- 1一小口、一小塊（尤指食物；也可說「一丁點」消息或安慰）
A morsel is a very small amount of something, most often a tiny piece of food — a bite, a crumb, a little bit you could put on a fork. She ate every morsel means she finished even the last scrap. Writers also stretch it away from the plate: a morsel of news, a morsel of comfort, a morsel of truth. The feeling stays the same: not a meal, just a scrap. It is a slightly old-fashioned, storybook word, more at home in writing than in the . A child might say a little bit; a novel might say a morsel. It can sound gentle, even a bit sweet. Though actually, it starts from biting: the older French and Latin behind it are “a little bite,” not “a little thing” in general. That is why food is still the first picture the word paints.
組成From Old French morsel, a little bite, from Latin morsum “a bit,” from mordeo “to bite.” The -el makes it a small piece. English also has the French doublet morceau.
同家族的字
- morceauthe French word for a piece; English borrowed both, so they are doublets
- remorsefrom Latin “to bite again”; same biting root as morsel
原始詞典資料5 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。
morselnoun/ˈmɔːsəl/
- 1
A small fragment or share of something, commonly applied to food.
- By sticking out his tongue and curling it sideways to explore the hairy jungle around his mouth, he was always able to find a tasty morsel here and there to nibble on.
- If a morsel of food fell off your plate, the advice of one contemporary document was to pick it up, make the sign of the cross over it, season it well - and then eat it.
- 2
A mouthful of food.
- Me thinks I ſee the Turke nodding vvith his Turban, and telling me that I ſhould thanke Heaven for that diſtance vvhich is betvvixt us, els he vvould ſvvallovv me all up at one morſell; […]
- 3
A very small amount.
- Didn't even a morsel of decency remain in his brother?
morselverb/ˈmɔːsəl/
- 1
To divide into small pieces.
- 2
obsoleterareTo feed with small pieces of food.
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。