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In stories, a mermaid is a woman who lives in the sea, with a woman’s body and a fish’s tail instead of legs. She belongs to fairy tale, sailors’ yarn, and films; she is not a real animal. Some tales make her gentle, some make her dangerous — she may sing and pull a sailor off his course. Though actually the old English pieces of the word are quite plain: mere was a sea or a lake, and a maid was a young woman, so a mermaid is a “sea-maid”. The male counterpart is a merman. People stretch the word in dress-up and shop signs, but the picture in the head is still that tail.
美人魚
組成From Middle English mermayde, “maid of the sea”: mere (“sea, lake”) + maid, so mer- + maid. Dutch meermeid is a close cousin. Old English had meremenn for a sea-woman or siren.
原始詞典資料3 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。
mermaidnoun/ˈmɜːˌmeɪd/
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A mythological creature with a woman's head and upper body, and a tail of a fish.
- Search the depth, & ſee that variety of Sea monſters & fiſhes, Mare-maids, Sea men, Horſes, &c. which it affords.
- People that are drowned, and whose bodies are not founds are believed to have been taken into the dwellings of the Mermaids.
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Coloured a brilliant turquoise.
- a mermaid smoothie
- mermaid ice-cream
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obsoleteA prostitute.
- A Gentleman or an honeſt Cittizen, ſhall not Sit in your pennie-bench Theaters, vvith his Squirrell by his ſide cracking nuttes; nor ſneake into a Tauerne vvith his Mermaid; but he ſhall be Satyr'd and Epigram'd vpon, and his humour muſt run vpo'th Stage: […]
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。