读报刊杂志学英语(六)--英语名词的一些集锦
先来分享最近在Vogue杂志上看到的一句英语。It’s better to cry in a Rolls-Royce than to be happy on a bicycle.—Patrizia Reggiani
Patrizia Reggiani是意大利人, 因雇人杀害前夫Maurizio Gucci—(Gucci品牌创始人的孙子)而入狱18年(被判26年)。 这是她1970s的名言。
这句英语与我们中文里的那句"宁愿在宝马车里哭，不愿在自行车上笑"如出一辙。如果不是因为中文这句也是有出处(节目《非诚勿扰》里有个女生首创) ，我都以为中文是从其他语言翻译过来的。
前一阵网友心城特意前来询问英语笔记的更新，一下子让我有了动力接着归纳总结。以前当老师的时候，对"教学相长"这个说法深有同感，而今日与网友间的分享交流则更是让我自己受益匪浅，因为每个人的视觉不同，看一个单词/句子的角度不同。虽说写这个系列的初衷是为自己，督促自己整理笔记，在此留个备份，便于今后进一步拓展和增添，但是实际上，在与你们大家的分享中我又有诸多新的收获，从不同角度加深了理解。
据不完全统计, 英语中的名词(只限common nouns, 不包括 proper nouns, pronouns) 在所有被统计的词汇里占据27% (https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/1994/hudson1994a.pdf). 这个占了比1/5还要多比例的名词，我应该从怎样一个角度写，心里真没有底。所以一日我问某人:
我: "你知不知道英语中的glitter, flicker, glow, burst, escape, mention可以作名词用? "
他答: "你研究这个干什么？ 你这个问题就好比问人家茴香豆的"茴"字有几种写法。"
我坚持到: "你先回答问题。"
答: "那些词当然可以作名词的，很常见啊。"
我: "那你有没有觉得看到这些常常作动词用的词，偶尔作名词用时，觉得这些名词用的特别形象，带有动感?"
他答，"没有。你们文科生就是没事找事。。。"
说得我一下子没了信心写。
不过人的信心不应该这么容易受打击，还是写自己想写的，万一大家和我感同身受呢:))。为了写这一篇，我把陈年老账都翻出来，不过以前的笔记不记出处的，而且很多时候是从学写作的角度、欣赏的角度记下来的，所以这里罗列的都不是什么生僻的用法，很多都是比较常见的词汇。当然，这个系列写长了，这篇的内容可能跟以前有一篇写词性间的转换使用有点overlap.
转入正题。
先看下面一个句子。这个例句中划线的三个名词的构成有一点点不同，第一个词succession是动词succeed的名词形式，第二个词surrender可能以动词形式出现的频率更高些，第三个词stopover是个组合词。
The protocols were multilayered: a succession of PCR tests by nurses from the Royal Clinics: a Gulfstream jet in the middle of the night from Riyadh; a convoy from a deserted airstrip; a surrender of electronic devices; a stopover at a mysterious guesthouse visible in satellite photos but unmarked on Google Maps. (The Atlantic April 2022)
众所周知，在英语中，名词可以从动词或形容词演变过来，有时只需要在后面加后缀即可变为名词，比如下面所列举:
动词变名词，如nourish —nourishment, criticize—criticism, stop—stoppage, reveal—revelation, disclose—disclosure, divulge—divulgence, betray—betrayal, continue-- continuity 等等
形容词变名词, 如are -- rarity, convenient--convenience, short—shortage, private--privacy等等
I. 但是英语中也有些词，它的词性可以是多元的，既可以作动词用，也可以做名词用(或是形容词用)，当然出现的频率有高有低。我不知道大家看到了一个习惯作动词用的词以名词出现时，大脑会不会兴奋一下，就好比你看见一位老熟人一日乔装打扮，给了你一种新鲜感一样。比如前面提到的flicker一词，当它用在 a flicker of hope (一闪而过的希望) a flicker of inspiration (短暂的启迪/灵感)这样的表达法时， 你会不会觉得很生动形象，带有动感? (希望你们的回答是yes:))) 当然读多了，常常遇见，就像习惯看见老朋友的新装束，人的感觉也会渐渐麻木的:)。
看更多的例子:
Then, with a rush and a cry, a raven soars past, drawing your attention to the unexpected details around you. A flicker of movement makes you grab your camera, but the lizard darts away before you take a picture. Now you notice flowers growing in the shadow of a rock. More surprises await.
February is a time of transition—a month that often begins beneath a mantle of snow and ends with a flicker of warming that presages the arrival of spring.
