这一篇文章昂立外语【新概念培训】给大家讲新概念英语词汇obscure。曾出现于新概念三的Lesson 36 A chance in a million:
Readers happily accepted the fact that an obscure maidservant was really the hero's mother.
在这里的obscure意思是无名的、不起眼的。托马斯就有本书叫做Jude the Obscure(《无名的裘德》)。
让我们来看看The Captives by Hugh Walpole中的一段话:
The dress was very fine--simple of course and quite plain, but elegant as no dress of Maggie's had ever been elegant. ……She had a moment of acute disgust with herself so that she could have torn the dress from her and rushed into her old obscure and dingy black again.
由此可见Maggie原来的装束是朴实无华,非常不起眼的。而与她收到的裙子形成强烈对比。
obscure作为形容词,最基本的含义是模糊的,幽暗的。
如:
He set the bed in an obscure corner.
他把床放在一个昏暗的角落。
这里的obscure就等于dim。又如:
What should she do then? Whither should she go? She flung up her head and looked bravely into the face of Ellen, the cook, who came to remove the breakfast, but she had to bite her lip to keep back the tears that WOULD come and fill her eyes so that the world was misty and obscure. (The Captives by Hugh Walpole)
眼泪模糊了视线,不正是这句话的最恰当翻译吗?
但是obscure和dim以及相近意思的vague有所区别。虽然他们都有缺少亮光的昏暗模糊之意。dim指光线不足或视力较差,不能清晰地看见物体。vague通常作借喻用,形容抽象事物。obscure指因光线不充足而使物体灰暗不清,失去光泽或若隐若现。作借喻时指因复杂、深奥或含糊而难于理解:
The reasons why he did it are obscure.
他做那事的理由还不清楚。
obscurely是obscure的副词形式,基本含义也是难以理解地。比如:
They were making her feel obscurely worried
这句话等于She is worried for reasons that were difficult to understand.
obscure当然不止形容词一个词性,它还可以做动词。猜猜看作动词是什么含义呢?对了,就是使…变模糊的含义。如:
The moon was obscured by clouds.
月亮被云遮住了。
又可再引申为抽象的“遮蔽”:
Recent successes have obscured the fact that the company is still in trouble.
近来的成功掩盖了公司仍旧处于困境中的事实。
经过我们的讲解,obscure这一词是不是变得不再obscure了呢?