- 1槍擊膝蓋骨（私刑）
To kneecap someone is to shoot them in the knee on purpose — not to kill them, but to punish them and leave them badly hurt. It is unofficial: not a court, not the police. Paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland became notorious for it; gangs elsewhere have done it too. Newspapers still use the word for that kind of street punishment. Though actually the shot does not always hit the kneecap bone itself; the point is to wreck the leg as a warning. People sometimes stretch the verb in or jokes to mean 'disable' or 'hobble' a plan, but the real meaning is a violent attack on the knee. Informal in tone; the act is brutal. The noun kneecap is simply the bone at the front of your knee; this entry is the darker verb that grew from that.
組成knee + cap: the knee, and the 'cap' of bone that sits on the front of it. The verb comes from that noun.
原始詞典資料5 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。
kneecapnoun/ˈniːˌkæp/
- 1
anatomymedicinesciencesThe flat, roundish bone in the knee.
- 2
businessconstructionmanufacturingA metal cover trim that fits over a panel rib after it has been cut and bent.
- 3
A cap or strong covering for the knees, used chiefly for horses, to protect their knees in case of a fall.
kneecapverb/ˈniːˌkæp/
- 1
To destroy the knees of (a person), usually by shooting at the knees, as a punishment carried out by criminals or terrorists.
- The Sinn Féin press officer Richard McAuley freely admitted, “Back four or five years ago, people were getting kneecapped who should not have been kneecapped.”
- 2
To attack (someone) in a way that is excessively and needlessly damaging: to cut (someone) off at the knees.
- This story of how American originality lost its way is arresting and well told. On an alternate timeline without Donald Trump in office dismantling the American scientific establishment and Elon Musk kneecapping the American state, it might have been the manifesto of a new politics.
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。