词汇 | a mailbox for the dead |
词源 | a mailbox for the dead. While recording the plight of home- less vagrants on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, American poet Langston Hughes (1902–67) took a long walk and came to a small mountain cemetery. On the cemetery gate there seemed to be a mailbox, though there was no house in sight. Upon reaching the gate he realized that what he saw was only an old board that had warped into the shape of a mailbox. The idea of a “mailbox for the dead,” however, caught his fancy, and that night he began a story that would fit the title. During his writ- ing he kept calling his father, whom he had not seen for more than 13 years. The next day Hughes received a telegram inform- ing him that his father had died the night before, at the same time the poet had been writing “A Mailbox for the Dead.” |
随便看 |
|
英语词源词典收录了13259条英语词源词条,基本涵盖了全部常用英语词汇的起源、历史,是研究英语词汇或通过词源学英语的必备工具。