- 1關鍵人物；核心支柱（原義是車軸上固定輪子的銷）
A linchpin is the person or thing a whole group or system cannot do without. Take that person or thing away, and the rest starts to fall apart. You might call one nurse the linchpin of a night team, or one rule the linchpin of a plan. It feels a little formal: you hear it in the news and in careful writing more than in easy daily chat. A thing or an idea can be a linchpin, not only a person. Though actually, the first linchpin was a real pin. On an old cart, a pin went through the end of the bar that held the wheel. If that pin came out, the wheel slid off. From about the middle of the 1900s, people began using the same word for whoever or whatever holds a system in place. Some writers spell it lynchpin; that is the same word.
組成From Middle English lynspin: an old word lins (the bar a wheel sits on) + pin. From Old English lynis, and related to German Lünse and Dutch luns. Possible older cousins include Welsh olwyn (wheel). The people-and-systems meaning is much newer than the pin.
同家族的字
- pinthe second half is the ordinary pin that holds something in place
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。
linchpinnoun/ˈlɪnt͡ʃˌpɪn/
- 1
A pin inserted through holes at the end of an axle or shaft, so as to secure a wheel or shaft-mounted device.
- In ij camellis ferri vocatis lynspins emptis pro carectis iiijᵈ.
- Every design that villany could suggest was had recourse to in the hopes of nobbling Wild Dayrell; but never being left for an hour by either his trainer or jockey, he escaped the intended “coopering,” even when the lynchpins of the wheels of his van had been tampered with.
- 2
A central cohesive source of stability and security; a person or thing that is critical to a system or organisation.
- What is difficult to appreciate, however, is the discrepancy between his statement to the 'Manchester Guardian' correspondent and his known abhorance for party politics, which is the lynchpin of modern democracy.
- Community nurses have been described as the lynchpins of palliative care in the community.
linchpinverb/ˈlɪnt͡ʃˌpɪn/
- 1
To adopt as, or serve as, a central cohesive source of stability and security.
- The poems turn fear of individual death into an audit of the costs of an aristocratic status quo which is linchpinned by a monarchy indulging in paradigms of social redress that have become cosmetic, opportunities for self-display rather than genuine justice.
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。