- 1冰山。「the tip of the iceberg」台灣說「冰山一角」。iceberg lettuce 在台灣叫美生菜。
An iceberg is a huge piece of ice floating in the sea. It broke off from a glacier — a slow river of ice on land — and now drifts in cold water. Most of an iceberg sits under the water; only a smaller part sticks up where you can see it. Ships have to watch for icebergs because the hidden part can tear a hole in the side of a ship. The Titanic is the famous story. People stretch the word. When someone says “that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” they mean you are only seeing a small part of a much bigger problem. That saying is very common, even among people who never see real icebergs. There is also iceberg lettuce: a round, pale, lettuce named after this ice, because it looks pale and tightly packed. In food talk, “iceberg” often means that lettuce. The ice sense is the older one; the saying is the one you will hear most.
From the word’s history
Partial calque of Dutch ijsberg, from ijs 'ice' + berg 'mountain'; attested 1774.
部分仿造荷蘭文 ijsberg，ijs 是「冰」，berg 是「山」。
組成Partial calque of Dutch ijsberg: ijs (ice) + berg (mountain). English ice + berg, so “ice mountain.” First used for a glacier seen from a ship, then for the floating pieces that break off. The “tip of the iceberg” sense comes from how little of the ice you can see.
原始詞典資料6 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。
icebergnoun/ˈaɪsbɜːɡ/
- 1
obsoleteThe seaward end of a glacier.
- 2
A huge mass of ocean-floating ice which has broken off a glacier or ice shelf
- The Titanic hit an iceberg and sank.
- Clissold the excellent cook, who should have gone with the motor party, tumbled off a small iceberg and concussed himself while posing or 'ponting' as it had come to be known- Griffith Taylor, with his usual wit, had defined 'to pont' as 'to spend a deuce of a time posing in an uncomfortable position'.
- 3
slangAn aloof person.
- 4
An impending disastrous event whose adverse effects are only beginning to show.
- He has little to lose: at present he will go down in history, alongside George W. Bush, as a skipper who ignored the looming fiscal iceberg.
- 5
slangA topic that is more convoluted and fractal than it may seem.
- Near-synonym: rabbit hole
- Do some digging into that politician's past life and associates, and you'll see that the iceberg runs deep.
- 6
slangA topic that is more convoluted and fractal than it may seem.
- Check out the gaming iceberg on this post! There's some really freaky titles there that I've never heard of.
- Today we're gonna talk about the Star Wars iceberg.
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。