| 词源 |
boll weevil. Weevil comes from the Old English wifel, “bee- tle,” and boll, first spelled bowl, refers to the pod of the cotton plant, which the beetle attacks. In Enterprise, Alabama there is a monument to a boll weevil—erected at the turn of the century after the beetle so devastated the cotton crop in the area that farmers were forced to plant peanuts, and as a result became more prosperous than they ever had been as cotton growers. See also gull. |