英语词汇skunk的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

skunk. The little striped mammal can squirt his foul yellow spray up to 12 feet, so American Indians called him segankw, or segonku, the Algonquian dialect word meaning simply “he who squirts.” Pioneers corrupted the hard-to-pronounce Algonqui- an word to skunk, and it has remained so since. We know the skunk’s foul spray as m-butyl mercaptain, or CH3C2CH2CH2SH, but it smells as bad under any name. The skunk was called en- fant du diable, “child of the devil,” by French Canadian trap- pers, but is also called the wood polecat and the wood pussy. The most common species is the striped skunk, Mephitis me- phitis, which might be loosely translated as “double stinky,” though mephitis means a noxious exhalation from the ground.

词汇	skunk
词源	skunk. The little striped mammal can squirt his foul yellow spray up to 12 feet, so American Indians called him segankw, or segonku, the Algonquian dialect word meaning simply “he who squirts.” Pioneers corrupted the hard-to-pronounce Algonqui- an word to skunk, and it has remained so since. We know the skunk’s foul spray as m-butyl mercaptain, or CH3C2CH2CH2SH, but it smells as bad under any name. The skunk was called en- fant du diable, “child of the devil,” by French Canadian trap- pers, but is also called the wood polecat and the wood pussy. The most common species is the striped skunk, Mephitis me- phitis, which might be loosely translated as “double stinky,” though mephitis means a noxious exhalation from the ground.
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