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Limbo and paradise- -

                                      

Our use of the word  limbo to refer to states of oblivion, confinement, or transition is derived from the theological sense of  Limbo as a place where souls remain that cannot enter heaven, for example, unbaptized infants.  Limboin Roman Catholic theology is located on the border of Hell, which explains the name chosen for it. The Latin word  limbus, having meanings such as “an ornamental border to a fringe” and “a band or girdle,” was chosen by Christian theologians of the Middle Ages to denote this border region. English borrowed the word  limbus directly, but the form  limbo that caught on in English, first recorded in a work composed around 1378, is from the ablative form of  limbus, the form that would be used in expressions such as  in limb½, “in Limbo.”
我们用 limbo这个词指被忘却、监禁或过渡的状态，此用法源于 Limbo的神学含义，指那些不能升入天堂的灵魂（如未受洗的儿童）所在地。 Limbo在罗马天主教的教义中指位于地狱的边境，这也是为什么选这个词指地狱的边境的原因。拉丁词 limbus有诸如“流苏或穗状的装饰性花边“和”嵌条或腰带”的意思，中世纪的基督教神学家选用这个词来指这种边界地区。英语直接借用了 limbus这个词，但出现于英语中的 limbo这种形式，首次记载于1378年左右完成的作品中，它源自 limbus的夺格形式，这种用法是在短语 in limbo中出现的，意思是“在地狱的边界地区”。

Perhaps the supreme example of the semantic process known as melioration is the word  paradise. In tracing this word from its origins to its present status, we see an elevation, or melioration, of meaning that raises the word to new heights. The history begins with the Avestan (the eastern dialect of Old Iranian) word  pairi-da¶za-, “enclosure,” made up of  pairi, “around,” and  da¶za-, “wall.” The Greek military leader and historian Xenophon, who served with Greek mercenaries in Persia, first used the Greek word  paradeisos adopted from the Avestan word to refer to the Persian kings' and nobles' parks or pleasure grounds. This Greek word extended to mean “garden” or “orchard” was an obvious choice for  translators of the Bible into Greek to use both for the Garden of Eden and the Abode of the Blessed, or heaven. The Greek word was adopted into Late Latin and was used much as we might expect in its biblical senses in ecclesiastical Latin (Late Latin  paradºsus). The Old English word  paradis taken from Latin is found, but our word probably really established itself in Middle English (first recorded before 1200), derived both from Latin and from Old French, which had adopted the word from Latin.
 paradise.这个词也许能作为词义进化最典型的例子，从它的起源到现在的地位，我们可以看到词义的进化或改进把这个词带到了一个新的高度。这个历史过程从意为“领地，圈地”的阿维斯陀语（古伊朗人西部方言） pairi-daeza-,开始，由意为“环形的” pairi,和意为“墙”的 daeza-,组成。曾随希腊雇佣军到波斯服役的希腊军事将领和历史学家色诺芬，首先使用了希腊语词 paradeisos,，该词采用了阿维斯陀词，指波斯国王和贵族们的花园或游乐场，这个希腊词衍生到表示“花园”或“果园”，显然是译者在把《圣经》翻译成希腊文时所做出的选择，以用来表明伊甸园和天国或天堂，有这两种含义的希腊词被引入后期的拉丁语中且当它们在教会拉丁文（后期拉丁语 paradisus)中意为《圣经》方面的意义时被更广泛地使用，古英语 paradis一词来自拉丁文，但我们用的这个词可能在中古英语（首次记录在1200年前）中真正确立了起来，人们发现它源于拉丁文和从拉丁文中采纳了这个词的古法语。

- 作者： 翰唐 访问统计：　2005年08月17日, 星期三 19:56 加入博采