喜樂美語
  1. 1上游、逆流而上。中文的「上游」幾乎完全對應，包括產業上游的引申用法

    Upstream means toward the source of a river — against the current, the hard direction, the way the water is coming from. Swim upstream and you are fighting the water. A village upstream of a factory sits above it on the river, so the factory's waste never reaches it. It works as an adverb ('the fish swim upstream to lay eggs') and as an adjective ('an upstream dam', 'the upstream villages'). Often it takes 'of' or 'from': 'ten upstream of the bridge'. The literal river meaning is only the beginning. English took the picture and used it everywhere, because it is such a useful one. In business and engineering, upstream means earlier in the process — closer to the raw materials, further from the customer. Oil companies split their work into upstream (finding and pumping the oil) and downstream (refining and selling it). In software, 'upstream' is the original project your copy came from, so a fix that goes upstream goes back to the source for everyone. Doctors talk about upstream causes — the real thing that started the illness, not the symptom you see at the end. Every one of these uses is the same image: go up the flow, toward where it began. Once your students see that, all the meanings become one meaning. And there is a quiet judgement inside 'swimming upstream' — it means struggling against how things naturally go.

From the word’s history

From up- + stream.

由 up 和 stream 組成。

Wiktionary

組成up- (toward the higher end, the source) + stream. The picture is a river: the source is up, the sea is down.

同家族的字

  • downstreamthe opposite direction on the same river, and the same business/process metaphor
  • mainstreamthe same 'stream' picture used for the main current of opinion

原始詞典資料11 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。

upstreamadj/ʌpˈstɹiːm/

  • 1

    In a direction against the flow of a current or stream of fluid (typically water); upriver.

  • 2

    Occurring earlier than something else; (also, usually, especially) being an influence on something else; causing a consequence for something else.

    • Input entry is upstream of input validation in the runtime process.
  • 3

    Occurring earlier than something else; (also, usually, especially) being an influence on something else; causing a consequence for something else.

  • 4

    computercomputingengineeringOccurring earlier than something else; (also, usually, especially) being an influence on something else; causing a consequence for something else.

  • 5

    computingengineeringmathematicsOccurring earlier than something else; (also, usually, especially) being an influence on something else; causing a consequence for something else.

    • The outage was caused by an upstream error in a payments library.
    • You can also check the upstream and/or Debian bug trackers for open and closed bugs and the upstream revision history or newer release(s).
  • 6

    biologynatural-sciencesOccurring earlier than something else; (also, usually, especially) being an influence on something else; causing a consequence for something else.

upstreamadv/ʌpˈstɹiːm/

  • 1

    Against the current.

    • In another moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore, but almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend up-stream.

upstreamverb/ʌpˈstɹiːm/

  • 1

    To stream upward.

  • 2

    To have (a software library, patch, etc.) accepted by the original developers of the related software, so that they maintain and distribute it.

    • I'd be more than happy to upstream your patch.

upstreamnoun/ʌpˈstɹiːm/

  • 1

    Part of the river towards the upstream direction.

    • The total depth of water at the upstream was measured by using a pointer attached to a carriage sitting on the water table walls.
  • 2

    The original developers or maintainers of software.

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。