| 词源 |
bird; birdie. Bird is one of the most common examples in En- glish of metathesis, the transposition of letters, sounds, or syl- lables that sometimes occurs as a word develops. Bird arose from the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) brid meaning the same. For well over half a century, beginning in about 1849, bird was American slang for a person or thing of excellence (“He’s a per- fect bird of a man”), the expression coming into use at about the same time as the still heard use of bird for “fellow” or “guy” (“He’s a strange old bird”). In the early 1920s, possibly at the Atlantic City Country Club in New Jersey, the popular expres- sion attached itself to golf in the form of birdie, which means “one stroke under par for a hole,” an excellent performance. Since about 1880 bird has been British slang for a girl. |