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To abase someone is to lower them in dignity, in rank, or in their own eyes. To abase yourself is to act as if the other person has complete power and you have none: you swallow your pride and accept being treated as small. The word is formal and a little old; you will find it in books, sermons, and careful essays more than in everyday chat. It is stronger than being polite to a boss. It carries humiliation: the lowering is meant to be felt. People also use it of a person made to feel worthless by cruelty or by guilt. It does not mean leave (that is abandon) and it does not mean make someone feel shy (that is abash, a neighbour that students mix up).
貶低;屈辱自己、自貶身分(書面、偏文)。
組成From Late Middle English, from Old French abaissier, to lower: a- (towards) + baissier (to lower), from a Latin word meaning low or short of stature. English kept the bring-down meaning, especially of pride and rank.
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,原文照列,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
abaseverb/əˈbeɪs/
- 1
To lower, as in condition in life, office, rank, etc., so as to cause pain or hurt feelings; to degrade, to depress, to humble, to humiliate.
- For whoſoeuer exalteth himſelfe ſhalbe abaſed: and hee that humbleth himſelfe, ſhalbe exalted.
- Our adverſaries object againe, that by praying that Chriſts merits may be made ours in particular, we greatly abaſe them. As though the Prophet David did abaſe God in making him his in particular, ſaying, the Lord is my rock, my fortreſſe, my God, and my ſtrength, my ſhield, the horne of my ſalvation, and my refuge: […]
- 2
archaicTo lower physically; to depress; to cast or throw down; to stoop.
- to abase the eye
- Her gracious words their rancour did appall, / And ſuncke ſo deepe into their boyling breſts, / That downe they lett their cruel weapons fall, / And lowly did abaſe their lofty creſts, / To her faire preſence, and diſcrete beheſts.
- 3
obsoleteTo lower in value, in particular by altering the content of alloys in coins; to debase.
- Though in the nature thereof, that with which a purer metal is mixed, be not base; yet, it abases the purer metal. […] [T]hough silver be a precious metal, yet it abases gold. Grace, and peace, and faith, are precious parts of our treasure here; yet, if we mingle them, that is, compare them with the joys, and glory of heaven; […] we abase, and over-alloy these joys, and that glory.
- [H]er majesty [Elizabeth I of England] let them all to understand, that she never intended (God's grace assisting her) to leese the fruit of so famous an act, by abasing the coin of the realm, which she found to be for the more part copper, and had now recovered it to be as fine, or rather finer, sterling silver, than ever it was in the realm by the space of two hundred years or more; a matter worth marking and memory.
資料來源:英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary(CC BY-SA 4.0)。 原文照列,未經改寫。