English Vocabulary and Etymology 2016/10/13(Week5)

▲Hamlet

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother's widow. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and is ranked among the most powerful and influential tragedies in English literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". The play likely was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime, and still ranks among his most performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879. It has inspired many other writers – from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and Iris Murdoch – and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella".

▲Icarus

In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the creator of the Labyrinth. Often depicted in art, Icarus and his father attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. Icarus' father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings or the sun's heat melt them. Icarus ignored his father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun, when the wax in his wings melted and he fell into the sea. This tragic theme of failure at the hands of hubris contains similarities to that of Phaëthon.

▲Labyrinth

In Greek mythology, the labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur eventually killed by the hero Theseus. Daedalus had so cunningly made the Labyrinth that he could barely escape it after he built it.

▲Musée des Beaux Arts

"Musée des Beaux Arts" is a poem written by W. H. Auden in December 1938 while he was staying in Brussels, Belgium with Christopher Isherwood.

                                                       W. H. Auden

⬦Poem

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

▲Prefix

⬥ab- away, from, from off, down

For example, absent, abandon

⬥de- down, off, away, from among, down from

For example, delete, deliver

⬥fra- brittle

For example, fragile, fragment

⬥gen- something produced, birth, start

For example, generate, gene

⬥pro- forward, forth, toward the front

For example, proceed, propel

⬥zeal- ardor, eager rivalry, emulation

For example, zealous, zealot

▲Suffix

⬥-ant: a person does a special thing

For example, accountant, contestant, observant

▲Vocabulary
☆Week7, Week8, Week9

✪ inclement (adj.) 1660s, from French inclément (16c.) and directly from Latin inclementem (nominative inclemens) "harsh, unmerciful," from in- "not, opposite of, without" (see in- (1)) + clementem "mild, placid." "Limitation to weather is curious" [Weekley].

✪ obsessed (adj.) mid-15c., "tormented, obsessed," past participle adjective from obsess. Originally especially "possessed" by a devil, etc.

✪ mastiff (n.) large, powerful breed of dog, early 14c., from Old French mastin "great cur, mastiff" (Modern French mâtin) or Provençal mastis, both from Vulgar Latin *mansuetinus "domesticated, tame," from Latin mansuetus "tame, gentle" (see mansuetude). Probably originally meaning a dog that stays in the house, thus a guard-dog or watchdog. Form in English perhaps influenced by Old French mestif "mongrel."

✪ doleful (adj.) late 13c., with -ful, from Middle English dole "grief" (early 13c.), from Old French doel (Modern French deuil), from Late Latin dolus "grief," from Latin dolere "suffer, grieve," which is of uncertain origin. De Vaan reports that it can be derived from a PIE root *delh- "to chop" "under the assumption that 'pain' was expressed by the feeling of 'being torn apart'. A causative *dolh-eie- 'to make somebody (feel) split' could have become 'to cause pain'. The experiencer must originally have been expressed in the dative." Related: Dolefully.

✪ interject (v.) 1570s, back-formation from interjection or else from Latin interiectus, past participle of intericere "to throw between, insert, interject." Related: Interjected; interjecting.

✪ histrionics (n.) "theatrics, pretense," 1820, from histrionic; also see -ics.

✪ elusive (adj.) 1719, from Latin elus-, past participle stem of eludere "elude, frustrate" (see elude) + -ive. Related: Elusiveness.

✪ symptomatic (adj.) 1690s, from French symptomatique or directly from Late Latin symptomaticus, from symptomat-, stem of symptoma (see symptom). General sense of "indicative (of)" is from 1751. Related: Symptomatical (1580s).

✪ imminent (adj.) 1520s, from Middle French imminent (14c.) and directly from Latin imminentem (nominative imminens) "overhanging; impending," present participle of imminere "to overhang, lean towards," hence "be near to," also "threaten, menace, impend, be at hand, be about to happen," from assimilated form of in- "into, in, on, upon" (see in- (2)) + -minere "jut out," which is related to mons "hill" (see mount (n.1)). Related: Imminently.

✪ engross (v.) c. 1400, "to buy up the whole stock of" (in Anglo-French from c. 1300), from Old French en gros "in bulk, in a large quantity, at wholesale," as opposed to en detail. See gross.
Figurative sense of "absorb the whole attention" is first attested 1709. A parallel engross, meaning "to write (something) in large letters," is from Anglo-French engrosser, from Old French en gros "in large (letters)." Related: Engrossed; engrossing.