- 1基礎工作、前置作業
Groundwork is the work that has to happen first, so that a plan has something solid to stand on. Before you build a house, you prepare the ground; before a big change at school or at work, someone has to do the quiet early jobs — talking to people, gathering facts, making a base. We mostly use it as a picture now, not about real soil. You lay the groundwork, or do the groundwork, for something. It is a slightly careful, grown-up word, common in news and in offices. Though actually, if you take it word by word, students sometimes think it means digging or farming. In almost every sentence you will meet, nobody is holding a shovel.
From the word’s history
Compound of ground + work.
ground（地基）加 work（工程）：打底的基礎工作。
組成ground + work. First, the work of making a firm base for a building; now mostly the early work that a later plan needs.
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，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。
groundworknoun/ˈɡɹaʊndˌwɜːɹk/
- 1
The foundation; the basic or fundamental parts that support or allow for the rest.
- The discovery of the laws of electricity laid the groundwork for a century of innovation.
- This outline programme was compiled by a working party consisting of members from the Regional Planning Office, the civil, mechanical and electrical, and signal engineering departments and the traffic services, on the basis of much groundwork done within each of these departments.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。