喜樂美語

核心畫面

You can think of tortoiseshell as one surface held up to the light: a polished brown sheet with pale yellow patches floating inside it, the patches blurring into the brown instead of stopping at a clean edge. That sheet was cut from the back of a turtle. Every other use of the word points back at this one surface — either at the stuff itself, or at something that wears the same mixed brown-and-yellow marking: a cat, a butterfly, a pair of glasses, the turtle the sheet came from.

tortoiseshell 可以想成一片舉到燈下的殼：褐色的底，裡面浮著淡黃色的斑塊，斑塊的邊緣是暈開的，不是切齊的…更多收起tortoiseshell 可以想成一片舉到燈下的殼：褐色的底，裡面浮著淡黃色的斑塊，斑塊的邊緣是暈開的，不是切齊的。這片殼是從海龜背上取下來的。這個字後來的每一個意思，都可以想成從這片殼的花色長出去——要嘛指這個材料本身，要嘛指身上帶著同一種褐黃混色的東西：一隻貓、一隻蝴蝶、一副眼鏡，或是提供這片殼的那隻海龜。

From the word’s history

The word is simply tortoise + shell, literally the shell of a tortoise. The shell actually worked into combs and frames came mostly from a sea turtle, the hawksbill, so the name kept the land animal while the material came from the sea.

這個字就是 tortoise（陸龜）加 shell（殼），字面上是「龜的殼」。實際被做成梳子和鏡框的殼，多半來自海裡的玳瑁，所以名字留著陸龜，材料其實來自海龜。

Wiktionary entry for tortoiseshell (kaikki extract 3f6f69a190036ae4): 「From tortoise + shell.」; the hawksbill identification is from the same entry's first noun gloss.

Two branches

這片殼本身，和它的花色

這一組離核心畫面最近：一組是那片殼本身，另外兩組是放在名詞前面，說一個東西「是這片殼做的」或「長得像這片殼」。

noun · B2

A hard, shiny material with a pattern of brown and pale yellow patches, cut from the shell of a tortoise or a sea turtle, and used in the past to make things like combs, glasses frames, jewellery and box lids.

玳瑁；龜甲

身上帶著這個花紋的動物

同一片花色被拿去叫動物。海龜是這條線的起點，因為殼本來就長在牠身上；貓和蝴蝶則是因為身上的褐黃斑塊看起來像那片殼，才借到同一個名字。

noun · C1

The sea turtle that the shell material comes from — the hawksbill turtle. This use is uncommon, and belongs mostly to writing about the animal or the shell trade.

玳瑁（海龜）

原始詞典資料6 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。

tortoiseshellnoun/ˈtɔː(ɹ)təˌʃɛl/

  • 1

    The horny, translucent, mottled covering of the carapace of the hawksbill turtle, used as a veneer etc.

  • 2

    The hawksbill turtle.

  • 3

    A domestic cat (or a rabbit, guinea-pig, etc.) whose fur has black, brown and yellow markings.

  • 4

    Any of several butterflies, mostly of the genera Nymphalis and Aglais that have similar markings.

    • Other common farmland butterflies to have suffered steep declines include the small tortoiseshell (64%), the wall brown (37%) and the large skipper (35%).

tortoiseshelladj/ˈtɔː(ɹ)təˌʃɛl/

  • 1

    Made of the covering of carapace of hawksbill turtle.

  • 2

    Having markings resembling covering of carapace of hawksbill turtle.

    • Speaking of round sunglasses, these lightweight polarized ones and come in two shades of tortoiseshell as well as black and bronze.

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。