Gethsemane is a garden on the Mount of Olives, just outside old Jerusalem. In the Christian story, Jesus went there with his followers on the night before he died. He prayed in great distress, and then Judas — one of his own group — brought the people who took him prisoner for the Romans. That betrayal is what the name carries in English. The place-name is older than that story: it comes from Aramaic words meaning “oil press,” a place where olives were crushed for oil, and it came into English through Greek. People still visit a garden called Gethsemane today. Writers sometimes stretch the name: a “Gethsemane” can mean a private hour of fear or sorrow before something hard, even when no garden is involved. That use is literary, not everyday. For most learners, it is a Bible place-name.

客西馬尼園