Everyone knows that stories are made up of words, from short poems to epic novels.
众所周知，故事是由词组成的，不管是短短的叙事诗还是长篇史诗小说。
But did you know that a single word itself can tell an entire story?
但是你知道吗，有一个单词自己就有一个完整的故事。
You see, just as we can look at a story's plot, setting, and characters,
正如我们可以研究一个故事的情节、设置和人物，
we can also study the history of an individual word,
我们也可以研究一个单词的历史，
where it developed, and the cultures and people who helped shape it.
看这个词如何演化以及在成形过程中起作用的文化和人。
Looking into the story of a word is like counting the rings of a tree.
研究一个单词自己的故事就像数一棵树的年轮。
Newer words, like Google or cyborg, have shorter stories.
新的单词，比如Google（谷歌）或cyborg（半机械人），它们自己的故事很短。
But the older the word, the longer the story and the more it stands to reveal to us not only about itself,
而一个单词的“年纪”越大，它的故事就越长，向我们展示的不光关于这个单词、
but about ourselves and our history.
还有关于我们自己和我们的历史的信息，也越多。
The oldest words in present-day English are those that come from Old English,
在现在的英语当中，最古老的单词都来自古英语，
the ancestor of our modern language whose first seeds were planted about 1500 years ago.
古英语是我们现代语言的始祖，起源于大约1500年前。
Compared to languages like Greek or Chinese that date back thousands of years,
相对于希腊语和中文这些历史长达几千年的语言，
English is just a sapling in the lexical forest.
英语在语言森林里只是一棵小树苗。
But the stories of its words often start long before English itself took root.
但英语单词的故事却早在英语发源之前就开始了。
One such word is the familiar word true, as in true stories. Let's take a look.
其中一个这样的词就是我们熟悉的true，用法如true stories。让我们来看一下。
True usually means factual, correct, or faithful to reality.
True通常指事实性的、正确的或符合现实的。
It can also mean exact, properly positioned, upright, or straight.
它也可以指精确、恰当放置的、正直或笔直。
A true friend is loyal, reliable, faithful, and steadfast.
“真正的朋友”是忠诚、可靠、忠实和坚定的。
The word true is a simple word,
True是一个简单的词，
and we can add some affixes to grow its family tree with words like truer, truest, truly, truth, and untruth.
我们可以添加一些词缀，在这个词的家谱上造出更多衍生词，比如更真实，最真实，真实地，事实以及虚假。
But if we go in the other direction to look at the roots of true itself,
但如果我们反其道而行，去追溯true这个词的根源，
we find even more relatives further up the family tree.
我们会在老家谱上找到更多亲戚。
The words trust, bethroth, and truce all derive from the same source as true,
信任，订婚以及停战，这些词都和true有一样的词源，
and these words all denote faithfulness or confidence.
都一样有着“忠诚”或“信任”的意味。
A thousand years ago, the word true looked and sounded different than it does today.
一千年前，true这个词不管拼写还是发音都和今天很不一样。
In several Old English dialects, the word treow was a noun that meant good faith or trust, a pledge or a promise.
在几种古英语方言里，treow这个词是一个名词，意思是忠诚的信仰，或者信任，是一种誓言或承诺。

But it also had another definition, tree, and that's no coincidence.
但它也有另外一层意思，树，而这并非巧合。
If we trace the roots back even farther, we find that both meanings derive from a common origin,
如果我们追溯到更远的历史，我们发现，这两个含义（诚信和树）来自一个相同的起源，
where some of the earliest expressions of the concept of truth were associated with the uprightness of an oak,
在那里，一些有关“真实”这个概念的表述，是和橡树的笔直、
the steadiness of a silver birch, and the fidelity of an orchard baring fruit year after year.
白桦树的稳固以及年复一年生产水果的果园表现出的那种尽责联系在一起的。
This may sound like a stretch at first, but trees are the oldest living organisms on this planet.
这乍听起来有些牵强，但别忘了，树是这个星球上最古老的生命体。
Some that would have been called treow long ago still stand today.
一些当年会被人们称为treow的树今天仍然存在。
The Fortingall Yew in Scotland is more than 2,000 years old.
苏格兰的福廷格尔红豆杉已经活了2000多年了。
A Californian Bristlecone Pine is more than 5,000.
加州有一棵狐尾松有5000多岁。
And Utah's Pando-quaking Aspen Grove has a single root system that dates back more than 80 millennia.
犹他州有一片山杨树林，他们有一个共用的根系，其历史可以追溯到八万多年前。
Trees have also held a sacred place in many cultures throughout history.
历史上，树也在诸多文化中占有神圣的地位。
The Celtic peoples who first inhabited the British Isles believed that trees housed deities.
凯尔特民族一开始居住在英伦三岛，他们相信树里居住着神。
And, in fact, the ancient Druids take their name from the same ancient root as tree.
而事实上，古德鲁伊教的名字就来自于同样古老的树名。
Planting a tree is itself an act of faith and commitment.
植树本身就是一种代表信仰和承诺的行为。
Not only are trees upright and prototypically straight,
不仅因为树木在形态上是向上而且通常是笔直的，
but they are actual, solid, and real, something you can see and touch.
更因为它们如此真实而坚固，是你可以亲眼看到、亲手触摸的东西。
And they are as reliable and steadfast to us today as they were a millennium ago,
而且，就和千年以前一样，树木始终那么可靠坚定，
nurturing us, sheltering us, and providing the pages of our books.
养育我们，庇护我们以及贡献我们书本的纸张。
Philosophers and poets, people in search of the truth, have often sought it in trees.
哲学家和诗人，这些寻求真理的人，经常会从树木上去寻找（真理）。
'What did the tree learn from the Earth to be able to talk with the sky?' asked Pablo Neruda.
“树从土地里学到了什么东西，让它能和天空交谈？”诗人巴勃罗·聂鲁达这样问道。
'A tree falls the way it leans,' says an old proverb.
“树倒的方向也是它倾斜的方向”。这是一个古老的谚语。
Just as trees mark our landscapes and witness our histories, the stories of words landscape our language,
正如树木成就了我们的风景并见证了我们的历史，单词的故事就是语言这幅风景画的树木，
capturing the rains and sunshine of generations and sending roots and branches far and wide.
收集一代代人智慧的阳光雨露，将根和枝叶伸得更远。
As there is a whole orchard in a single seed, there is a whole story in a single word, and that's the truth.
就像一颗种子可以长成一个果园，一个单词里也有一整个故事，这是真的。