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A blackleg is a worker who still goes in to work while the other workers are on strike. People on the strike side use this word to show they are angry; it is not a calm or polite label. It is mainly British. In American English the same cutting word is often scab. You put it on a person, and it is meant to sting. Though actually, English also uses blackleg for a disease of farm animals, so in a farming book it may not mean a person at all. The school meaning is the strike one. It is black + leg, but we cannot honestly say why those two pieces came to mean “someone who breaks a strike” — better to leave that story empty than invent one.
工賊（罷工時仍去上班的人，帶罵意；美式較常說 scab）
組成black + leg. The pieces are clear; the reason they mean a strike-breaker is not.
原始詞典資料6 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。
blacklegnoun
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agriculturebiologybusinessA fatal cattle disease caused by the soil-borne bacterium Clostridium chauvoei; symptomatic anthrax.
- “Soon afther, some mischances begun to happen to the farmer's cattle; a horse tuk the staggers, a fine vale calf died o' the black-lig, an' some uv his sheep o' the rid wather[.]”
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A disease of potato crops caused by pectolytic bacteria, characterized by blackening and decay of the lower stem portion.
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A disease of brassicas caused by the fungus Leptosphaeria maculans
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A person who cheats in a game; a cheater, especially a dishonest bookmaker.
- [H]ere, then, was a community of good taste and kind feeling, no sharpers, no black-legs, no wolves in sheep's clothing.
- [Y]our friend Bloundell-Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and travels the Continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of fashion and fleeces them.
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A person who takes the place of striking workers.
- In the autumn there was a row at some cement works about the unskilled labour men. A union had just been started for them and all but a few joined. One of these blacklegs was laid for by a picket and knocked out of time.
- It's in the evening after dark when the blackleg miner creeps to work. With his moleskin pants and his dirty shirt, there goes the blackleg miner.
blacklegverb
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To continue working whilst fellow workers strike.
- Why was I there, munitioning, blacklegging, slaving as though my bread depended on it?
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。