| 词汇 | sham |
| 词源 | sham. There is a good story about sham that merits repeat- ing. One writer in 1734 claimed that “a Town Lady of Diversion [a prostitute] in Country Maid’s Cloaths . . . to further her Dis- guise, pretends to be so sham’d.” But her clients discovered after sleeping with her that she wasn’t shamed, innocent, or healthy and “it became proverbial, when a maim’d lover [one with ve- nereal disease] was laid up, or looked meagre, to say he had met with a sham.” It may be true that sham, first recorded in the 1670s, derives from the tactics of some prostitute, but there is no absolute proof of it, though the word almost certainly has some connection with the word “shame.” |
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