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Sociability is the quality of being sociable — of liking to be with other people, and being easy and friendly when you are. It is the noun for that side of a person. You use it when you talk about the quality itself, not about one friendly act: 'Her sociability made her popular at work' means being-friendly-with-people is a thing she has, all the time, not just that day. It is a slightly formal word. In everyday talk a student is much more likely to hear 'she's very sociable' or 'she's a people person' than 'her sociability'. Where you really do meet the noun is in writing — psychology, education reports, book reviews, articles about children or about animals. Teachers write it on reports: 'good sociability with classmates'. And it stretches in two useful ways. It can be used of animals — dogs, monkeys, and bees are said to have sociability, meaning they naturally live in groups. And it can be used of a place or an event rather than a person: 'the sociability of the old market' means the market was a place where people mixed and talked easily. Notice one thing carefully: sociability is about wanting company and being comfortable in it. It is not about being kind, and it is not about being good at company. A quiet person can be very warm and have little sociability; a loud person can have plenty of sociability and still be rude.
善於社交(的特質)、合群、愛交際。中文常用形容詞說「他很好相處」「他很會社交」;名詞形式在中文寫作、心理學或學生評語裡才常見(如「社交性」)。注意別直接想成「人緣好」——人緣好是別人喜歡你的結果,sociability 是你自己喜歡跟人相處的性格。
組成sociable + -ity. The ending -ity turns an adjective into the name of the quality it describes: sociable → sociability, able → ability. Under sociable sits the Latin socius, 'companion, partner, ally'. English took the word through Middle French sociabilité, from Latin sociābilis.
原始詞典資料1 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。
sociabilitynoun/ˌsəʊ.ʃəˈbɪlɪti/
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The skill, tendency or property of being sociable or social, of interacting well with others.
- He was a true introvert, and his sociability lagged behind others of his age in the school.
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。