英语词汇grueling的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

grueling. No matter how you cook it, grueling, meaning ex- hausting or punishing, has something to do with gruel, a light, cooked, thin cereal usually made of oatmeal. There’s no doubt that the word derives from the expression to get, or take, one’s gruel, first recorded in the late 18th century. Why eating oat- meal came to be associated with a punishment is open to question. The traditional story is that to get one’s gruel is an al- lusion to Medici poisonings. The Medici family, which direct- ed the destiny of Florence from the 15th century to 1737 and produced two queens of France, did much good and evil, ranging from patronage of the arts to political tortures and poisonings. In fact, they were so prone to dispose of each oth- er by assassination that their genealogy is highly complicated. Catherine de Médicis (1519–89), queen of France, was partic- ularly infamous for political assassinations, especially for her part in the attempted assassination of Admiral Coligny and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) in which 30,000 Protestants were killed. She was also rumored to give poi- soned drink to her enemies under the guise of friendship, usually serving it in a thin drink of gruel. It wouldn’t be un- reasonable to assume that Catherine’s alleged poisonings in- spired the expression to get one’s gruel, except that the words aren’t recorded until some 200 years after her death. The Medici family is a more likely candidate, but most word sleuths now believe the poisonings have nothing to do with the phrase. Partridge suggests that it comes from an earlier nautical expression, to serve out the grog, “to mete out punish- ment,” making it comparable to humorous expressions such as settle one’s hash and cook one’s goose.

词汇	grueling
词源	grueling. No matter how you cook it, grueling, meaning ex- hausting or punishing, has something to do with gruel, a light, cooked, thin cereal usually made of oatmeal. There’s no doubt that the word derives from the expression to get, or take, one’s gruel, first recorded in the late 18th century. Why eating oat- meal came to be associated with a punishment is open to question. The traditional story is that to get one’s gruel is an al- lusion to Medici poisonings. The Medici family, which direct- ed the destiny of Florence from the 15th century to 1737 and produced two queens of France, did much good and evil, ranging from patronage of the arts to political tortures and poisonings. In fact, they were so prone to dispose of each oth- er by assassination that their genealogy is highly complicated. Catherine de Médicis (1519–89), queen of France, was partic- ularly infamous for political assassinations, especially for her part in the attempted assassination of Admiral Coligny and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) in which 30,000 Protestants were killed. She was also rumored to give poi- soned drink to her enemies under the guise of friendship, usually serving it in a thin drink of gruel. It wouldn’t be un- reasonable to assume that Catherine’s alleged poisonings in- spired the expression to get one’s gruel, except that the words aren’t recorded until some 200 years after her death. The Medici family is a more likely candidate, but most word sleuths now believe the poisonings have nothing to do with the phrase. Partridge suggests that it comes from an earlier nautical expression, to serve out the grog, “to mete out punish- ment,” making it comparable to humorous expressions such as settle one’s hash and cook one’s goose.
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