英语词汇born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. These words became famous not because they are from Shakespeare, Milton, or any of the great classical writers of antiquity, but because they were inscribed as a hoax over a door in the Hall of Graduate Studies at Yale University. The line is from novelist Rafael Sabatini’s rousing Scaramouche, beloved to generations of romantics, and the full quote, refer- ring to the hero, is “Born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad, and that was his only patrimony.” The words apparently were written on Yale’s hallowed walls as the result of a hoax. At least the building’s architect, John Donald Tuttle, confessed in a letter to The New Yorker (December 8, 1934) that collegiate Gothic repelled him. It is, he wrote, “a type of architecture that had been designed expressly . . . to enable yeomen to pour molten lead through slots on their enemies be- low. As a propitiatory gift to my gods . . . and to make them for- get by appealing to their senses of humor, I carved the inscrip- tion over the door.” Yale authorities apparently didn’t enjoy the joke. After employing medievalists, classical scholars, and Egyptologists to find the source of the quotation, only to learn it was from a mere adventure novelist, they planted the ivy that hides the words today.

词汇	born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad
词源	born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. These words became famous not because they are from Shakespeare, Milton, or any of the great classical writers of antiquity, but because they were inscribed as a hoax over a door in the Hall of Graduate Studies at Yale University. The line is from novelist Rafael Sabatini’s rousing Scaramouche, beloved to generations of romantics, and the full quote, refer- ring to the hero, is “Born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad, and that was his only patrimony.” The words apparently were written on Yale’s hallowed walls as the result of a hoax. At least the building’s architect, John Donald Tuttle, confessed in a letter to The New Yorker (December 8, 1934) that collegiate Gothic repelled him. It is, he wrote, “a type of architecture that had been designed expressly . . . to enable yeomen to pour molten lead through slots on their enemies be- low. As a propitiatory gift to my gods . . . and to make them for- get by appealing to their senses of humor, I carved the inscrip- tion over the door.” Yale authorities apparently didn’t enjoy the joke. After employing medievalists, classical scholars, and Egyptologists to find the source of the quotation, only to learn it was from a mere adventure novelist, they planted the ivy that hides the words today.
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