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來源于《圖書與藝術》版塊
Johnson
約翰遜語言專欄
In the beginning is the word
太初有道之詞意變化
Changing the meaning of a word is hard but not impossible
改變詞的意思很難，但并非不可能
“Misogyny” seems a straightforward word. In dictionaries, it is “hatred of women”. In its etymology are the Greek verb misein, to hate, and gyne, women. The word, like the sentiment, has been around for a long time. Euripides, an ancient Greek playwright, was called a misogynes, or woman-hater. (“Well, in his tragedies, yes,” his peer Sophocles is said to have quipped, “but in bed at any rate he was a philogynes.”) The first known use of “misogynist” in English is from 1620—by a female group counter-attacking against a screed called “The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward [sic], and Unconstant Women”.
“Misogyny（厭女癥）”這個詞似乎很直白。字典里的解釋為“hatred of women（憎惡女性）”。這個詞的詞源來源于希臘語動詞“misein（恨）”和“gyne（女性）”。這個詞和它所表達的情感一樣，已經存在很長一段時間了。古希臘劇作家歐里庇得斯被稱為“misogynes”或“woman-hater”（兩詞均意為“厭女者”）。“在他的悲劇中，是的，”據說他的同行索福克勒斯曾如此打趣道，“但無論如何，他在床上是個愛女性的人.”“厭女癥”在英語中的首次使用是在1620年，當時一個女性團體反擊一篇名為《對淫蕩、懶散、乖戾和不穩定女性的傳訊》的文章。
In fact, very few interesting words are quite so stable. As they are used, their meanings drift. Furthermore, they need not remain true to their etymological roots, a belief known to linguists as the “etymological fallacy”. The word “person”, for instance, comes from the Latin for “mask”; the word “tragedy” may derive from the Greek for “goat-song”. Over time, words evolve.
事實上，很少有有趣的詞能如此穩定。當詞匯被使用時，意思會發生變化。此外，它們不必忠于詞源學的根源，語言學家將這種認知稱為“詞源學謬誤”。例如，“person”一詞來自拉丁語，意為“面具”；“悲劇”一詞可能源于希臘語，意為“山羊之歌”。隨時間的推移，詞匯含義也不斷演變。
Much of that process is random. But it is also possible to make a conscious effort to shift how a word is used. One such bid is under way for “misogyny”. For decades, feminists have expanded its connotations beyond the idea of “hatred of women”. Recently Kate Manne, a philosopher at Cornell University, has become the voice of that campaign. She thinks the notion of a hatred for all women deep in the psychology of some men is philosophically untestable. In any case, few men, she says, really hate all women. Instead of misogyny meaning something men feel, she says it should designate something women face.
這個過程大部分是隨機的。但有意識地改變一個詞的用法也是有可能的。“misogyny（厭女癥）”就是這樣一個例子。幾十年來，女權主義者將其內涵擴展到“憎恨女性”之外。最近，康奈爾大學哲學家凱特•曼恩成為了這場運動的代言人。她認為，在一些男性的心理深處，對所有女性的憎恨是哲學上無法驗證的。她表示無論如何，很少有男人真的恨所有的女人。她說，“厭女癥”不是指男性的感覺，而是指女性所面臨的問題。
