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A main branch of a tree — not a little twig, but one of the thick arms that grow out from the trunk. Smaller branches grow from the bough. The word feels a little old and now. In everyday talk most people just say branch. You still meet bough in poems, songs, and set lines such as ‘when the bough breaks’: the picture is a heavy limb giving way. It is not a science word; people who study trees usually say branch or limb. Bough is the picture-word: something thick enough that a nest, or even a person, could sit on it.
主枝、大樹枝
組成This one does not split into smaller English pieces. It is an old Germanic word: Old English bōg / bōh meant a tree branch and also an arm or shoulder, from Proto-Germanic *bōguz (‘shoulder, upper arm’), from a still older root *bʰeh₂ǵʰús meaning ‘arm’. So the tree’s ‘arm’ and a person’s arm were once the same picture.
同家族的字
- bowthe front of a ship was thought of as its shoulder; that bow and this bough come from the same old word for ‘arm’ or ‘shoulder’ (not the bow you tie in a ribbon)
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。
Boughname
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A surname.
boughnoun/ˈbaʊ̯/
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A tree-branch, usually a primary one directly attached to the trunk.
- When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. (Rock-a-bye Baby)
- Where the Bee ſucks, there ſuck I, / In a Cowſlips bell, I lie, / There I cowch when Owles doe crie, / On the Batts backe I doe flie / after Sommer merrily. / Merrily, merrily, ſhall I liue now / Vnder the bloſſom that hangs on the Bow.
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obsoleteA gallows.
- It was vſed of auncient time in Gauelkind land, & hath receiued the allowance and iudgement of a good and lawfull cuſtome, that if the huſband be attainted and executed for a felonie by him committed, yet ſhall his wife for the ſolace of her loſſe and deſolation haue her dowrie of his land, and alſo the heire ſhall inherite the ſame according to that olde ſaying: The father to the bough, & the ſonne to the plough, […]
- "No need," he said, "long words to make, / And little heed we thy lies now, / But if she doom thee to the bough.["]
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。