英语词汇in a nutshell的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

in a nutshell; the Iliad in a nutshell; Iliad. One writer re- cently called the first expression a cliché that is rarely heard an- ymore, but the cliché must be a useful one, for in just two weeks since I read his pronouncement I’ve heard the expres- sion five times, once in the title of Stephen Hawking’s book The Universe in a Nutshell (2002). In a nutshell has a long, distin- guished history dating back to Cicero, who claimed in the first century b.c. that someone actually copied all 24 books of Hom- er’s epic poem The Iliad in a handwriting minuscule enough to fit in a walnut shell (a feat that has since been repeated several times). The phrase the Iliad in a nutshell later came to be in a nutshell, meaning “very small,” of great brevity, a condensation beyond the wildest dreams of the Reader’s Digest. Wrote Shake- speare in Hamlet (1601): “Oh God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have had bad dreams.” The Iliad takes its name from Ilion, another name for the city of Troy, Ilion honoring its legendary founder, Ilus.

词汇	in a nutshell
词源	in a nutshell; the Iliad in a nutshell; Iliad. One writer re- cently called the first expression a cliché that is rarely heard an- ymore, but the cliché must be a useful one, for in just two weeks since I read his pronouncement I’ve heard the expres- sion five times, once in the title of Stephen Hawking’s book The Universe in a Nutshell (2002). In a nutshell has a long, distin- guished history dating back to Cicero, who claimed in the first century b.c. that someone actually copied all 24 books of Hom- er’s epic poem The Iliad in a handwriting minuscule enough to fit in a walnut shell (a feat that has since been repeated several times). The phrase the Iliad in a nutshell later came to be in a nutshell, meaning “very small,” of great brevity, a condensation beyond the wildest dreams of the Reader’s Digest. Wrote Shake- speare in Hamlet (1601): “Oh God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have had bad dreams.” The Iliad takes its name from Ilion, another name for the city of Troy, Ilion honoring its legendary founder, Ilus.
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