英语单词

dreary是什么意思

dreary

英 ['drɪərɪ] 美 ['drɪri]
  • adj. 沉闷的,枯燥的

助记提示


1、from dreor "blood"; from dreosan (past participle droren) "fall, drop, decline, fail,"; from PIE root *dhreu- "to fall, drop, flow, drip, droop".
2、The word has lost its original sense of "dripping blood.".
3、其它具有同源性的相关词:drizzle, drip, drop, droop, drowsy.
4. 枯 --》就是枯萎,因为干燥才会枯萎,燥 --》本身就是干燥的意思。所以枯燥本身就表示很干、干巴巴的意思,所以:dry + ear => drear => dreary => 听得耳朵都干巴巴的、听起来很“干”。
5. 谐音“赘而累”------累赘得让人很累。

中文词源


dreary 沉闷的

来自PIE*dhreu, 滴,掉落,词源同drip, drop. 原义为滴血的,引申义沉闷的,阴深的。

英文词源


dreary
dreary: [OE] In Old English, dreary (or drēorig, as it then was) meant ‘dripping with blood, gory’, but its etymological connections are with ‘dripping, falling’ rather than with ‘blood’. It goes back to a West Germanic base *dreuz-, *drauz- which also produced Old English drēosna ‘drop, fall’, probably the ultimate source of drizzle [16] and drowsy.

The literal sense ‘bloody’ disappeared before the end of the Old English period in the face of successive metaphorical extensions: ‘dire, horrid’; ‘sad’ (echoed in the related German traurig ‘sad’); and, in the 17th century, the main modern sense ‘gloomy, dull’. Drear is a conscious archaism, created from dreary in the 17th century.

=> drizzle, drowsy
dreary (adj.)
Old English dreorig "sad, sorrowful," originally "cruel, bloody, blood-stained," from dreor "gore, blood," from (ge)dreosan (past participle droren) "fall, decline, fail," from Proto-Germanic *dreuzas (cognates: Old Norse dreyrigr "gory, bloody," and more remotely, German traurig "sad, sorrowful"), from PIE root *dhreu- "to fall, flow, drip, droop" (see drip (v.)).

The word has lost its original sense of "dripping blood." Sense of "dismal, gloomy" first recorded 1667 in "Paradise Lost," but Old English had a related verb drysmian "become gloomy."

双语例句


1. a dreary winter's day
阴沉的冬日

来自《权威词典》

2. The otherwise dreary book is enlivened by some very amusing illustrations.
这本枯燥乏味的书幸亏加了一些精彩的插图才变得生动有趣.

来自《简明英汉词典》

3. His speech was dreary.
他的讲演枯燥乏味.

来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

4. So a dreary Monday afternoon in Walthamstow is nothing to write home about, right?
这么说,在沃尔瑟姆斯托度过的一个沉闷的周一下午没什么值得大书特书的,是吗?

来自柯林斯例句

5. She was tired of hearing the same dreary tale of drunkenness and violence.
她听够了那些关于酗酒和暴力的乏味故事.

来自《简明英汉词典》

考试词汇

单词首字母