| 词源 |
bumble. The pompous beadle Mr. Bumble in Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1837–38) is a self-important, petty, domineering parish official. His name has come to be used for all such officious bu- reaucrats, collectively called bumbledom. In the book Bumble winds up in the workhouse he once commanded. Partridge notes that “Dickens chose this echoic name—he was a master of echoism—because Mr. Bumble and his like waffle and vainly boom their way through life.” |