灵魂拷问：你真的理解“until”这个小词吗？
until=before？
看到until一词，同学们的第一反应是不是“直到”、“到……为止”？
有的同学可能还会联想到 “Not until”的部分倒装用法或是“not … until…”，这两个搭配都表示“直到…才…”。
（有木有想起自己以前做中高考英语语法题纠结的场景呢？）
不过到了GRE考试，如果只知道until是“直到”的意思，并不足以帮助我们理解原文。
比如下面两个句子：
1. What prevents the planet from continuing its spiral until it collides with the star?
2. Until the 1930s, the tango was primarily thought of as a dance form rather than as a genre of song.
是不是有种似懂非懂的感觉？
其实，这两句当中的until都可以理解为“在……时间之前”，可以和before同义替换。
光说不练假把式，下面来看看具体的案例~
What prevents the planet from continuing its spiral until it collides with the star?
until替换为before，句意不变→
What prevents the planet from continuing its spiral before it collides with the star?
🌟翻译：行星在与恒星相撞之前，是什么阻止了行星向恒星螺旋式靠近的趋势？
Until the 1930s, the tango was primarily thought of as a dance form rather than as a genre of song.
同样的，until替换为before，句意不变→
Before the 1930s, the tango was primarily thought of as a dance form rather than as a genre of song.
🌟翻译：二十世纪三十年代之前，探戈（tango）主要被看作是一种舞蹈形式，而不是一种音乐体裁。
prior to=before？
此外，prior to也表示“在……时间之前”，
同样可以和before同义替换，比如：
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the framing in piano was made entirely of wood.
🌟翻译：工业革命之前，钢琴内的支架完全是木制的。
The history of the transmission of ancient Roman texts prior to invention of the printing press is reconstructed from evidence both internal and external to the texts themselves.
🌟翻译：古罗马文本在印刷机发明之前的传播历史，可以通过文本自身和文本以外的证据来重建。
总 结
敲黑板！划重点！
until和prior to都有“在……时间之前”的意思，
在句中都能同义替换为before
大家学会了吗？
最后，通过一道真题，
检验一下同学们有没有掌握until和prior to这两个表达的意思。
🌟原文：
A divide between aesthetic and technical considerations has played a crucial role in mapmaking and cartographic scholarship. Since nineteenth century cartographers, for instance, understood themselves as technicians who did not care about visual effects, while others saw themselves as landscape painters. That dichotomy structured the discipline of the history of cartography. Until the 1980s, in what Blakemore and Harley called “the Old is Beautiful Paradigm,” scholars largely focused on maps made before 1800, marveling at their beauty and sometimes regretting the decline of the pre-technical age. Early mapmaking was considered art while modern cartography was located within the realm of engineering utility. Alpers, however, has argued that this boundary would have puzzled mapmakers in the seventeenth century, because they considered themselves to be visual engineers.
🌟题目：
It can be inferred from the passage that, beginning in the 1980s, historians of cartography
A. placed greater emphasis on the beauty of maps made after 1800
B. expanded their range of study to include more material created after 1800
C. grew more sensitive to the way mapmakers prior to 1800 conceived of their work
D. came to see the visual details of maps as aesthetic objects rather than practical cartographic aids
E. reduced the attention they paid to the technical aspects of mapmaking
🌟解析：
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