英语词汇dirt-eater的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

dirt-eater. One who eats dirt or clay for its nutritional con- tent, especially a southern poor white or black person. Dirt- eating, or clay-eating, is still practiced, especially in South Carolina and Georgia low country among poor farmers and sharecroppers. It has a long history. The German explorer Al- exander von Humbolt described geophagists or dirt-eaters called the Ottomaques of the Orinoco, who fed “on a fat, unc- tuous earth . . . tinged with a little oxide of iron.” Similar prac- tices have flourished in many lands: the Aleppo fed a kind of fuller’s earth called Byloon to pregnant women and sickly girls; the Javanese ate little balls of reddish clay called Ampo if they wished “to become thin and graceful”; the Swedes enjoyed a hearty “mountain meal” called bergmehl, sometimes mixed with flour; and workmen in the European Kiffhausen stone quarries spread a very fine clay called “steinbutter” on their bread. Geophagists usually suffer from mineral deficiencies which the soil helps remedy.

词汇	dirt-eater
词源	dirt-eater. One who eats dirt or clay for its nutritional con- tent, especially a southern poor white or black person. Dirt- eating, or clay-eating, is still practiced, especially in South Carolina and Georgia low country among poor farmers and sharecroppers. It has a long history. The German explorer Al- exander von Humbolt described geophagists or dirt-eaters called the Ottomaques of the Orinoco, who fed “on a fat, unc- tuous earth . . . tinged with a little oxide of iron.” Similar prac- tices have flourished in many lands: the Aleppo fed a kind of fuller’s earth called Byloon to pregnant women and sickly girls; the Javanese ate little balls of reddish clay called Ampo if they wished “to become thin and graceful”; the Swedes enjoyed a hearty “mountain meal” called bergmehl, sometimes mixed with flour; and workmen in the European Kiffhausen stone quarries spread a very fine clay called “steinbutter” on their bread. Geophagists usually suffer from mineral deficiencies which the soil helps remedy.
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