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A palimpsest is an old document — often animal skin, in the days before cheap paper — where someone off the first writing and wrote something new on top. If you look very carefully, you can sometimes still see the old words underneath. Museums and scholars love palimpsests because the hidden writing can be a lost book. Though actually, people now also use the word for anything that has old layers under new ones: a city, a memory, a wall of paint. That later use belongs to books and careful talk. In a history class, it still means the real -and-rewritten page. It is a rare, educated word. You will not hear it on the bus.
重寫本
組成From Latin palimpsēstus, from Ancient Greek παλίμψηστος (palímpsēstos, “scraped again”). palin- is “again” or “back”; the rest is about scraping the surface clean.
同家族的字
- palindromeshares Greek palin-, “back” or “again”
原始詞典資料10 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。
palimpsestnoun/ˈpælɪmpsɛst/
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A manuscript or document that has been erased or scraped clean, for reuse of the paper, parchment, vellum, or other medium on which it was written.
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archaicMonumental brasses that have been reused by engraving of the blank back side.
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astronomynatural-sciencesCircular features believed to be lunar craters that have been obliterated by later volcanic activity.
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geographygeologynatural-sciencesGeological features thought to be related to features or effects below the surface.
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computingengineeringmathematicsMemory that has been erased and re-written.
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The partial erasure of or superimposition on an older society or culture by a newer one.
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Something bearing the traces of an earlier, erased form.
- But on her he did not see even the palimpsest of a smile.
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A text with several layers of meaning, especially pertaining to different points in time.
- I also agree there's more instrumental development that needs doing. For all we know there's a fourth layer to the palimpsest.
- Miraculously, the Stasi's record of Garton Ash's years in Berlin remained intact, and in his extraordinary book The File he recalls going back to Berlin, sifting through the material, and piecing together those years for himself. The result is a palimpsest of memories, observations recorded by informants and agents, and the recollections in his own diaries at that time.
palimpsestverb/ˈpælɪmpsɛst/
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To scrape clean, as in parchment, for reuse.
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On paper: to reuse, often by erasure or change of pen direction or color. Especially fueled by Earth Day.
- Typically refers to a multi-layered work, e.g.: new ads covering old on a roadside sign.
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。