, eure, was once used to mean ‘luck’ but also any destiny or fate, whether good or bad. This comes via French from the same Latin root that gives bonheur, ‘happiness’.

To be unured即“不幸的”，這個名詞源於eure，曾被用於表示幸運，但也表示命天命，而不表示好、壞。Eure來源於法語中的拉丁詞彙bonheur（表示“幸福”）。

8. Unsonsy

In Scottish English and English from the north of England, you might have heard unsonsy used to mean ‘unlucky’ – and, indeed, to mean ‘unhandsome, plain’. Sonsy, unsurprisingly, means ‘lucky’ or ‘bringing luck’, as well as ‘attractive’.

從蘇格蘭語中，你可能聽說過unsonsy之前的意思是“不幸的”，事實上，該詞用來表示“不好看的，樸實無華的”。不出所料，Sonsy意味着“幸運”或者“帶來好運”、或者“有吸引力”。

9. Mischancy

Mischancy originally meant ‘unlucky’, formed by derivation with mischance, and first found in the work of the poet and bishop Gavin Douglas (c1476-1522). You might still come across mischancy in Scottish and Irish English, although it is now usually used to mean ‘subject to chance or mischance; risky, dubious’ rather than ‘unlucky’.

Mischancy最初的意思是“不幸的”，由單詞mischance（災難）演變而來，首次使用是在詩人及主教加文·道格拉斯(c1476 - 1522)的作品中。在蘇格蘭和愛爾蘭的英語中，你仍然可能遇到mischancy，雖然現在mischancy通常用來遭受某些偶然的、有風險的、可疑的事件而不是單指“不幸的”。

10. Stiff

Stiff has plenty of meanings, but if you hear the adjective in Australia or New Zealand, there’s a chance that it’s intended as a slang word meaning ‘unlucky’. Unlike most of the other words on this list, stiff is still in use with this sense –but you have to be in the right part of the world.

Stiff有很多含義,但是如果你在澳大利亞或新西蘭聽到這個形容詞，有可能它作爲一個俚語詞使用，其意思爲“不幸的”。不像之前的大多數單詞，stiff的這種含義仍在使用中，但你需要在合適的地域使用（stiff表示不幸的用法只在部分地區存在）。

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