| 词源 |
crowherd; crow-keeper; scarecrow. We’ve heard of sheep- herds (shepherds) and cow-herds, but crow-herds? Crowherds, it seems, were boys or old men equipped with makeshift bows and employed to keep crows off planted fields. They were ap- parently first called crow-keepers, this term mentioned in Shakespeare’s King Lear: “That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper . . .” A crow-keeper could also be called a scare- crow, a word first recorded as applying to humans hired to scare off crows (1553) and applied to “a straw dummy dressed like a man” about a half century later. |