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A mandrake is a poisonous plant. The famous kind grows around the Mediterranean; its thick root can look a little like a human body, which is why old stories grew up around it. For a long time people said it had magic powers — that it shrieked when you pulled it from the ground, that it could help with love or sleep, or that it could kill you. We do not treat the magic as true now, but the plant really is toxic, and the stories are still how the word lives in English: old plays, folk tales, and books like Harry Potter. Scientists still use the older name mandragora for the same plant.
曼德拉草。不是「曼陀羅」（那是另一種有毒植物）。
組成From Middle English mandrake, a reshaping of mandragora. People heard -dragora and thought of dragons, so they swapped in English drake. From Old English mandragora, from Medieval Latin, from Greek mandragóras.
同家族的字
- mandragorathe older English and scientific name this was reshaped from
原始詞典資料4 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。
mandrakenoun/ˈmændɹeɪk/
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Any plant of the genus Mandragora, certain of which are said to have medicinal or aphrodisiac properties; the root of these plants often resembles the shape of a small person, hence occasioning various mythic, magical, or occult uses.
- [T]his is the true deſcription of the plant and therefore thoſe idle formes of the Mandrakes and Womandrakes, as they are fooliſhly ſo called, which have beene expoſed to publike view, both in ours and other lands and countries, are utterly deceitfull being the work of cunning knaves, onely to get mony by their forgery.
- Pharmaceutically tested in recent times, mandrake show aphrodisiac properties.
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A root of a mandrake plant that resembled human form, especially one kept or used for magic or occult purposes.
- Mandrakes were sometimes considered in the light of familiars. Witches kept both male and female specimens of the magic root in bottles[.]
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slangThe drug methaqualone.
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artsfolklorehistoryA kind of tiny demon immune to fire.
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。