從頭到尾做完,一個角落都不漏
核心畫面的兩面:先形容「事情」被做得完整,再形容「做這件事的人」習慣如此。
leaving nothing out · adjective · B2
Including every important detail; done carefully so that nothing is left out.
徹底的;詳盡的
Picture cleaning a room and actually going all the way through it — under the bed, behind the door, inside the drawers — instead of just the parts that show. Nothing is left untouched, because you went from one end to the other. That is the picture: work that reaches every corner, and by extension the kind of person who works that way.
Thorough began as a stressed form of the same Middle English word that gave us through; the idea inside it is 'going all the way through'. In Middle English it already meant 'perfect, complete' — an adjective built from an adverb of motion from end to end. So the modern sense is the old picture kept intact.
thorough 其實跟 through 是同一個字的兩種讀法:中古英文的 thurgh 重音化之後分出了 thorough,字裡的想法就是「一路穿過去、從這頭到那頭」。中古英文時期它已經有「完整、無缺」的意思,是從一個表示「從一端到另一端」的副詞造出來的形容詞。所以現代的「徹底」不是後來加上去的比喻,而是那個穿過去的畫面一直留著。
Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com), entry "thorough"
Two branches
從頭到尾做完,一個角落都不漏
核心畫面的兩面:先形容「事情」被做得完整,再形容「做這件事的人」習慣如此。
leaving nothing out · adjective · B2
Including every important detail; done carefully so that nothing is left out.
徹底的;詳盡的
十足的(加強語氣的說法)
「從頭到尾都是」這一層被拿去加強名詞:不是做得徹底,而是「徹頭徹尾就是那樣」。
complete, utter · adjective · B2
Used before some nouns to emphasize that something is completely that way — often about a bad quality (British English).
十足的;徹頭徹尾的
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。
Thoroughname
historicalChristianityA scheme devised in 17th-century England by Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford to establish absolute monarchy in England, involving the appointment of Arminian clergy.
thoroughadj/ˈθʌɹə/
Painstaking and careful not to miss or omit any detail.
Utter; complete; absolute.
thoroughprep/ˈθʌɹə/
archaicThrough.
thoroughnoun/ˈθʌɹə/
dialectalA furrow between two ridges, to drain off the surface water.
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。