- 1座右銘；學校的常叫校訓
A motto is a short sentence, or even just a few words, that a person, a school, a club, a company, or a country holds up as a little rule for how to behave, or as a belief they want remembered. It stays short on purpose, so it sticks: you might see it on a school wall, under a crest, or at the bottom of a sign. A school's motto is the line they hope every student will keep; a person's motto is the line they try to live by. People also use it a little loosely for any favourite saying, even one nobody voted on or in stone. It feels a bit formal, a bit old-fashioned in chat, but it is still the ordinary word for that official line. You will almost always meet it as a noun. There is a rare verb, to motto something, meaning to put a motto on it — can leave that alone.
組成Borrowed in the late 1500s from Italian motto, “a word, a saying,” from Latin muttum, “a mutter, a grunt” — a little sound you make. It is a doublet of mot.
同家族的字
- mota doublet: both come from that Italian/Latin word for a saying; mot is a short witty remark, not used much now
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。
mottonoun/ˈmɑ.toʊ/
- 1
A personal slogan.
- You have to be in it to win it — that's my motto.
- 2
governmentheraldryhobbiesA sentence, phrase, or word, forming part of an heraldic achievement.
- ‘Gentlemen, I can tell you what the new queen will take as her motto. It is Bound to Obey and Serve.’
- 3
A sentence, phrase, or word, prefixed to an essay, discourse, chapter, canto, or the like, suggestive of its subject matter; a short, suggestive expression of a guiding principle; a maxim.
- It was the motto of a bishop eminent for his piety and good works, ... Serve God, and be cheerful.
- “[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer. […]”
- 4
obsoleteA paper packet containing a sweetmeat, cracker, etc., together with a scrap of paper bearing a motto.
mottoverb/ˈmɑ.toʊ/
- 1
To compose mottos.
- The singularity of his epigraphic strategy notwithstanding, Emerson does not draw attention to his own mottoing. One exchange suggests that his practice was a convention imposed from without.
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。