英语词汇bark up the wrong tree的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

bark up the wrong tree. Coon dogs, which could be almost any breed of dog or even mongrels in Colonial days, commonly chased raccoons through the underbrush and treed them, barking furiously at the base of the tree until their masters came to shoot the “gone coon.” But the crafty nocturnal animal, called a rahaugum by John Smith, often escaped through the branches to another tree in the dark, leaving the dogs barking up the wrong tree, which is the origin of the American phrase. Skilled hunters who could bark a squirrel, that is, strike the bark on the lower side of the branch where it sat, killing it by the concussion, have nothing at all to do with the expression. The bark of a tree comes to us from the Anglo Saxon beore, while a dog’s bark is related to the Old English barki, “wind- pipe.” It’s said that dogs in the wild state howl, whine, and growl, but that their barking is an acquired habit—anyway, de- barking operations are available to silence dogs whose barks are worse than their bites and dogs that bark at the moon. Barkable is an unusual old word. One would take the adjective to be a modern affectation, but it dates back to at least the 13th century, a treatise of the time on estate management advising lords to have “discreet shepherds . . . with good barkable dogs.”

词汇	bark up the wrong tree
词源	bark up the wrong tree. Coon dogs, which could be almost any breed of dog or even mongrels in Colonial days, commonly chased raccoons through the underbrush and treed them, barking furiously at the base of the tree until their masters came to shoot the “gone coon.” But the crafty nocturnal animal, called a rahaugum by John Smith, often escaped through the branches to another tree in the dark, leaving the dogs barking up the wrong tree, which is the origin of the American phrase. Skilled hunters who could bark a squirrel, that is, strike the bark on the lower side of the branch where it sat, killing it by the concussion, have nothing at all to do with the expression. The bark of a tree comes to us from the Anglo Saxon beore, while a dog’s bark is related to the Old English barki, “wind- pipe.” It’s said that dogs in the wild state howl, whine, and growl, but that their barking is an acquired habit—anyway, de- barking operations are available to silence dogs whose barks are worse than their bites and dogs that bark at the moon. Barkable is an unusual old word. One would take the adjective to be a modern affectation, but it dates back to at least the 13th century, a treatise of the time on estate management advising lords to have “discreet shepherds . . . with good barkable dogs.”
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