喜樂美語

核心畫面

Something so bad it makes you feel fear or shock — and from that, anything extremely bad.

可以想成一種會讓你心頭一驚、感到害怕的東西。terrible 原本連著「讓人恐懼」這個感覺（和 terror 同源）…更多收起可以想成一種會讓你心頭一驚、感到害怕的東西。terrible 原本連著「讓人恐懼」這個感覺（和 terror 同源），核心畫面比較像「壞到令人害怕」；從這個畫面出發，它一路淡化成日常用來罵「很糟」，最後甚至只剩下「程度很強」的加強語氣。

Three branches

壞到令人害怕

這一家最貼近核心畫面：事情壞到會讓人害怕、震驚，或壞到造成嚴重傷害。terrible 和 terror（恐懼）同根，最初的力道就在這裡。

shocking · adjective · A2

Making you feel afraid or shocked.

駭人的；令人震驚的

日常的「很爛」

把「可怕」的力道在日常口語裡淡化下來，變成單純抱怨「品質很差、很爛」。已經沒有真的害怕的意思，只是強烈地說「這不好」。這是核心情緒被磨平後最常用的一面。

very poor quality · adjective · A2

Very bad in quality; much worse than just not good.

很糟的；爛的

加強語氣的「極大」

情緒色彩完全褪掉，只剩下「很強、很大」的放大作用，放在名詞前面加重語氣。可以想成原本「可怕」的強度被抽出來，純粹拿來當「非常」用。

intensifier · adjective · A2

Used before a noun to mean 'very great' or 'very big', to make it stronger.

極大的（加強語氣）

原始詞典資料7 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。

terribleadj/ˈtɛɹəbəl/

  • 1

    Dreadful; causing terror, alarm and fear; awesome

    • The witch laid a terrible curse on him.
    • People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly.
  • 2

    Formidable, powerful.

    • […]and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog," and "real old salt," and such-like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea.
    • "He is the right sort of man for a labourer, but he is a terrible eater, to be sure," thought the farmer.
  • 3

    Intense; extreme in degree or extent.

    • He paid a terrible price for his life of drinking.
    • ‘Then the father has a great fight with his terrible conscience,’ said Munday with granite seriousness. ‘Should he make a row with the police […]? Or should he say nothing about it and condone brutality for fear of appearing in the newspapers?
  • 4

    Very unpleasant; disagreeable.

    • The food was terrible, but it was free.
    • To Edward […] he was terrible, nerve-inflaming, poisonously asphyxiating. He sat rocking himself in the late Mr. Churchill's swing chair, smoking and twaddling.
  • 5

    Very bad; lousy.

    • Whatever he thinks, he is a terrible driver.
    • The openly ridiculous plot has The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) scheming to win the Pirate Of The Year competition, even though he’s a terrible pirate, far outclassed by rivals voiced by Jeremy Piven and Salma Hayek.
  • 6

    Prone to a particular temptation.

    • He's a terrible man for beer.
    • I should have known designing was in my blood as I'm terrible for tweaking patterns I'm stitching.

terribleadv/ˈtɛɹəbəl/

  • 1

    dialectalIn a terrible way; to a terrible extent; terribly; awfully.

    • ‘Oh, terrible bad, sir, terrible deep the snow is,’ said the hedgehog.

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。