- 1㹴犬類的長耳獵犬，一般叫「西班牙獵犬」；台灣最常見的兩種是可卡犬（cocker spaniel）和查理王小獵犬（King Charles spaniel），寵物店多半直接講品種名，不太講 spaniel 這個總稱。
A spaniel is a type of dog with a soft coat and long, ears that hang down beside its face — those ears are the give-away, and they are what most people picture when they hear the word.
It is not one single breed but a whole family of them. The cocker spaniel and the springer spaniel are the two you will meet most; there is also the King Charles spaniel, small and popular as a lap dog. Spaniels were originally bred to help hunters — to find birds in long grass, push them into the air, and fetch them once they fell. That working history explains the shape of the dog: medium size, strong nose, endless energy, and a nature that wants to please. They are known for being friendly and , which is why so many became family pets rather than working dogs.
Lowercase s, unlike Spain and Spanish, even though that is where the word comes from. Countable: a spaniel, three spaniels. When a breed name is attached, both parts stay lowercase in ordinary writing — a cocker spaniel — though the personal names inside King Charles spaniel keep their capitals.
The word is neutral and everyday. You will hear it from dog owners, in pet shops, at the vet, in novels. There is no formal or informal split to worry about.
A fair warning about size: dictionaries say "long ears that hang down", and that is true, but the family runs from the small King Charles up to the fairly large springer, so "a spaniel" alone does not tell you much about how big the dog is.
組成The word means, quite literally, "the Spanish one". It travelled from Latin Hispaniolus (Spanish, from Hispania = Spain) through Old Occitan and Old French espaigneul into Middle English as spaynol — because the dog was believed to have come from Spain. Over the centuries the sound softened into spaniel and people stopped hearing the country inside it.
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。
spanielnoun/ˈspænjəl/
- 1
Any of various small to medium-sized breeds of gun dog having a broad muzzle, long, wavy fur and long ears that hang at the side of the head, bred for flushing and retrieving game.
- 2
A cringing, fawning person.
- Pro[theus].[…]Yet (Spaniel-like) the more ſhe ſpurnes my loue, / The more it growes, and fawneth on her ſtill;
spanielverb/ˈspænjəl/
- 1
To follow loyally or obsequiously, like a spaniel.
- Antony: Do we shake hands.—All come to this!—The hearts / That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave / Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
- J. Sedgewick (1840), Timon, but not of Athens, page 200: “Always spanielling at the heels of power, the mitred Dignitaries displayed, from first to last, the most rancorous hostility against her.”
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。