英语词汇eavesdropper的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

eavesdropper. The eaves of a house is simply the edge of the roof that overhangs the side. (Eaves is both singular and plural, there being no word eave.) In ancient times, English law for- bade the building of a house less than two feet from another person’s property, because rainwater dropping off the eaves might injure a neighbor’s land. So the space beneath the eaves of a house and about two feet out came to be called the eavesdrip or eavesdrop. Later, in the 15th century, persons standing in this space near a window trying to overhear conversations in- side a house were called eavesdroppers, and it was from their name that the verb to eavesdrop was formed. One 16th-century English writer warned of “eavesdroppers with pen and ink out- side the walls,” and the great jurist Sir William Blackstone called “eavesdroppers” a “common nuisance.”

词汇	eavesdropper
词源	eavesdropper. The eaves of a house is simply the edge of the roof that overhangs the side. (Eaves is both singular and plural, there being no word eave.) In ancient times, English law for- bade the building of a house less than two feet from another person’s property, because rainwater dropping off the eaves might injure a neighbor’s land. So the space beneath the eaves of a house and about two feet out came to be called the eavesdrip or eavesdrop. Later, in the 15th century, persons standing in this space near a window trying to overhear conversations in- side a house were called eavesdroppers, and it was from their name that the verb to eavesdrop was formed. One 16th-century English writer warned of “eavesdroppers with pen and ink out- side the walls,” and the great jurist Sir William Blackstone called “eavesdroppers” a “common nuisance.”
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