"Yosemite Valley… is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and gold and wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. "—photographer Ansel Adams
Light dances around the walls and pastel yellows and blues offer a burst of color.
英语很常见的动词作名词用，比如:
The book is a surprisingly buoyant read. (Vogue, August 2021)
Maybe, but the irony is that many people who behave foolishly consider themselves to be “in the know", to be in possession of inside knowledge; access to it, for them, is a point of pride.
下面的这些作名词也很常见，我个人很喜欢这样的词，非常简洁明了。
Despite a report on Tuesday showing a plunge in housing starts and building permits in March, housing remains a bright spot amid indications that economic growth slowed to a crawl in the first three months of the year.
The economy has been hobbled by a strong dollar and weak global demand, which have undermined exports. Lower oil prices are also a drag, as they have eroded the profits of energy firms and prompted them to slash spending on capital projects. (这个显然是很多年前的新闻:))
A number of problems had reached a slow boil.
Alienating the Saudi monarchy, he suggested, would harm Biden’s position. “It’s up to him to think about the interest of America. “ He gave a shrug.
Yet, pushed to the brink of despair, it’s her big sister, someone she looked up to when they were young, someone who’s been a comfort to her in other rough times, that she wants to talk to, someone she imagines might be able to comfort her now.
It is the push and pull of these “other desires”—namely motherhood and the impact childbearing can have on a career, a body, a mind—that the track “King” explores so affectingly. (Vogue May 2022)
In the months that followed his death, we would pull ourselves together and find a resolve we didn’t know we had. (The Atlantic June 2022)
Exactly when the therapeutic virtues of comic books were recognized is unclear. Justin Green, an American cartoonist, gave clinicians a nudge with “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary”, a bawdy autobiographical account of growing up tortured by religious guilt and compulsive neurosis, published in 1972. (The Economist May 21st 2022)
The VC scene has its roots in the 1960s and had been a misfit in the financial world. (The Economist December 11th, 2021)
But there is a catch: Maine’s money may go only to schools whose curriculums are “nonsectarian”. (The Economist December 11th 2021)
Every day is a scramble to justify a sorry existence. (The Economist December 4th 2021)
While the sides bickered, Mr Peterson became a sensation. (The Economist December 4th 2021)
Rarely can a spoonful of rice have caused such a stir. (The Economist December 4th 2021)
II. 英语中有些名词，同一个名词可以用来指事，也可以指人，而不需要加个什么-er之类的来表示。比如下面这些句子。
I never particularly thought of myself as a gossip until I saw my first child, age one and a bit, hold a banana to her ear in the kitchen and say ”whatsthegoss?” into one end. (Vogue, December 2021) (嚼舌头之人)
Gomez remembers being a teenager, at a Shania Twain show in Las Vegas with her dad, when a stranger yelled that her dad was a wetback. (Vogue April 2021) (这个词有好几种解释，一种解释是指墨西哥一带偷渡过来，从河流中游过来，背都还湿的，有点类似我们的fresh off the boat.另一种解释是，整天面朝黄土背朝天，干活干的湿透了衣背的劳动者。)
Softy: He broke with the post-Stalin Soviet Union after deciding that Nikita Khrushchev was a softy. (The Atlantic May 2022) 类似中文里的"软蛋":)
At 18, when she was still filming Wizards, Gomez entered a serious relationship with a teen heartthrob, an entanglement whose off-and-on ups-and-downs were dissected constantly and voraciously until it ended in 2018. (Vogue April 2021) (让人心跳加速的名人，性感之人，或心爱之人)
He’s a regular fixture as Singh’s venues, sometimes seating guests. (Harper’s Bazaar, September 2021) (指常年在一个地方或是一个位置的人)
Virtually every important name in fashion-- YvesSaint Laurent， John Galliano， Tom Ford， the list is endless-- has been a regular at one time or another. (Vogue, May 2022)
Olivia Colman, in an indelible performance, plays a vacationing academic named Leda, squarely in middle age, who sees his Greek-island idyll spoiled by a boisterous American family that has descended upon the resort. (Vogue, November 2021) (in the moive The lost Daughter)
That Utah is such a laggard is probably down to the lasting influence of the Mormon church and believers' tendency to marry young and have large families. (The Economist September 18, 2021)
Ramakrishna， a nineteenth-century mystic, told his devotees that madness was a mark of devotion and should never be mocked. (The Atlantic, October 2022)
既然说到这里，再加一点。我们都知道，很多时候以--er结尾的单词是表示人，比如下面这个句子:
By dint of her personality, as well as the fact that she was a young woman in the spotlight, she had to be unconditionally grateful, composed, sparkling. “I am just such a people-pleaser,” she adds.
