喜樂美語

核心畫面

You can think of ochre as a handful of soil that already has colour in it. Dig it, crush it, add water, and you have paint without adding anything else. Everything else the word does grows out of that handful of coloured earth.

ochre 可以想成「一把本身就有顏色的土」。從地裡挖出來，磨成粉，加水，不用再加別的東西，就已經是顏料了。它的顏色…更多收起ochre 可以想成「一把本身就有顏色的土」。從地裡挖出來，磨成粉，加水，不用再加別的東西，就已經是顏料了。它的顏色是黃裡帶紅、像曬過的泥巴。這個字後來的每一個用法，都可以看成是從這把土延伸出去的：先是這種土，接著是這種土的顏色，最後是用這個顏色去形容東西。

From the word’s history

From Old French ocre, from Latin ochra, from Greek okhra meaning pale yellow. The oldest meaning recorded is the colour, and the earth was named for it.

往回追是古法文 ocre、拉丁文 ōchra、希臘文 ōkhra，本意是「淡黃色」。所以顏色其實是更早的那一層，土是因為顏色才得名。這也說明了為什麼今天材料和顏色會共用一個字。

Wiktionary entry for ochre (kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:129367757), etymology 1

Two branches

土本身（材料）

這一支就是核心畫面本身：可以挖、可以磨、可以拿在手上的那種土。

noun · C1

A soft earth, dug out of the ground, that is reddish-yellow or brownish-yellow because it holds iron. People grind it into a powder and mix it with water or oil to make paint, dye, or colour for cloth.

赭土／赭石顏料

那個顏色

把注意力從那把土移到它的顏色上，字就從「材料」變成「色名」，再從色名長出形容詞的用法。

noun · C1

A dark yellow colour with orange or red in it — the colour of ochre earth. It is used for walls, cloth, paint and clothes, and often sounds warm and a little old.

赭色／土黃色

原始詞典資料9 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。

ochrenoun詞源 1/ˈəʊkə/

  • 1

    A clay earth pigment containing silica, aluminum and ferric oxide.

  • 2

    A somewhat dark yellowish orange colour.

  • 3

    The stop codon sequence "UAA".

  • 4

    datedslangMoney, especially gold.

    • ‘What does he come here cheeking us for, then?’ cried Master Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. ‘If you want to cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out.’
  • 5

    Any of various brown-coloured hesperiid butterflies of the genus Trapezites.

ochreadj詞源 1/ˈəʊkə/

  • 1

    Having a yellow-orange colour.

  • 2

    archaeologyhistoryhuman-sciencesReferring to cultures that covered their dead with ochre.

ochreverb詞源 1/ˈəʊkə/

  • 1

    To cover or tint with ochre.

    • […] his eye was caught by the sight of one child in a group of smaller children playing in the shallows some little distance down—a white child, so white by contrast with the others that at first he thought it must be ochred, which it could not be while playing in the water.
    • The sun gloats in the sky, casting a gleam on the pasture where there was so much umbering and ochreing only moments before.

這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：

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。