核心畫面

Take `broadcast` apart and you get its two halves: `broad` + `cast` — to throw something wide. Picture a farmer walking a field, swinging one arm, and the seed leaving his hand does not land in a single spot; it falls all over the ground at once. Radio and television make the same gesture with sound and pictures, and so does the person who repeats your news until the whole office has it.

broadcast 可以想成它的兩個半邊:broad(寬)加 cast(拋),也就是「撒出去」。畫面像一個農夫走過田更多收起broadcast 可以想成它的兩個半邊:broad(寬)加 cast(拋),也就是「撒出去」。畫面像一個農夫走過田裡,手臂一揮,種子不是落在某一個點上,而是同時鋪滿整片地。廣播和電視做的其實是同一個動作,只是撒出去的東西換成聲音和畫面;而一個人把你的消息講到整間辦公室都知道,用的也是同一個手勢。

From the word’s history

From broad (Old English brad, "wide") plus cast (from Old Norse kasta, "to throw"). The earliest recorded sense, 1767, is agricultural: seed "dispersed upon the ground by hand". Radio only borrowed the word in 1921-22 — and what it borrowed was exactly that picture of one action spreading something over a wide area.

broadcast 由 broad(古英語 brad「寬」)加上 cast(來自古諾斯語 kasta「拋、擲」)組成。最早記錄的意思是農業用語(1767 年):「用手把種子撒滿地面」。無線電要到 1921–22 年才借走這個字,而借走的正是「一個動作就把東西鋪滿一大片」這個畫面。

Online Etymology Dictionary, entry "broadcast" (etymonline.com/word/broadcast)

Two branches

從電台、電視台撒出去

撒種子的手勢直接搬到無線電上:一個訊號送出去,落點是所有打開收音機或電視的人。這一組裡有「撒」這個動作,也有被撒出去的那個東西。

air on radio/TV · verb · B2

To send out a programme on radio or television so that many people can watch or hear it.

播出 / 播送

把話撒得到處都是

同樣是撒,只是這次撒的是話,而且沒有電台,只有一張嘴。因為撒出去就收不回來,這個用法常常帶著「本來不該這樣散開」的味道。

spread news · verb · B2

To tell something to a lot of people, especially something that was meant to be private.

張揚 / 到處說

原始詞典資料13 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。

broadcastadj/ˈbɹɔːd(ˌ)kɑːst/

  • 1

    Cast or scattered widely in all directions; cast abroad.

    • The seed was broadcast, not drilled.
    • And ſuch a double Sowing is of the greateſt Importance; for on the thick Growth of a Crop very much depends on the Bigneſs of it at Harveſt, becauſe, by ſuch a thick Growth, the Weeds are overcome and kept down from hurting the Oats; and, likewiſe, the Heats and Droughts kept the better out from parching up the Roots of the Oats, which, in too thin a Crop, often prove fatal to it; for, when Oats are ſown in the random or broadcaſt Way, there is no more Mold allowed their Roots than what the Harrows and Roll give them; which, at beſt, is but a ſuperficial and moſt thin Covering, and, therefore, the more liable to ſuffer by Droughts, which is different from the Way of ſowing Oats in Drills.
  • 2

    Communicated, signalled, or transmitted to many people, through radio waves or electronic means.

    • For radio-transmission it has been found that certain passages of a rhythmical nature come out more clearly if wooden-headed sticks are used. The Timpani sometimes tend to sound blurred and even to have a blurring effect on the rest of the orchestral ensemble in broadcast music, when ordinary soft sticks are used in a strongly marked rhythm.
  • 3

    Relating to transmissions of messages or signals to many people through radio waves or electronic means.

    • The new limitations would still prohibit foreigners from wholly or directly owning broadcast licensees, allowing only indirect ownership through a stake in a controlling parent of a broadcast licensee.

broadcastadv/ˈbɹɔːd(ˌ)kɑːst/

  • 1

    Widely in all directions; abroad.

    • [O]n reporting to Captain Thrasher he informed me that his orders were to take a detachment of forty men across the French Broad River and turn them loose to wander broadcast over the country as a protection to foraging parties of quartermasters and commissaries, […]
    • The commercial traveller, a personage unknown to antiquity, is one of the striking figures created by the manners and customs of our present epoch. […] Our century will bind the realm of isolated power, abounding as it does in creative genius, to the realm of universal but levelling might; equalizing all products, spreading them broadcast among the masses, and being itself controlled by the principle of unity,—the final expression of all societies.
  • 2

    archaicagriculturebusinesshorticultureBy having its seeds sown over a wide area.

