《牛津英语词典》:90岁的英语词汇权威

Today, we’re revisiting The Times’s crossword column, Wordplay, and a word — OED — that was one of the most difficult clues from the previous week’s puzzles.

今天，我们重温时报的填字游戏专栏“词玩”(Wordplay)，以及一个单词——OED——这是上周的字谜游戏中最难的线索之一。

The Oxford English Dictionary, a.k.a. the OED, is one of the best-known references on the English language. Yet a devious clue — “It ends with ‘zyzzyva,’ in brief” — stumped many of our solvers in the May 3 puzzle. It has appeared in The Times Crossword a total of 139 times.

《牛津英语词典》(The Oxford English Dictionary)，也就是OED，是最著名的英语参考书之一。然而，一条曲折的线索——“简而言之，它以‘zyzzyva’结束”——在5月3日的谜题中让我们的许多读者感到困惑。这个词在时报纵横字谜中一共出现了139次。

The OED was the 1857 brainchild of the Philological Society of London, which decided that existing English language dictionaries were incomplete and deficient.

1857年，伦敦语文学会(Philological Society of London)创造了《牛津英语词典》，该学会认为当时现有的英语词典不完整、有缺陷。

It was a slow and laborious process, as their attempt was to “include all English language vocabulary from the Early Middle English period (1150 AD) onward, plus some earlier words if they had continued to be used into Middle English.” The first part, or “fascicle,” was published in 1884.

这是一个缓慢而费力的过程，因为他们希望“包括中世纪早期（公元1150年）以来的所有英语词汇，再加上中世纪英语中使用的一些更早期的单词。”词典的第一部分，或“分册”，于1884年出版。

The “complete” dictionary — entries are always being added — was published in 1928, and the OED, which is published by the Oxford University Press, just celebrated its 90th birthday.

1928年，总是在添加词目的“完整”词典出版了，牛津大学出版社(Oxford University Press)出版的《牛津英语词典》刚刚迎来了90岁生日。

By the way: A zyzzyva is “A genus of tropical weevils (family Curculionidae) native to South America and typically found on or near palm trees.”

顺便说一句: zyzzyva是“热带象鼻虫（仙茅科）的一个属，原产于南美洲，通常出现于棕榈树上或附近”。