但是肯定是有例外。记得上中学时，老师反复强调cook和cooker的区别，cooker是指烧饭的容器，cook才是做饭的人。
再看下面两个例句，都不是指人的。
A rich broth livened by star anise, cloves, ginger, and mild jalapenos warmed our bones as the sun set over the skyline of Wyoming’s Wind river Range, while the hint of fish sauce and burst of lime hit us with flavors that we simply do not usually encounter in the backcountry. After all those samey-samey chilis and pastas, this pho is a gamechanger. (Backpacker)
It was a kind of no-brainer. (Vogue Nov 2021) (这个很常见，指这个东西很简单，不需要用脑都知道，而非无脑之人:))
II. 组合词: 英语中的组合词俯拾皆是，比如现在常用的lockdown,就是由动词和副词组合的名词，这样的例子举不胜举，有些时候两个单词间还保持着hyphen, 有些就是两个词直接联系在一起。中间有没有hyphen我想是应该是约定俗成的吧。
下面简单列举一些:
Verb+adverb/preposition: lockdown, meltdown, crackdown, takeaway, getaway, bail-out, fall-out, sell-off, trade-off, handover, hangover, carryall, comeback, breakthrough, downturn (reverse the order)
Noun+noun: bottleneck, bullhead, ponytail, heartbeat, holidaymaker, backwater, rosebud, cornerstone, spotlight
Verb+verb: hip-hop, tick-tock, tictac, flip-flop, chitchat, humdrum, hotch-potch (podge)
Adj+noun: Shortfall, top-notch, tightrope (walk the tightrope), mainstream, mainstay
Verb+noun: touchstone, runway
再比如Know-how，must-have 等等等等。
用在句子中:
Yosemite National Park, a World Heritage Site, is here, roughly 3 ½ hours east of San Francisco. Whether you hike a mountain, ski the steeps, or lounge in a hot tub beneath a canopy of stars, you’ll find your perfect getaway.
One of the big takeaways of the pandemic is that communities survive better than individuals. (Vogue August 2021)
The crown prince has legalized cinemas and concerts, and invited notably raw hip-hop artists to perform. (The Atlantic April 2022)
Add more humdrum annoyances such as launch delays, which are common, and space tourism may remain a hobby for a few super-rich daredevils with lots of time to spare. (The Economist July 17th, 2021)
It was all quite humdrum-- and that was the point. (The Economist Dec 4th, 2021)
But the realm of the gods is a very real mountain located in central Greece, just north of the fertile Thessalian plain and a hairsbreadth from the Aegean Sea. (Backpacker Spring 2022)
Mainstay: The couple, who married in 1922, were mainstays of Zurich’s fledgling Dada movement. (Vogue Nov 2021)
Keepsake: Glazman points out, suggesting fragrance as a much more effective travel keepsake than a pilfered bottle of shampoo. (Vogue Nov 2021)
Mainstream: Because of their tendency to become quasi-natural monopolies are not exactly mainstream in Washington, DC, but nor are they completely alien to the political debate there. (The Economist November 21-27th, 2020)
Yet his appeal transcends his backwater milieu. (The Economist May 21st 2022)
Mr Berry paints the community in atmospheric hues, each brushstroke deepening the reader’s understanding of how the link between soil and people sustains the town. (The Economist May 21st 2022)
That versatility scored the brand a windfall.
His eight novels and more than 50 short stories are usually set in Port William, a stand-in for Port Royal. (The Economist May 21st 2022)
Indeed, something far more basic explains the run-up in inflation: a surge in stimulus-fuelled demand, compounded by disruptions to supply. (The Economist May 21st 2022)
And so his plan to raise revenue is a hotch-potch of unothodox measures. (The Economist December 4th 2021)
Rob Witwer, a former Republican state lawmaker and co-author of "The Blue-print", wonders whether the Republican Party in Colorado has been too damaged by Mr. Trump to make a comeback. (The Economist September 3rd 2022)
总而言之，英语文字的这种特点， 一词多性，词与词之间的组合，赋予了其语言的生动性，灵活性，常常简洁又传神。
这就暂告一个段落了。又想起某人说的"茴香豆的茴字有几种写法"。我想文字最终的用处不是用来咬文嚼字，它更重要的在于传递信息，传递思想，传递情感。而阅读的关键在于量，大量的阅读会在潜移默化中让我们对文字产生一种感觉, 就是我们平常说的语感，让我们在享受文字之美的同时，感受文章的深度和力度。