英语词汇bookworm的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

bookworm. Bookworms are literally the larvae or adults of various insects, moths, and beetles that live in and feed upon the pages and bindings of books. No single species can properly be called the bookworm, but the little beetle anolium, silver- fishes (order Thysanura) and book lice (order Psocoptera) are widely known by the name. The human of the bookworm spe- cies also lives in and feeds upon the pages of books, but doesn’t usually destroy them. Human bookworms have been scorned since before Ben Jonson wrote of a “whoreson book-worm.” Authors especially are fools to be contemptuous of bookworms, but from Elizabethan times to the present few scriveners have had anything good to say about them. As for insect bookworms, a 19th-century journal called The Bookworm had this to say about them: “Bookworms are now almost exclusively known in the secondary and derivative meaning of the word as porers over dry books; but there was a time when the real worms were as ubiquitous as our cockroaches. They would start at the first or last page and tunnel circular holes through the volume, and were cursed by librarians as bestia audax and pestes chartarium. There were several kings of these little plagues. One was a sort of death-watch, with dark-brown hard skin; another had a white body with little brown spots on its head. Those that had legs were the larvae of moths, and those without legs were grubs that turned into beetles. They were dignified, like other disagreeable things, with fine Latin names, which we spare our readers. All of them had strong jaws and very healthy appetites; but we are happy to find that their digestive powers, vigorous as they were, quail before the materials of our modern books. China clay, plaster of Paris, and other unwholesome ailments have conquered the pestes chartarium. They sigh and shrivel up. Peace to the memory, for it is now hardly more than a memory, of the bestia audax.”

词汇	bookworm
词源	bookworm. Bookworms are literally the larvae or adults of various insects, moths, and beetles that live in and feed upon the pages and bindings of books. No single species can properly be called the bookworm, but the little beetle anolium, silver- fishes (order Thysanura) and book lice (order Psocoptera) are widely known by the name. The human of the bookworm spe- cies also lives in and feeds upon the pages of books, but doesn’t usually destroy them. Human bookworms have been scorned since before Ben Jonson wrote of a “whoreson book-worm.” Authors especially are fools to be contemptuous of bookworms, but from Elizabethan times to the present few scriveners have had anything good to say about them. As for insect bookworms, a 19th-century journal called The Bookworm had this to say about them: “Bookworms are now almost exclusively known in the secondary and derivative meaning of the word as porers over dry books; but there was a time when the real worms were as ubiquitous as our cockroaches. They would start at the first or last page and tunnel circular holes through the volume, and were cursed by librarians as bestia audax and pestes chartarium. There were several kings of these little plagues. One was a sort of death-watch, with dark-brown hard skin; another had a white body with little brown spots on its head. Those that had legs were the larvae of moths, and those without legs were grubs that turned into beetles. They were dignified, like other disagreeable things, with fine Latin names, which we spare our readers. All of them had strong jaws and very healthy appetites; but we are happy to find that their digestive powers, vigorous as they were, quail before the materials of our modern books. China clay, plaster of Paris, and other unwholesome ailments have conquered the pestes chartarium. They sigh and shrivel up. Peace to the memory, for it is now hardly more than a memory, of the bestia audax.”
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