喜樂美語
  1. 1從何處、從那裡（古語／書面語）。相當於中文文言的「自何處」「所從來」。台灣學生只要「讀得懂」就好，不必自己用——現代英文口語一律講 where ... from。它有兩個親戚：whence（從哪裡來）、whither（往哪裡去）、where（在哪裡），可以三個一起記。

    Whence means 'from where' or 'from which place'. It is a very old word, and today it belongs to books, poems, the Bible, old stories and jokes — nobody orders coffee and says whence. You will meet it in two jobs. As a question: 'Whence came this noise?' means 'Where did this noise come from?' As a joining word inside a sentence: 'He returned to the village whence he came' means 'the village that he came from'. It also stretches beyond real places to sources and causes: 'a , whence all the trouble began' — meaning 'and from that the trouble began'. Modern writers use it deliberately, for an old or grand or gently funny flavour, and it is common in the fixed phrase 'return whence you came'. Because whence already contains 'from', careful old writers would never say 'from whence' — but Shakespeare and the King James Bible both do ('from whence cometh my help'), so it is not really an error, just something teachers argue about. For your own writing, plain 'where … from' is almost always the better choice; you need whence mainly for reading.

From the word’s history

From Middle English whennes, from Old English hwanon 'from where' + adverbial -s.

源自古英文 hwanon「從哪裡」，加上副詞字尾 -s。

Wiktionary

組成Built from when-/where- (the question word) plus an old -s ending that meant 'from' in Middle English (spelled whennes). That same old -s survives in words like 'always' and 'nowadays'. So the 'from' is already inside the word.

同家族的字

  • whensame Old English root hwanon/hwonne — whence is the 'from' version of the same question word
  • thencebuilt the same way: 'from there', matching there as whence matches where
  • hencebuilt the same way: 'from here', and now mostly meaning 'for this reason'

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。

whenceadv/ʍɛns/

  • 1

    archaicformalliteraryFrom where; from which place or source.

    • Whence came I?
    • "Pork" comes from French, whence we get most of our modern cooking terms.

whenceconj/ʍɛns/

  • 1

    literaryUsed for introducing the result of a fact that has just been stated; thence

    • The work is slow and dangerous, whence the high costs.
    • I scored more than you in the exam, whence we can conclude that I am better at the subject than you are.

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。