| 词汇 | belfry |
| 词源 | belfry. This word for a church steeple isn’t directly named for the bells hung inside it; in fact, it owes its life to the worship of war, not God. In their desire to conquer their neighbors, Ger- man strategists of the Middle Ages built moveable wooden towers ironically called bergfieds (“peace” shelters) that they used in their advances on walled cities. Soldiers concealed in- side these primitive, “vertical” tanks could protect themselves from enemy archers, and the devices proved so effective that many other European armies adopted them. By the time the En- glish imported the siege tower in about 1500 it was called the berfrey and the English built it even taller, so that their own archers could climb to the top and fire arrows into a walled city or castle. But with the invention of new weapons using gun- powder, the wooden berfreys became outmoded in offensive military operations and were hauled within the walls of cities to serve as watchtowers. Here they were equipped with bells so that watchmen inside could sound the alarm of an enemy at- tack. Over the years people constantly associated the word ber- frey with the word bell and because of this “klang association”— the hearing of one word in the sound of another—they began to pronounce it belfrey, substituting an l from bell for the r, this dissimilation being belfry’s only etymological connection with the word bell. Later, churches were built with bell towers and the name belfry was used for them, too. |
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