- 1水傳播的、經水傳染的；（運輸上）水運的。醫療衛生新聞裡最常見的是「水媒傳染病／經水傳播的疾病」，像霍亂、傷寒；災後停水、水管破裂時，記者就會提到這個。運輸的用法是「水運」，屬公文、報告的正式語氣。油漆罐上的「水性（漆）」也是這個字。
Waterborne means carried by water. You meet it in two quite different worlds.
The first, and by far the more common, is health. A waterborne disease is one that spreads through water people drink or wash in — , typhoid, dysentery, many kinds of . The water looks clean, but it is carrying the from one person to the next. After a flood or an earthquake, when break and clean water runs short, aid workers immediately start worrying about waterborne illness, and that is the phrase you will read in the news. You can also say waterborne bacteria, waterborne parasites, waterborne pollution.
The second world is transport and shipping, where waterborne simply means travelling on water: waterborne freight, waterborne trade, a waterborne patrol. This use is formal and rather technical — a shipping report or a government document, not a conversation.
There is a third, smaller use worth knowing if you ever buy paint: a 'waterborne' paint or coating is one where the colour is carried in water rather than in a chemical solvent, so it smells less and you can clean your brush in the sink. The word sits in a small family of `-borne` words that all work the same way: airborne (carried by air), bloodborne (carried by blood), foodborne (carried by food). Once you see the pattern, all of them open at once.
組成water + -borne. -borne is an old past participle of the verb bear in its original sense 'to carry' (as in 'bear a burden'), not the modern sense 'to give birth to'. So waterborne = water-carried.
同家族的字
- airbornesame `-borne` — carried by air; used of diseases, of dust, and of a plane once it has left the ground
- foodbornesame `-borne` — carried by food, as in foodborne illness
- bearthe verb `-borne` comes from, in its old meaning 'to carry'
- burdenfrom the same old root as `bear` — the thing that is carried
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。
waterborneadj
- 1
Transported or transmitted by water.
- 2
Floating on the water; afloat.
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。