    • When [rape is] grown broadcast the superphosphate may be incorporated with the surface soil by the harrow when preparing the ground for the seed or in covering the same.

broadcastnoun/ˈbɹɔːd(ˌ)kɑːst/

  • 1

    A transmission of a radio or television programme intended to be received by anyone with a receiver.

    • No one knows how long it will be until a broadcast from a studio in New York will be viewed in India as well as in Indiana, will be seen in the Congo as it is seen in Chicago. But as surely as we are meeting here today, that day will come; and once again our world will shrink.
    • After nearly 40 years of continuous broadcast in Hong Kong, a 24-hour transmission of the BBC World Service will go silent in the former British colony, replaced with programming from China's state radio channel. The move by Radio Television Hong Kong, owned by the local government, was meant to "enhance the cultural exchange between the mainland and Hong Kong", a spokesman said.
  • 2

    A programme (bulletin, documentary, show, etc.) so transmitted.

    • The DJ was feeling nervous before his first national broadcast.
    • We interrupt this broadcast at the request of the police department to bring you the following special bulletin: The dead body of Miss Paula Canfield, missing student at Westlake University and daughter of the multi-millionaire Harold Canfield, has been found in the Arroyo Seco near the Colorado Street Bridge.
  • 3

    archaicagriculturebusinesshorticultureThe act of scattering seed; a crop grown from such seed.

    • Since my laſt, I went to ſee a piece of Daniel Fitch's, of Pluckley, Kent. He has two acres of broadcaſt, the oldeſt I have ever ſeen, ſown twenty years ago with barley, like clover.
    • It was stated by Mr. Miller, that the common method was, formerly, to sow the barley-seed with a broadcast at two sowings; the first being harrowed in once, but the second not until the seed is buried; […]

broadcastverb/ˈbɹɔːd(ˌ)kɑːst/

  • 1

    To transmit a message or signal through radio waves or electronic means.

    • When the boys reached the business section of Bayport they found that Jackley's confession had already become known. The local radio station had broadcast it in the afternoon news program and people everywhere were discussing it.
    • Practicing vocational service to the limit of one's vision makes a difference whether an employer regards his employees as "robots or human beings"; it makes a difference in the kind of advertisements he publishes or broadcasts; it makes a difference how he reacts under pressure from a competitor; it makes a difference in the quality of his service.
  • 2

    To transmit a message over a wide area.

    • The break with imperialism and the liberation of Russia from the predatory war, the publication of the secret treaties and the solemn abrogation of the policy of seizing foreign soil, the proclamation of national freedom and the recognition of the independence of Finland, the declaration of Russia as a "Federation of Soviet National Republics" and the militant battle-cry of a resolute struggle against imperialism broadcast all over the world by the Soviet government in millions of pamphlets, newspapers, and leaflets in the mother tongues of the peoples of the East and West—all this could not fail to have its effect on the enslaved East and the bleeding West.
    • However, truth and lies can usually be confirmed or denied by speaking with eyewitnesses of events in order to verify what took place. The amount of time separating the event in question from when it was broadcasted also makes a difference.
  • 3

    To transmit a message over a wide area.

    • Urban legend has it that someone is monitoring all those e-mails broadcast from your work address. Hard to imagine a more boring job but the truth is, and I shouldn't have to tell people this, the record of those e-mails is in a server somewhere and it can be monitored.
  • 4

    To appear as a performer, presenter, or speaker in a broadcast programme.

    • She [Françoise Dolto] is most well known in France for her broadcasts on France-Inter, Lorsque l'enfant parait; she broadcasted for twelve minutes every day of the week for two years, answering parents' questions.
  • 5

    archaicagriculturebusinesshorticultureTo sow seeds over a wide area.

    • I ſhall content myſelf, […] to ſay that the ſeed ſhoud be ſown in the garden, or very good ground, in rows, or broadcaſt, and as ſoon as the plants are of the ſize of a gooſe-quill, to be tranſplanted in rows of eighteen inches diſtance, and eighteen inches apart, one plant from the other: […]
    • I wanted to grow my own cut flowers for the big day so three months earlier I broadcasted an annual seed mix across a few recently cleared borders.

資料來源:英文維基詞典 English WiktionaryCC BY-SA 4.0)。 原文照列,未經改寫。