meat

英 [miːt]美 [mit]
  • n. 肉，肉类（食用）
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中文词源

meat 肉

来自古英语mete,食物，来自Proto-Germanic*mati,来自PIE*mad,湿的，多汁的，词源同mate,mastoid.后词义限定为肉，其原义见中古英语词grene-mete,蔬菜，即green meat.

英文词源

meat
meat: [OE] Etymologically, meat is a ‘portion of food measured out’. The word’s ultimate source is Indo-European *mat-, *met- ‘measure’, which also lies behind English measure. This produced a prehistoric Germanic *matiz, which by the time it passed into Old English as mete had broadened out in meaning from ‘portion of food’ to simply ‘food’.

That is still the meaning of its Germanic relatives, Swedish mat and Danish mad, and it survives for English meat in certain fixed contexts, such as meat and drink and What’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison, but for the most part the more specific ‘flesh used as food’, which began to emerge in the 14th century, now dominates.
=> measure
meat (n.)
Old English mete "food, item of food" (paired with drink), from Proto-Germanic *mati (cognates: Old Frisian mete, Old Saxon meti, Old Norse matr, Old High German maz, Gothic mats "food," Middle Dutch, Dutch metworst, German Mettwurst "type of sausage"), from PIE *mad-i-, from root *mad- "moist, wet," also with reference to food qualities, (cognates: Sanskrit medas- "fat" (n.), Old Irish mat "pig;" see mast (n.2)).

Narrower sense of "flesh used as food" is first attested c. 1300; similar sense evolution in French viande "meat," originally "food." In Middle English, vegetables still could be called grene-mete (15c.). Figurative sense of "essential part" is from 1901. Dark meat, white meat popularized 19c., supposedly as euphemisms for leg and breast, but earliest sources use both terms without apparent embarrassment.
The choicest parts of a turkey are the side bones, the breast, and the thigh bones. The breast and wings are called light meat; the thigh-bones and side-bones dark meat. When a person declines expressing a preference, it is polite to help to both kinds. [Lydia Maria Child, "The American Frugal Housewife," Boston, 1835]
First record of meat loaf is from 1876. Meat-market "place where one looks for sex partners" is from 1896 (meat in various sexual senses of "penis, vagina, body regarded as a sex object, prostitute" are attested from 1590s; Old English for "meat-market" was flæsccyping ('flesh-cheaping')); meat wagon "ambulance" is from 1920, American English slang, said to date from World War I (in a literal sense by 1857). Meat-grinder in the figurative sense attested by 1951. Meat-hook in colloquial transferred sense "arm" attested by 1919.

双语例句

1. Remove the meat with a fork and divide it among four plates.
用餐叉把肉叉走，分到4个盘里。
来自柯林斯例句
2. The government increased prices on several basic commodities like bread and meat.
政府提高了面包、肉类等几种基本商品的价格。
来自柯林斯例句
3. The meat they'd managed to procure assuaged their hunger.
他们把搞到手的肉拿来充饥。
来自柯林斯例句
4. They would sell the meat off as pet food.
他们将把肉当作宠物食品卖掉。
来自柯林斯例句
5. Meat was available once a week if at all.
就算有肉，也是每周才吃一次。
来自柯林斯例句