| 词源 |
jalopy. Here’s one whose origins etymologists don’t even ven- ture a guess upon. It means, of course, a beaten-up old car or (rarely) airplane (usually called a crate). Should you want to in- vestigate, the word seems to have surfaced first in Chicago in about 1924 and was sometimes spelled jaloppi. Possibly it de- rived from the slang of a foreign language. Rattletrap and heap are synonyms of about the same age. |