- 1溫血的、恆溫的（生物學正式用語為「恆溫動物」）；形容人時指「熱情的、血性的」
Warm-blooded animals keep their body at about the same warm temperature all the time, whether the air around them is hot or cold. Birds and — so dogs, whales, , and you — are warm-blooded. Their bodies burn food to make heat, which is why they must eat a lot. The opposite is cold-blooded: snakes, fish, and frogs take their temperature from around them, so a lizard is cool in the morning and warm after lying in the sun. Scientists prefer the word "endothermic", because "warm-blooded" is a bit rough as a description, but every ordinary person and every school textbook says warm-blooded, and it is the word you need. It is an adjective, and it keeps its : a warm-blooded animal, these animals are warm-blooded. There is a second, older use about people: a warm-blooded person is full of feeling — passionate, quick to love or to anger. In that use it is a compliment about someone having strong human feelings, and it usually appears in novels rather than in conversation.
From the word’s history
Compound of warm + blooded.
由 warm「溫暖」加 blooded「有⋯血的」組成。
組成warm + blooded. Blooded is blood + -ed, meaning "having blood of that kind" — the same pattern as blue-eyed (having blue eyes) or long-haired (having long hair).
同家族的字
- cold-bloodedthe exact opposite, built the same way; also means cruel and unfeeling when said of people
- bloodthe base word inside blooded
- hot-bloodedsame pattern — said of people who anger or love easily
- blue-eyedthe same -ed pattern: having eyes of that kind
原始詞典資料2 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。
warm-bloodedadj
- 1
biologynatural-scienceszoologyMaintaining a relatively constant and warm body temperature, regardless of the ambient temperature; endothermic.
- The cold-blooded animals are all feeble breathers, and the most energetic breathers are the warmest-blooded. A mollusc, a fish, a frog, a quadruped, and a bird, represent the various stages of this correspondence.
- Moreover, instead of hibernating like our northern reptiles, they [birds] are able to remain active all winter, even in arctic latitudes, so long as sufficient food is available to maintain the body. This retention of heat increases the body temperature, and implies an increase as well of the creature’s activity, so that birds in addition to being the warmest-blooded animals are at the same time the quickest and most active.
- 2
Passionate.
- Claire jumped from her chair and smiled the warmest-blooded smile that she could muster.
- Chasseur said, “Murder is a grisly, nasty business, Jessica. The female species simply doesn’t have the genetic makeup to deal sensibly with it. Murder is a cold-blooded act. Women are, by nature, warmer-blooded than men, which is why they’re so attractive to the male of the species.”
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。