- 1
A dais is a low stage in a room. You stand on it to speak or perform so people can see and hear you. It is not a full theatre stage; it is only a raised floor, often at one end of a hall, with a or a table on it. You hear the word in formal rooms: prize day, a wedding speech, a conference. Teachers may also say platform or stage in easier English. Say it with two beats, DAY-iss, though some people it to DAYSS. Though actually, the word travelled a long way: from a Greek disc or tray, to a Latin “table,” to a French raised platform, into English.
講台；高臺
組成From Middle English deis, from Anglo-Norman / Old French deis, dois (modern French dais), from Latin discum, from discus (a disc, later a table), from Greek dískos (a disc you throw, or a tray). The idea moved from a flat round thing, to a table, to a raised floor for speaking.
原始詞典資料5 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。
daisnoun/ˈdeɪ.ɪs/
- 1
A raised platform in a room for a high table, a seat of honour, a throne, or other dignified occupancy, such as ancestral statues; a similar platform supporting a lectern, pulpit, etc., which may be used to speak from.
- Many of the figures, clad in mail from head to foot, were ranged above the dais; and she could almost fancy a skeleton form beneath, or that wild and fearful eyes glared through the apertures of the closed visors.
- At last we came to the head of the cave, where there was a rock daïs almost exactly similar to the one on which we had been so furiously attacked, a fact that proved to me that these daïs must have been used as altars, probably for the celebration of religious ceremonies, and more especially of rites connected with the interment of the dead. On either side of this daïs were passages leading, Billali informed me, to other caves full of dead bodies.
- 2
historicalA bench, a settle, a pew.
- [page 211] The Mer-man he stept o'er ae deas, / And he has steppit over three: / "O maiden, pledge me faith and troth! / O Marstig's daughter, gang wi' me!" […] [pages 213–214] Notes on The Mer-man. […] I remember having seen in the hall of the ruined castle of Elan Stalker, in the district of Appin, an old oaken deas, which was so contrived as to serve for a sittee; at meal-times the back was turned over, rested upon the arms, and became a table; and at night the seat was raised up, and displayed a commodious bed for four persons, two and two, feet to feet, to sleep in. I was told, that this kind of deas was formerly common in the halls of great houses, where such œconomy, with respect to bed-room, was very necessary.
- DAIS, Dess, Deas […] A long board, seat or bench erected against a wall. […] A pew in a church
- 3
obsoleteAn elevated table in a hall at which important people were seated; a high table.
- As the principal table was always placed upon a dais, it began very soon, by a natural abuse of words, to be called itself a Dais, and people were said to sit at the dais, instead of at the table upon the dais.
- 4
The canopy over an altar, etc.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
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。