shibboleth
英 ['ʃɪbəleθ]
美 ['ʃɪbəlɛθ]
- n. 口令；（基督教《圣经》）考验用的词；特殊的习惯
GRE
shibboleth 口音，习惯，准则，教条，行话来自希伯来语 shibboleth,麦穗。 现词义来自圣经中记载的小故事，两民族 Gileadites 和 Ephraimites 打战，Ephraimites 人打败了逃跑，但由于这两个民族人长得一样，从长相上无 法辨别，但是口音有差别，Ephraimites 人无法发-sh-音，于是，Gileadites 人在关卡上让所有 通过的人念 shibboleth 这个词，不能正确的发-sh-的人就抓起来。因而引申诸相关词义。类 似于中国南北东西口音差异。
- shibboleth
- shibboleth: [14] Hebrew shibbōleth meant ‘stream’. According to the Bible, the Gileadites used it as a password, for they knew their enemies the Ephraimites could not pronounce the sh properly (‘And it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay, then they said unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right’, Judges 12:5–6).
In 17th-century English it came to be applied generically to any word used as a test of pronunciation, particularly as a sign of belonging to a group, and hence by extension to any catchword or slogan adopted by a group, and this eventually evolved into the modern sense ‘outmoded slogan, practice, etc still adhered to’.
- shibboleth (n.)
- late 14c., the Hebrew word shibboleth, meaning "flood, stream," also "ear of corn;" in Judges xii:4-6. It was the password used by the Gileadites to distinguish their own men from fleeing Ephraimites, because Ephraimites could not pronounce the -sh- sound. Hence the figurative sense of "watchword" (first recorded 1630s), which evolved by 1862 to "outmoded slogan still adhered to." A similar test-word was cicera "chick pease," used by the Italians to identify the French (who could not pronounce it correctly) during the massacre called the Sicilian Vespers (1282).
- 1. It is time to go beyond the shibboleth that conventional forces cannot deter.
- 是时候摆脱那些传统力量无法遏制的陈规陋习了。
来自辞典例句
- 2. They would say to him, Then say, Shibboleth.
- 6就对他说, 你说示播列.
来自互联网
- 3. Maritime nations still respond automatically to the shibboleth of the freedom of the seas.
- 海洋国家依然听从[四海自由]的口令.
来自互联网
