- 1虐待
When you ill-treat someone, you treat them on purpose. You hurt them, them, or fail to give them the care a living being needs. People use this word most often about a child or an animal — someone who cannot easily fight back or walk away. The cruelty can be blows, harsh words, locking someone away, or leaving them hungry and cold. It is a serious word, the kind that turns up in news, in court, and in talk about rights, not in a joke among friends. Though actually, in everyday speech many people say treat badly, be cruel to, or abuse instead, because ill-treat sounds a little old-fashioned and formal. You will still meet it in careful writing. It is almost always about a weaker living being, not about a broken machine or a hard day at school.
「ill-treat」是動詞，指故意用殘酷的方式對待別人。它的常見句型是「ill-treat someone」（虐待某人）。傷害、嚇唬，或不給對方該有的照顧，都算在內。殘酷的方式可能是打人、說狠話、把人關起來，或讓人挨餓受凍。
這是很嚴肅的字，常出現在新聞、法庭，或談人權的文章裡，朋友之間開玩笑不會用。它最常用在小孩或動物身上，因為這些對象不容易反抗或離開。
口語上大家多半改說「對待得很差」、「殘忍對待」或「虐待」，ill-treat 聽起來比較舊、比較正式，但在仔細寫作裡還是會看到。它幾乎都是指比較弱小的生物，不會用來講機器壞掉，也不會用來講學校裡辛苦的一天。
From the word’s history
A compound of ill + treat.
由 ill「不好地」加 treat「對待」組成。
組成From ill (badly) + treat (to behave toward someone).
同家族的字
- treatthe same verb: to behave toward someone in a certain way
- mistreatthe same idea with mis- instead of ill-: to treat someone badly
- ill-treatmentthe noun for that cruel behaviour
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。
ill-treatverb
- 1
To treat someone or something badly or unkindly; to abuse or mistreat.
- He would never speak a word, only eat and cry, and she hadn't the heart to strike it or illtreat the youngster either; but somebody taught her a charm to make him speak, and then she found out what kind of a brat he really was.
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。