- 1梅杜莎（希臘神話裡頭髮是蛇、看了會變成石頭的女人）
Medusa is a woman in old Greek stories. Instead of hair, she had live snakes. If you looked straight at her face, you turned into stone. That is why everyone in the story is so afraid of her.
A hero called was sent to kill her. He did not look at her. He looked only at her reflection in his bright metal shield, like a mirror, and then he cut off her head. The stories say the head was still dangerous after that — even dead, it could turn people to stone.
Though actually, you will hear two versions. In older Greek telling, Medusa was one of three terrible sisters, the Gorgons, and she was the only one who could die. A later Roman telling, the one many films use, says she was beautiful at first and a goddess later changed her hair into snakes as a punishment. Both are old; neither is 'the tidy school version' on its own.
People sometimes stretch the name. A 'Medusa stare' means a look so cold it makes you freeze. That is the story used as a picture, not a new word. Write it with a capital M: it is a name.
組成From Middle English Medusa / Meduse, from Latin Medūsa, from Greek Médousa, from médō, 'to rule over' (the name is like 'she who rules / the guardian'). English later also used the name as a common picture for anything that 'turns you to stone'.
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。
Medusaname/mɪˈdjuːsə/
- 1
human-sciencesmysticismmythologyThe youngest and only mortal of the three gorgon sisters, killed by Perseus.
- 1895, Adolf Furtwängler, Eugenie Strong (editor and translator), Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture: A Series of Essays on the History of Art, 2010, →ISBN, page 201, On an Attic vase of the middle of the fifth century the head of Medusa in the hand of Perseus is represented as that of a beautiful woman free from any distortion. This led us to conclude (supra, p. 158) that Medusa must have been so represented at Athens in the greater arts even previous to this vase, for the vase-painters never invent such bold novelties for themselves.
- It will be suggested here that the myth of Perseus, involving the decapitation of Medusa, is a narrative version of ritual.
medusanoun
- 1
biologynatural-scienceszoologyA jellyfish; specifically, a non-polyp form of individual cnidarians, consisting of a gelatinous umbrella-shaped bell and trailing tentacles.
- Typically, what we think of as the jellyfish, the medusa, reproduces sexually, spawning sperm and eggs which, once fertilised, turn into sea anemone-like polyps, which attach themselves to the jellyfish’s bottom or other surfaces.
- 2
medicinepathologysciencesSynonym of worm-star.
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。