喜樂美語

核心畫面

You can picture someone with their eyes on a page, taking the words in. Reader is just read plus -er: the one doing the reading. From there the word stretches two ways — to things that are not people at all (a book you read from, a machine that reads a card), and to a job title for someone whose work is reading and teaching.

reader 可以想成一個人眼睛落在紙頁上、把字一行行吃進去的樣子。它就是 read 加上 -er：做這個動作的人。…更多收起reader 可以想成一個人眼睛落在紙頁上、把字一行行吃進去的樣子。它就是 read 加上 -er：做這個動作的人。從這裡它往兩邊延伸——一邊跑去指根本不是人的東西（拿來練習讀的書、會讀卡片的機器），一邊變成一個工作的職稱（靠讀書和講學過日子的人）。

Three branches

在讀的人

最直接的 read + -er：做「讀」這個動作的人，差別只在你是誰的讀者、讀什麼。

reader (person) · noun · B1

a person who reads, especially someone who often reads a certain kind of book or writing.

讀者

拿來練習讀的書

這裡的 -er 沒有指「會讀的東西」，而是指「為了讀而做出來的東西」：一本專門服務讀這個動作的書。

reading practice book · noun · B1

a book used to help someone, especially a child or a language learner, practice reading.

讀本

會讀取資料的機器

把「讀」的人換成機器：英文很自然地把讀取資料也叫 read，於是做這件事的裝置就成了 reader。

card reader device · noun · A2

a machine or small device that reads information from a card or disc, or that is used for reading digital books.

讀卡機；閱讀器

原始詞典資料22 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。

Readername

  • 1

    A surname

  • 2

    A census-designated place in Nevada County and Ouachita County, Arkansas, United States.

  • 3

    An unincorporated community in Western Mound Township, Macoupin County, Illinois, United States.

  • 4

    A census-designated place in Wetzel County, West Virginia, United States, named after the Reader Run creek.

readernoun/ˈɹi.dɚ/

  • 1

    A person who reads.

    • an early reader, a talented reader
  • 2

    A person who reads a publication.

    • 10,000 weekly readers
    • In its May 1965 issue, Life magazine condemned skateboards as a “menace to limb and even to life,” and cautioned readers about riders who “take over the paths made for peaceful strollers.”
  • 3

    A person who recites literary works, usually to an audience.

  • 4

    A proofreader.

  • 5

    A person employed by a publisher to read works submitted for publication and determine their merits.

    • They were dog-eared by the hands of many a publisher's-reader and postman.
  • 6

    A position attached to aristocracy, or to the wealthy, with the task of reading aloud, often in a foreign language.

    • "I am commissioned by the Queen to offer you the place of Italian reader; and I assure you the offer was made with many kind expressions of interest. You will enter upon the duties, which are almost nominal, immediately."
  • 7

    A university lecturer ranking below a professor.

  • 8

    Any device that reads something.

    • a card reader, a microfilm reader
    • The reMarkable PDF reader is really targeted at the digital writing market, rather than the digital reading market, though most serious e-readers support pens for annotations and signatures.
另外 9 個記錄的用法
  • 9

    A book of exercises to accompany a textbook.

  • 10

    An elementary textbook for those learning to read, in a native language or a foreign language.

    • Appletons’ School Readers
    • [Editor David W. Blight said:] In 1795, after producing his own geography textbook, modeled on Jedidiah Morse’s famous Geography (1784), Bingham resigned as a teacher in the Boston schools, opened a bookstore on Cornhill Street in Boston, and devoted himself to producing schoolbooks. In Boston in 1797, he published the first of approximately 23 editions of The Columbian Orator. By the first two decades of the nineteenth century, in vast stretches of rural America, including the South, Bingham’s readers joined the Bible and an occasional almanac as the only books in many homesteads. […] Finally, Bingham saw the early American republic as a new political beginning for humankind, and his more than one million schoolbooks sold across the land were designed to produce republican citizens. The Columbian Orator was an elocution manual as well as a reader for school children in the new republic.
  • 11

    A literary anthology.

    • A good bedtime reader should entertain and delight, and that's what I find in Girard Kent's The Boy Harleqin ^([sic]) and Other Stories.
  • 12

    A lay or minor cleric who reads lessons in a church service.

  • 13

    advertisingbusinessmarketingA newspaper advertisement designed to look like a news article rather than a commercial solicitation.

  • 14

    Reading glasses.

  • 15

    slanggamblinggamesMarked playing cards used by cheaters.

    • LUMINOUS READERS—Marked cards that can be read only through tinted glasses.
    • Of the 150,000,000 decks of cards sold each year in America, Scarne estimates that 1 percent get marked at some point. Yet, as he discovered in his 1972 gambling survey, only 2 percent of average players have any idea of how to detect these "readers."
  • 16

    obsoleteslangA wallet or pocketbook.

    • […] Q was a Queer-screen, that served as a blind; / R was a Reader, with flimsies well lined; […]
  • 17

    At Eton College, a lesson for which pupils are sent back to their separate school houses.

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。