喜樂美語
  1. 1縮影

    A microcosm is a small group, place, or situation that seems to hold the same qualities as a much larger one. A classroom can be a microcosm of the whole school. One street market can feel like a microcosm of the city. People use it when they want to say: if you understand this small picture, you understand the big one. It is a little formal; you meet it in news, essays, and speeches more than in chat. It is not a science word for atoms, and it is not the same as microscope. The old idea behind it is “a small universe.” You often meet it in the pattern a microcosm of…. Though actually, it is always a claim, not a proof: someone is saying the small thing is like the big thing, and you are allowed to wonder if that is really true.

組成From French microcosme, from Latin microcosmus, from Ancient Greek mikrós (small) + kósmos (universe, order). In English you can also see it as micro- + -cosm.

同家族的字

  • cosmosshares the Greek piece kósmos, meaning the universe or an ordered world
  • cosmicfrom the same Greek kósmos; about the universe as a whole
  • macrocosmthe matching pair: the big world, while a microcosm is the small one that mirrors it

原始詞典資料4 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。

microcosmnoun/ˈmaɪ.kɹə(ʊ)ˌkɒz.əm/

  • 1

    Human nature or the human body as representative of the wider universe; man considered as a miniature counterpart of divine or universal nature.

    • The Christian humanists were emphatic in their demand that a man who wishes to understand himself must realize that he is a little world that reflects on a smaller scale the larger world of the universe. […] On the other hand, the whole idea of man as a microcosm was questioned by those who were not in sympathy with the Christian humanists.
  • 2

    obsoleteThe human body; a person.

    • If you see this in the Map of my Microcosme, followes it that I am knowne well enough too?
  • 3

    A smaller system which is seen as representative of a larger one.

    • Near-synonyms: epitome, paradigm, model
    • With a few actors at his disposition he created a microcosm of life.
  • 4

    biologyecologynatural-sciencesA small natural ecosystem; an artificial ecosystem set up as an experimental model.

    • The method is relatively labour intensive (24-30 microcosms are run) and more difficult to interpret when compared with other microcosm methods (Shannon et al. 1986; Cairns & Cherry 1993).

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。