- 1少得可憐
Call something measly when it is so small, so thin, or so cheap that you feel a bit insulted. A measly wage, a measly portion, a measly two days off. It is informal, and it carries a scowl: you are not only counting, you are complaining. You would not put it in a careful letter to a boss. Though actually, the word is a cousin of . It comes from measle — once a word for one of those spots, or the illness — plus -y, so it first painted things as spotty and sick-looking (measly meat had nasty spots in it). From 'spotty and poor' it slid into 'pathetically small'. Most speakers today never think of the illness when they say it.
組成measle (old singular of measles: a spot or the illness) + -y. Further back, the spot-word sits with old Germanic words for a blister or a mark on the skin.
同家族的字
- measlesSame old spot-and-illness word; measly kept the sour feeling and moved it onto size and value.
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。
measlyadj/ˈmiːzli/
- 1
Particularly of pigs or pork: infected with larval tapeworms or trichinae (parasitic roundworms).
- Then take five or six apples, pick out the cores and fill up the holes thus made with flour of brimstone; stop up the holes and cast in the apples to the measly hog.
- 2
Of a person: infected with measles.
- A measly boy, he looked like a tramp, probably one of the street boys from the village, just walked up here and made himself at home, and when I told him to leave, he wouldn't.
- 3
informalSmall (especially contemptibly small) in amount.
- For one whole day's work all I was given was twenty measly pounds.
- The visiting tourists eagerly forked over a measly two dollars per group to their guides as payment for their services. This amount was measly sum to the givers, but a princely sum to the takers.
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。