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Usurious describes interest, rates, or loans that are high — so high that charging them feels wrong or even criminal. It is a formal, written word, at home in law, newspapers and history books rather than in conversation, and it always carries blame: nobody describes their own rates as usurious. In many countries there is a legal limit, so a usurious loan can literally be an illegal one. Occasionally people stretch it beyond money, saying a price or a fee is usurious just to mean greedy, but that is a writer showing off a little. Say it 'yoo-ZHOOR-ee-us'.
高利貸的、利息高得離譜的
組成usury (lending at unfairly high interest) + -ous (an ending that makes an adjective, 'full of, having the nature of'). Usury goes back through Old French to Latin ūsūra 'interest'.
原始詞典資料2 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。
usuriousadj/juːˈʒuːɹɪəs/
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Of or pertaining to usury.
- If an Executor pay an Uſurious Bond, other Creditors may make a Devaſtavit of it, Hob. p. 167. If a Man be bound in an Obligation Uſurious, the Bond is void between the Parties, yea and Strangers ſhall take the advantage of it; and therefore if ſuch an Obligor makes his Executor and die, and the Executor pay the uſurious Bond, other Creditors may ſhew it, and make a Devaſtavit of it, in Winchcomb and the Biſhop of Wincheſter’s Caſe.
- The fallacy of his [Justice William Best’s] argument is, that he supposes the objection to the plaintiff’s recovery to be, that his contract with the defendant is usurious; whereas the objection really arises from the circumstance that these notes are deposited to enforce another contract, which was usurious, and the defence rests on this — not that more than 5 per cent. is reserved by these bills, but that they are destined to enforce a contract which is usurious.
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Exorbitant.
- But nature, violated by these excesses, exacts a most usurious interest for this illicit indulgence. She makes them pay for moments of rapture with hours of despair.
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。