| 词源 |
hoi polloi. Hoi polloi means the masses, the crowd, deriving from the Greek hoi pol’oi “the many.” It shouldn’t be written as the hoi polloi, which is equivalent to saying “the the many,” though great writers like Dryden have made this usage accept- able. Hoi polloi is often erroneously associated with snobs because of its resemblance to hoity-toity, “haughty or snob- bish,” another English word that dates back more than three centuries. |