【英语学习】【WOTD】sleuth 释义/词源/示例

sleuth v. [SLOOTH]

Definition

1: to act as a detective: search for information
2：担任侦探：侦查信息

2: to search for and discover
2：侦查并发现

Did You Know?

"They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" Those canine tracks in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles set the great Sherlock Holmes sleuthing on the trail of a murderer. It was a case of art imitating etymology. When Middle English speakers first borrowed sleuth from Old Norse, the term referred to "the track of an animal or person." In Scotland, sleuthhound referred to a bloodhound used to hunt game or track down fugitive from justice. In 19th-century U.S. English, sleuthhound became an epithet for a detective and was woon shortened to sleuth. From there, it was only a short leap to turning sleuth into a verb describing what a sleuth does.

“它们是巨型猎犬的爪印！”  Arthur Conan Doyle的小说《巴斯克维尔的猎犬》中，那些猎犬留下的痕迹让大侦探福尔摩斯Sherlock Holmes开始侦查凶手的踪迹。这正是模拟词源学的恰案。当中古英语第一次从北欧语言中借用sleuth这个单词时，它的意思是“动物或人类的踪迹”。在苏格兰，sleuthhound指的是用于狩猎或缉拿逃犯的猎犬。在19世纪的美国英语中，sleuthhound变成了侦探的诨名，很快就简短为sleuth。自此，只用了一小步就把sleuth从名词变成了动词，表示侦探所作的事情。

注：hound：n. 猎狗，追踪者，迷 vt. 紧追，催促；canine：犬的；犬科的；imitate：v. 模仿，效法，冒充；bloodhound：侦查犬，侦探，间谍；fugitive：逃亡者，难捕捉之物；fugitive from justice：逃犯；hunt game：狩猎；epithet：称号，诨名

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B7%B4%E6%96%AF%E5%85%8B%E7%B6%AD%E7%88%BE%E7%9A%84%E7%8D%B5%E7%8A%AC

Examples

• “Farmer would go sleuthing in the archives of Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies to find evidence of an undiscovered landfall in Canada, and Ward could build a rig that trailed an 11-foot metal detector behind a combine, which is how they unearthed $1 million in pallasite fragments from several sequare miles of Alberta farmland.”
  --- Joshuah Bearman and Allison Keeley, Wired, january 2019
  
  Farmer（人名？）在亚利桑那州立大学的天文研究中心的档案里搜寻加拿大境内一块尚未被发现的陨石着陆证据，Ward（人名？）建造了一个装置，可以追踪着联合收割机尾部的11英尺的金属探测器。这就是他们如何在Albert农场的数平方英里的石铁陨石碎片中找到价值100万美金的陨石。
  
  注：archive：档案； landfaull：登陆，着陆，到达陆地；rig：装备，钻井架，钻塔；trail v. 追踪，尾随；combine：n. 联合收割机，集团，联合企业；pallasite：[矿]石铁陨石；橄榄陨铁；
• "For more than five decades, Morse has sleuthed out long-lost family trees for a living. From his home base here in Haywood, Morse travels the world tracking down missing heirs."
  --- Becky Johnson, The Mountaineer (Haywood County, North Carolina), 20 Nov 2018
  
  在过去的超过50年里，Morse一直在搜寻遗失了很久的族人。从这里他的老家Haywood，Morse寻遍了整个世界，四处打探那些失去联系的族人。
  
  注：decade：十年；long-lost：遗失了很久的；family tree：家族，家谱，族人；home base：老家；travel the world：走遍世界；track down：追中，找寻，打探；heir：族人，子嗣，后代，继承人