- 1動物園管理員、飼育員。負責餵食、清理欄舍、每天觀察動物健康的那個人，不是獸醫也不是售票員。拼法 zookeeper / zoo-keeper 都通，現在多寫成一個字。
A zoo-keeper is the person whose job is looking after the animals in a zoo. Not the person who sells the tickets, and usually not the animal doctor either — the keeper is the one who feeds the animals, cleans out their homes, checks that they look well, and notices early when something is wrong. Keepers often work with the same few animals for years, so they come to know each one as an individual.
It is a countable noun for a person: one zoo-keeper, two zoo-keepers. The spelling moves around: you will see 'zoo-keeper' with a , 'zookeeper' as one word, and 'zoo keeper' as two. All three are used, and none is wrong; one word is the most common spelling today, especially in American writing. Inside a zoo, staff usually it and just say 'keeper' — 'ask one of the keepers'.
A note on the word 'keeper'. English uses it for a person who takes care of something over time: a , a goalkeeper, a , a . It carries a sense of responsibility and of watching over — not just 'the person who holds' but 'the person who is trusted with'. That is exactly the feeling in zoo-keeper.
組成zoo + keeper. 'Zoo' is short for 'zoological garden' — Victorian Londoners clipped the long name down to one syllable and it stuck. 'Keeper' is 'keep' plus -er, 'one who keeps or looks after'.
同家族的字
- shopkeepersame -keeper piece: the person who looks after a shop
- goalkeepersame -keeper piece: the player who looks after the goal
- beekeepersame -keeper piece: the person who keeps bees
- zoology'zoo' is a short form of 'zoological garden', from Greek zōion, 'animal'
原始詞典資料1 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。
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
- zookeeper
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。