- 1魄力；幹勁；進取心（偏口語、帶點老派，不是課本詞。）
Gumption is the mix of sense and backbone that makes you see what needs doing and then do it, without waiting to be pushed. It is informal, a little old-fashioned or folksy — more at home in American talk and older British talk than in young city slang. “She had the gumption to ask for more pay.” It sits near guts, drive, and common sense, though actually it is milder than guts: less about danger, more about initiative and not being helpless. You can tell someone they have no gumption if they freeze, complain, and never start. It is praise when they do start. Not a school-textbook word; you meet it in stories and in spoken English.
組成Borrowed from Scots gumption, “common sense, shrewdness, drive.” Where Scots got it is unknown. It may connect with older words meaning “to pay attention.”
同家族的字
- gauman old English verb, “to understand / take heed,” probably from the same root
- goamanother old form, “to recognize, see,” from that same attention-root
原始詞典資料3 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。
gumptionnoun/ˈɡʌmpʃən/
- 1
Common sense, initiative, resourcefulness.
- Gumption, or rum gumption, docility, comprehenſion, capacity.
- When I see a man who has a good business, sufficient to support his family respectably, neglecting his affairs, and running into debt, in order to obtain a political office, I fancy that, whatever may be his talents, he is not burdened with gumption. […] When I see a man attending diligently to his own concerns, sending his children to school, paying his debts, and keeping clear of law suits, quarrels, and politics, I set him down as a man possessing a reasonable share of gumption.
- 2
Boldness of enterprise; aggressiveness or initiative.
- "You've got a hard way of looking at things, Scarlett," he said. "But you think Hugh over. You could go far and do worse. I think his honesty and his willingness will outweigh his lack of gumption. Scarlett did not answer, for she did not want to be too rude. But to her mind there were few, if any, qualities that outweighed gumption.
- 3
Energy of body and mind, enthusiasm.
- A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption.
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。