喜樂美語
  1. 1壞血病

    Scurvy is the illness you get when your body has had almost no vitamin C for a long time. Fruit, fresh greens, and some other plant foods carry that vitamin; dried meat and do not. After weeks of going without, gums bleed, teeth , old cuts open, you from almost nothing, and you grow very weak. For centuries it was the sailors’ disease: a ship could be at sea for months with no oranges, lemons, or fresh leaves, and the crew would fall apart. People later learned that a little citrus fruit — or even pickled cabbage — was enough to stop it, though actually they did not yet have the name “vitamin C”; they only knew that certain foods saved you. Today scurvy is uncommon where shops sell fruit all year, but it can still appear if someone eats almost no fresh food for a long stretch. In older or English the same word is also an adjective meaning mean or low — a scurvy trick — because the disease made the skin look rough and , and that ugly look was borrowed for ugly behaviour.

組成The adjective came first: Late Middle English scurvi / scurvy, a form of scurfi, “having scurf” — scurf plus a suffix like -y, “full of”. Scurf is the flakes of dead skin (from Old English scurf). The sailors’ illness took the same name because it made the skin look scabby.

同家族的字

  • scurfthe flakes of dead skin; scurvy first meant “covered in scurf”
  • scurvy-grassa small seaside plant people once ate to keep scurvy away

原始詞典資料7 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。

scurvyadj/ˈskɜːvi/

  • 1

    obsoleteAffected or covered with scurf (“skin disease causing flakes of skin to fall off”) or scabs; scurfy, scabby; also, of or relating to a skin disease causing scurf or to scurvy (noun sense 1).

    • Some wenches come vnlased, / Some hyswyues come vnbrased, / Wyth theyr naked pappes, / That flappes and flappes; / […] / A sorte of foule drabbes / All scuruy with scabbes: […]
    • The bran of VVheate boiled in ſharpe vineger, and rubbed vpon them that be ſcuruie and mangie, easeth the partie very much.
  • 2

    obsoleteOf growths on plants: resembling scurf; scurfy.

  • 3

    archaicOf a person or thing: disgustingly mean; contemptible, despicable, low.

    • a scurvy knave    a scurvy trick
    • Iſt not a ſcuruie ieſt, that a man ſhould ieſt himſelfe to death.
  • 4

    archaicOf the way someone is treated: poor, shabby.

scurvynoun/ˈskɜːvi/

  • 1

    medicinepathologysciencesA disease caused by insufficient intake of vitamin C, leading to the formation of livid spots on the skin, spongy gums, loosening of the teeth, and bleeding into the skin and from almost all mucous membranes; (countable, obsolete) an occurrence of this disease.

    • Our legs now vs deceiue, / ſwolne euery ioint withall, / With this diſeaſe, which, by your leaue, / the Scuruie men doe call.
    • [H]ee will go to the ſea, and teare the gold out of the Spaniards throats but he will haue it, byrlady when he comes there, poore ſoule hee lyes in brine in Baliſt, and is lamentable ſicke of the ſcuruies; […]
  • 2

    derogatoryA contemptible or despicable person.

    • Row, row you scurvies, / She'll have us boiled in oil. / Move, move those creaking oars, / until you reach Cape soil.
    • Muppet Treasure Island (1996) Avast! There be no treasure on this island, just a bunch of googly-eyed, synthetic scurvies staging a bastardized retelling of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson adventure.
  • 3

    obsoletebiologymedicinenatural-sciencesA cattle disease, perhaps affecting the skin.

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。