英语词汇mob的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

mob. Englishmen often criticize Americans for their laziness in shortening words like fanatic to fan, but they were doing the same thing long before. Early in the 17th century some British Latin scholars introduced the phrase mobile vulgus, “movable (or fickle) crowd,” for an excited or fickle crowd. People short- ened this to one word, mobile, which they pronounced “mo- billy,” and then further abbreviated it to mob. Language purists were quite indignant. “This Humour of speaking not more than we need . . . has so miserably curtailed some of our words,” Addison complained, citing mob as a new vulgarism. “I have done my utmost for some years past to stop the progress of ‘mob’ . . . ,” Steele wrote in the Tatler, “but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.” Mob, of course, survived all its critics. Said Swift of the word in Polite Conversation, “Abbrevi- ations exquisitely refined: as Pozz for ‘positively,’ Mobb for ‘Mobile.’ ”

词汇	mob
词源	mob. Englishmen often criticize Americans for their laziness in shortening words like fanatic to fan, but they were doing the same thing long before. Early in the 17th century some British Latin scholars introduced the phrase mobile vulgus, “movable (or fickle) crowd,” for an excited or fickle crowd. People short- ened this to one word, mobile, which they pronounced “mo- billy,” and then further abbreviated it to mob. Language purists were quite indignant. “This Humour of speaking not more than we need . . . has so miserably curtailed some of our words,” Addison complained, citing mob as a new vulgarism. “I have done my utmost for some years past to stop the progress of ‘mob’ . . . ,” Steele wrote in the Tatler, “but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.” Mob, of course, survived all its critics. Said Swift of the word in Polite Conversation, “Abbrevi- ations exquisitely refined: as Pozz for ‘positively,’ Mobb for ‘Mobile.’ ”
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