Words That Are Much Older Than They Seem

100多年前就有”fanboy/girl”，原来这些流行语早就在用了

FRIEND, AS A VERB

A common lament in pieces about “kids these days and their social whatsawhozits” is “when did friend become a verb?” The answer is: Sometime in the 1400s, if not earlier. In the earliest examples of the verb friend from the OED, it just means "to make friends." You could go to a place, and friend some people there. It also had the meaning of helping someone out, being a friend to them, e.g., “Reports came that the King would friend Lauderdale,” an example from 1698.

当代年轻人的社交活动，让人不禁感慨，“friend（成为好友）什么时候变成动词了？”答案是：不晚于14世纪。Friend做动词的例子最早出现在《牛津英语词典》中，表示“交朋友”。你可以去一个地方，和那里的人交朋友。Friend还有帮助别人，成为朋友的意思，例如1698年的一个例子，“有报道说国王会帮助劳德代尔”。

UNFRIEND

If you could friend someone, it was only natural, according to the productive rules of English word formation, that you could unfriend them, too. The word shows up in this example from 1659: “I Hope, Sir, that we are not mutually Un-friended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.”

如果能用friend表示“成为好友”，那么根据英语词汇构成规则，自然也可以用unfriend表示“移除好友”。这个关于unfriend的例子出现在1659年：“先生，我希望我们不会因为已经存在的分歧而绝交。”

HANG OUT

Hang out has been used as a verb for passing the time since at least the 1830s. In the Pickwick Papers (1837), Charles Dickens wrote: "I say, old boy, where do you hang out?"

至少从19世纪30年代起，“hang out（闲逛）”就用作打发时间的动词。查尔斯·狄更斯在《匹克威克外传》（1837）中写道：“我说，老家伙，你在哪里闲逛？”

FUNKY

The application of funky to music came around the 1930s, but the “strong smell” sense had been around long before that. Since the 1600s, funk was slang for the stale smell of tobacco smoke, and by extension, anything that stank. Cheeses, rooms, and especially ship’s quarters could be described as funky.

20世纪30年代，人们开始用funky（放克风格的）形容音乐，但早在那之前，funky就表示“强烈的气味”相关的感觉。自17世纪以来，funk作为俚语，指烟草的陈腐气味，并由此引申为任何有臭味的东西。奶酪、房间，尤其是船舱，都可以用funky（恶臭的）来形容。

FANBOY AND FANGIRL

The application of fanboy to comics and science fiction had to wait until the '70s, but before that, there were sports fans, and in 1919 the paper in Decatur, Illinois, reported that, “it was a shock to the fan boys when Cincinnati ... beat the Chicago White Sox.” The first citation for fangirl is from 1934: “Mary ... dashed out through the rain so swiftly that only two of the fan-girls caught her.”

上世纪70年代，漫画和科幻小说开始拥有“粉丝”，但在此之前已经出现体育粉，1919年，伊利诺伊州迪凯特的报纸报道，“辛辛那提击败芝加哥白袜队时，男粉丝们感到震惊。”1934年，女粉丝（fangirl）第一次被引用：“玛丽……不顾雨水迅速冲了出去，以至于只有两个女粉丝发现了她。”

来源：Mental Floss

编辑：董静

本文转载自中国日报网，如有侵权，请联系我们删除。