喜樂美語
  1. 1獨角獸（商業用法也照講「獨角獸企業」，指估值十億美元以上的新創公司）

    An imaginary animal shaped like a white horse with one straight horn in the middle of its forehead. It comes from old European stories, where it was wild and pure and could only be tamed by a gentle person; today it lives mostly in children's books, cartoons, and a whole industry of pink and rainbow things — unicorn cakes, unicorn pencil cases, unicorn hair. Because of that, calling something 'very unicorn' suggests it is cute, sparkly, , and a little bit silly. Two useful stretches. First, in everyday talk a unicorn is something wonderful that you want but probably cannot find, because it may not exist: the perfect flat that is cheap, big and near the station is a unicorn. Second, in business news a unicorn is a young private company worth more than one billion US dollars — rare enough, when the term was coined, to be a mythical beast. That business sense is now very common in Taiwan's tech reporting, so you will meet it. In all these uses the thread is the same: one of a kind, rare, hard to find.

From the word’s history

From Middle English unicorne, from Anglo-Norman/Old French unicorne, from Latin ūnicornis, from ūnus 'one' + cornū 'horn', a calque of Greek μονόκερως.

源自拉丁文 ūnicornis，由 ūnus「一」加 cornū「角」組成。

Wiktionary

組成From Latin ūnicornis: ūnus 'one' + cornū 'horn'. That Latin word was itself a copy of Greek monókerōs, also 'one horn' — and Old English had its own version, ānhorn, before the Latin-French form pushed it out.

同家族的字

  • unicyclesame uni- 'one' — one wheel
  • uniformsame uni- 'one' — one single form
  • unicellularsame uni- 'one' — one cell
  • unitalso from Latin ūnus, 'one'

原始詞典資料19 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。

unicornnoun/ˈjuː.nɪ.kɔːn/

  • 1

    human-sciencesmysticismmythologyA mythical, horselike creature with a horn on its forehead, supposed to be very rare and to be drawn to virgins and other chaste maidens.

    • [Seb.] A liuing Drolerie: now I will beleeue / That there are Vnicornes:[…]
    • The unicorn who may be touched and tamed only by a chaste virgin is a lunar symbol of the ancient religion of Europe.
  • 2

    biblicallifestylereligionIn various Bible translations, used to render the Latin unicornis or rhinoceros (representing Hebrew רְאֵם): a reem or wild ox.

    • God brought him forth out of Egypt, he hath as it were the ſtrength of an Vnicorne: he ſhall eate vp the nations his enemies, and ſhall breake their bones, and pierce them thorow with his arrowes.
  • 3

    Certain animals:

  • 4

    Certain animals:

  • 5

    Certain animals:

  • 6

    Certain animals:

  • 7

    Certain animals:

  • 8

    governmentmilitarypoliticsA howitzer.

    • The Sixth Inniskilling Dragoons and the First Battalion Royal Scots will be in attendance, and there will be unicorns, carricks, pursuivants, heralds, mace-bearers, ushers, and pages, together with the Purse-bearer, and the Lyon King-of-Arms, and the national anthem, and the royal salute
另外 7 個記錄的用法
  • 9

    Someone or something that is rare and hard to find.

    • On Capitol Hill, Mr. Manchin is something of a unicorn — the only national Democrat from his ruby-red state — and acts and votes accordingly.
  • 10

    slangSomeone or something that is rare and hard to find.

  • 11

    businessSomeone or something that is rare and hard to find.

    • But I also think, “They’re looking for a unicorn — a magical designer who can solve all their problems.” It’s too bad unicorns don’t exist. … I have never met a designer who is an expert in all those skill areas. … Even if you find a unicorn designer with all those skills, actually doing all those things at your company is a huge amount of work.
    • He believes that good data scientists, “otherwise known as unicorn data scientists,” have three types of expertise.
  • 12

    businessfinanceSomeone or something that is rare and hard to find.

    • As the price of Web hosting plummeted and PCs and cell phones proliferated, college and grad-school dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page and Sergey Brin could suddenly conjure unicorns on their laptops.
    • In May 2016, out of 163 global unicorns, China had 31, with a total valuation of $154 billion or about 26 percent of global unicorn valuation.
  • 13

    Someone or something that is rare and hard to find.

  • 14

    Being many (especially pastel) colours; multicoloured.

    • unicorn smoothies
  • 15

    historicalA 15th-century Scottish gold coin worth 18 shillings, bearing the image of a unicorn.

unicornverb/ˈjuː.nɪ.kɔːn/

  • 1

    slangTo participate in a sexual threesome as a bisexual addition to an established heterosexual couple.

    • Katja*, 27, has unicorned on two separate occasions.
    • “In Annie’s unicorning, she’s really able to try out other people’s relationships and see how they function from within,” Gillespie tells me.
  • 2

    businessfinanceTo exceed a valuation of one billion U.S. dollars, while solely backed by venture capitalists.

    • Since Waze, Soluto and Onavo, both Israeli startups, have had great exits in consumer tech, and Wix “unicorned” through its IPO.
    • For eager investors looking to score in a future IPO, the eight still-private martech unicorns might be tempting. That list includes Domo, Slack, Sprinklr, Shopify, and EventBrite, all of which have “unicorned,” or surpassed the billion-dollar valuation mark, in the past year or two.

unicornadj/ˈjuː.nɪ.kɔːn/

  • 1

    Having one horn.

  • 2

    Rare and hard to find.

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。