| 词汇 | oesophagus |
| 词源 | oesophagus. When Mark Twain wrote his satire on Sherlock Holmes’s stories called “A Double-Barrelled Detective Story,” he began the tale as follows: It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind Nature for the wingless wild things that have their homes in the tree-tops and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of the woodland; the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere; far in the empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and the peace of God. The “solitary oesophagus” in the passage was solitary all right, for it never existed outside of Twain’s teeming imagination. He had of course invented the bird—which know-it-alls were quick to describe to friends—and later remarked that few read- ers ever questioned him about it. |
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