喜樂美語

核心畫面

Hold this picture: you stand and look out as far as your eyes can go, and there is a line where land or sea seems to touch the sky. Nothing stops you there — it is simply where your seeing runs out.

你站在海邊或曠野往遠處看，天和地在最遠處接成一條線。那條線很特別——它不是牆，沒有東西擋著你，它只是「你的視線到此為…更多收起你站在海邊或曠野往遠處看，天和地在最遠處接成一條線。那條線很特別——它不是牆，沒有東西擋著你，它只是「你的視線到此為止」的地方；而且你往前走，它也跟著往後退。這個「看得到的最遠邊界」就是 horizon 三個用法共同的底。

From the word’s history

The Greek root hóros means "boundary," and horízōn meant "the bounding (circle)" — literally the line that marks off how far you can see. The modern core keeps that exactly: a limit made of sight, not of matter.

希臘文 ὅρος (hóros) 是「界線」，horízōn 就是「畫界線的那個（圈）」——正好指視野盡頭那一圈。現代的核心完全承接了它：這是一條用「看得到多遠」畫出來的界線，不是用磚牆砌出來的。也因為界線的意思在根裡，後來延伸到「知識的邊界」「時間的邊界」都非常自然。

Wiktionary, entry "horizon" (Ancient Greek ὁρίζων < ὅρος "boundary")

Three branches

看得見的那條線

這是核心畫面本身：眼睛真的看到的那條天地交界線。

skyline · noun · C2

The far-away line where the land or the sea looks as if it meets the sky.

地平線

心裡的邊界

把「看得多遠」從眼睛換成頭腦：一個人的知識和經驗也有盡頭，那個盡頭就是他的 horizon。

limit of one's outlook · noun · C2

The limit of your ideas, knowledge, and experience — how far they reach.

眼界

時間上的遠方

把空間的遠方換成時間的遠方：還沒到眼前，但已經在遠處露出輪廓了。

on the horizon · noun · C2

If something is on the horizon, it seems likely to happen in the future.

即將出現

原始詞典資料7 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。

horizonnoun/həˈɹaɪ.zən/

  • 1

    The visible horizontal line (in all directions) where the sky appears to meet the earth in the distance.

    • A tall building was visible on the whole sweep of the horizon.
    • The sky and sea seem to merge at the horizon.
  • 2

    The range or limit of one's knowledge, experience or interest; a boundary or threshold.

    • Some students take a gap year after finishing high school to broaden their horizons.
    • With clinical researchers hard at work, a new treatment is on the horizon.
  • 3

    The range or limit of any dimension in which one exists.

    • Only mortality, this irreducible and primordial horizon, that very horizon which, in Being and Time, Heidegger so compellingly revealed as the unsurpassable and defining possibility, remains.
  • 4

    geographygeologynatural-sciencesA specific layer of soil, or stratum

  • 5

    archaeologyhistoryhuman-sciencesA cultural sub-period or level within a more encompassing time period.

  • 6

    Any level line or surface.

  • 7

    board-gameschesscomputerThe point at which a computer chess algorithm stops searching for further moves.

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。