| 词源 |
intoxicated. There are more synonyms for intoxicated in Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus than for any other entry in the book, 46 of them in all. Intoxicate, ironically enough, comes from a Greek word meaning poison—toxikon, the poison into which war arrows were dipped. Then in the Middle Ages, the Latin toxicum became a general term for any poison. This resulted in the English toxic, “poisonous,” our intoxicate, mean- ing “to poison,” becoming limited to the temporarily “poisonous” effects of too much liquor. Which is something to remember the next time someone quips, “Name your own poison.” |