- 1困境；窘境
A predicament is a hard, uncomfortable situation. You are in it now, and you cannot see a clean way out — or every way out will hurt someone or cost you something. People use it for real-life corners: two friends asked for help at the same hour; you lost your passport the night before a flight; you said a sharp thing and now you have to walk into that room. It is a little more formal than trouble. In a quick chat you might say you are stuck, or you do not know what to do; predicament shows up in stories, news, and careful talk. Though actually, the word did not begin as trouble. It came from an old philosophy word for a category — a type of thing you can say about something. English later poured a new meaning into the same shape: not a type, but a tight spot you have landed in.
From the word’s history
From Middle English, from Old French predicament, from Late Latin praedicāmentum 'that which is predicated, category'.
經古法文來自晚期拉丁文 praedicāmentum「範疇」。
組成From Middle English predicament, from Old French predicament, from Late Latin praedicāmentum, ‘that which is predicated; a category.’ The ‘difficult situation’ meaning came later.
同家族的字
- predicatesame Latin source: praedicāmentum was ‘something said of a thing’; a predicate is what you say about the subject
原始詞典資料3 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。
predicamentnoun/pɹɪˈdɪkəmənt/
- 1
A definite class, state or condition.
- 2
An unfortunate or trying position or condition.
- Culture, for me, is the effort to provide a coherent set of answers to the existential predicaments that confront all human beings in the passage of their life.
- The Midlanders will hope the victory will kickstart a campaign that looked to have hit the buffers, but the sense of trepidation enveloping the Reebok Stadium heading into the new year underlines the seriousness of the predicament facing Owen Coyle's men.
- 3
human-scienceslogicmathematicsThat which is predicated; a category.
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。