- 1言外之意、潛台詞（表面話底下真正要說的意思）
The subtext is the meaning underneath the words — what someone really means, or what a scene is really about, which is not said out loud. If your boss says 'that's an interesting choice of shirt', the words are polite but the subtext is that they dislike it. It began as a word for drama and literature, where actors and readers hunt for the subtext of a scene, and it is still heavily used in criticism and writing classes. But it has spread into ordinary conversation about people: 'the subtext of that email was that I should stop asking'. It is usually uncountable, and the fixed phrase 'the subtext is (that)...' is the shape you will meet most. There is also a verb 'subtext', but it is technical and rare — ignore it for now. A useful signal: when a speaker says something has 'no subtext', they mean take it exactly as said.
組成sub- (under) + text (the words themselves; from Latin texere 'to weave' — a text is something woven together). Literally: what is woven underneath the words.
原始詞典資料2 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。
subtextnoun
- 1
literaturemediapublishingAn implicit meaning of a text, often a literary one, or a speech or dialogue.
- Everyone heard the announcement, but not everyone agrees on what the subtext was.
- The word dick has meant penis since the 1890s, but Chester Gould’s private detective “Dick Tracy” has no puerile subtext related to this word.
subtextverb
- 1
To create or use a subtext.
- All the participants used subtexting as an important viewing strategy of mainstream films. We are always looking for innuendoes and cues either with certain individual characters or between female characters.
- Subtexting is the technique that every author needs to know in order to create dialogue that is rich in meaning while sounding natural, for in real life, this is the way people often converse.
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。