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A person who wants good things for someone else and shows it — by sending a card, waiting outside to clap, writing a message, bringing flowers. The key thing is the distance: a well-wisher is usually NOT a close friend or family member. They are the crowd at the hospital gate, the strangers who write to a singer who is ill, the people lining the street for a wedding. That is why the word appears most often in the plural, in news writing: 'crowds of well-wishers', 'hundreds of well-wishers gathered'. Their support is warm but light — good feeling from outside the circle. It can carry a faint edge if you want it to, since a well-wisher gives words rather than help; 'he has plenty of well-wishers but few real friends' uses exactly that gap. The spelling is normally .
祝福者、來道賀(或探望)的人;新聞裡常說「祝福的民眾」
組成well (好好地、如你所願地) + wisher (許願、祝願的人)。合起來:「希望你好的人」。這裡的 well 是副詞的 well,不是水井那個 well。
同家族的字
- wishsame 'wish' — 祝願
- wishfulsame 'wish' — 一廂情願的
- well-meaningsame adverb 'well' — 出於好意的(但可能幫倒忙)
原始詞典資料3 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。
well-wishernoun詞源 1/ˈwɛlˌwɪʃə/
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Someone who extends good wishes, or expresses sympathy, to someone else.
- [T]hose honest gentlemen that are always exposed to the wit and raillery of their well-wishers and companions; that are pelted by men, women, and children, friends and foes, and in a word, stand as butts in conversation, for every one to shoot at that pleases.
- [T]he actual traytor or rebel is guilty of perjury in the eye of the lavv; the ſecret promoter, or vvell-vviſher of the cauſe, is ſo before the Tribunal of conſcience.
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obsoleterareFollowed by to: someone who has an ambition to be or become something.
- I never saw your chancellor, nor his chaplain. The latter has a good deal of learning, and is a well wisher to be an author: your chancellor is an excellent man.
well-wishernoun詞源 2/ˈwɛlˌwɪʃə/
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rareSomeone who makes a wish at a wishing well.
- They strolled on and passed a smiling man standing by the Village wishing well. "Well," said the well-wisher. Ah … must be the Village idiot.
- "I'll put a removable lid on it [a wishing well]," he assured her. "That way, it'll be safe for the nippers, but accessible to, um, well wishers. Have a wish in mind, Bree?"
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。