007 GRE单词精选之 环球词源十个
kowtow (verb)：磕头；卑躬屈膝
Nope, kowtow is not a giant truck for pulling bovines, but rather a word that comes from the imperial courts of China. When a person kowtowed to the emperor, or any eminent mandarin for that matter, he or she knelt and touched the ground with his or her forehead. Such a gesture was intended to show respect and submission.
不，kowtow不是拉牛的巨型卡车，而是源自中国宫廷的一个词。当一个人向皇帝或任何显赫的官员磕头时，他或她会跪下，用额头触地。这种姿态是为了表示尊敬和臣服。
Today, kowtow has a negative connotation and implies that a person is acting in a subservient or sycophantic manner.
如今，kowtow带有负面含义，暗示一个人表现得卑躬屈膝或阿谀奉承。
Paul kowtowed to his boss so often the boss herself soon became nauseated by his sycophancy.
保罗频繁地对老板卑躬屈膝，老板本人很快就对他的阿谀奉承感到厌烦。
powwow (noun/verb)：会议；磋商
No, it’s not kowtow’s cousin. This word sprung from American soil, namely the Algonquin tribe of North America. A powwow was quite a hootenanny of a time and involved a big party of dancing and dining between tribes.
不，它不是kowtow的近亲。这个词源于美国本土，具体是北美阿尔冈昆部落。powwow曾是一段热闹的时光，部落之间会举办包含舞蹈和宴饮的大型聚会。
Strangely, today’s meaning is a lot more subdued, and far less fun. Any informal discussion or colloquy is regarded as a powwow. You and your co-worker can have a mid-afternoon powwow over coffee. A political leader can have a powwow with his cronies (I’m presuming they favor cigars over coffee).
奇怪的是，如今它的含义温和多了，也远没那么有趣。任何非正式的讨论或磋商都可被视为powwow。你和同事可以在午后喝咖啡时进行一场磋商。政治领袖可以和他的亲信们开个会（我猜他们更喜欢雪茄而非咖啡）。
Before the team takes the field, the coach always calls for a powwow so that he can make sure all the players are mentally in the right place.
在球队上场前，教练总会召集一次会议，确保所有球员都在心理上做好了准备。
junta (noun)：军政府；执政团
Junta means to join and comes via Portugal and Spain. But this joining was in no way peaceful. Whenever military groups joined forces to usurp the existing regime, they would form a military junta. Today, junta can refer to the aggressive takeover by a group.
Junta意为“联合”，源自葡萄牙和西班牙。但这种联合绝非和平的。每当军事集团联合起来篡夺现有政权时，他们就会组成军事执政团。如今，junta可指一个团体的强行夺权。
As dangerous of a threat as North Korea is, some analysts believe that were a junta suddenly to gain power, it could be even more unpredictable and bellicose than the current leadership.
尽管朝鲜的威胁很危险，但一些分析人士认为，如果一个军政府突然掌权，可能会比现任领导层更加不可预测且好战。
imbroglio (noun)：错综复杂的局面；困境
It may sound like an exotic vegetable or a pungent pasta dish, but it’s neither. Imbroglio comes to us via mid-18th century Italian and has nothing to do with the kitchen. Instead it is related to the verb embroil and describes a confusing, and potentially embarrassing, situation.
它听起来可能像一种奇特的蔬菜或辛辣的意面，但都不是。Imbroglio源自18世纪中期的意大利，和厨房毫无关系。它与动词“embroil（使卷入）”有关，描述的是一种混乱且可能令人尴尬的局面。
The chef cook-off featured one gourmand who had the unfortunate distinction of mixing the wrong broths, creating an imbroglio that viewers will not soon forget.
厨师大赛中有一位美食家不幸把高汤混错了，造成了一个观众们久久不会忘记的混乱局面。
juggernaut (noun)：强大的势力；不可阻挡的力量
To many, this word was forever immortalized in X-Men 2, when one of the main characters, Juggernaut, ran through walls, pulverizing them. This power to knock over and destroy anything in one’s path can also be traced to the original juggernaut, a word that comes to us via Hindi. A juggernaut was a large temple vehicle—and when I mean large, I mean humongous—under which followers of Krishna would supposedly throw themselves.
对许多人来说，这个词因《X战警2》而永载史册，片中主要角色之一“红坦克”能穿墙而过，将墙壁撞得粉碎。这种摧毁路径上一切事物的力量也可追溯到其本源，该词源自印地语。Juggernaut曾是一种大型寺庙车辆——我说的“大型”是指极其巨大——据说克里希纳的信徒会投身其下。
Today, the word juggernaut doesn’t necessarily include any grisly sacrifice, but refers to any large force that cannot be stopped.
如今，juggernaut一词不一定包含可怕的献祭，而是指任何无法阻挡的强大力量。
Napoleon was considered a juggernaut, until he decided to invade Russia in winter; within weeks his once seemingly indomitable army was decimated by cold and famine.
拿破仑曾被视为一股不可阻挡的力量，直到他决定在冬季入侵俄罗斯；几周内，他那支看似不可战胜的军队就因严寒和饥荒而溃败。
schadenfreude (noun)：幸灾乐祸
Schadenfreude is one of those words that at first glance may seem gratuitous. After all, do we really need a word that literally translates from the German as harm-joy? Unfortunately, a twisted quirk of human nature is that we can sometimes take joy in the suffering of others. Luckily, German has provided us a word to use if we ever see someone cackling sardonically at the suffering of others.
Schadenfreude是那种乍一看可能觉得多余的词。毕竟，我们真的需要一个从德语直译过来意为“伤害-快乐”的词吗？不幸的是，人性的一个扭曲特点是，我们有时会因他人的痛苦而感到快乐。幸运的是，德语为我们提供了一个词，当我们看到有人在他人痛苦时尖刻地大笑时，就可以用它。
From his warm apartment window, Stanley reveled in schadenfreude as he laughed at the figures below, huddled together in the arctic chill.
斯坦利在温暖的公寓里，从窗户望着下面在 Arctic 严寒中挤作一团的人影，一边嘲笑一边沉浸在幸灾乐祸的情绪中。
amuck (adv.)：狂暴地；疯狂地
To run amuck (also spelled amok) is to run about frenzied. While this word comes to us via Malay, you don’t have to live on the Malaysian peninsula to witness people running amuck.
“run amuck（也拼写为amok）”意为狂暴地奔跑。虽然这个词源自马来语，但你不必住在马来半岛就能看到人们疯狂地乱跑。
Wherever the bowl-cut teen-idol went, his legions of screaming fans ran through the streets amuck, hoping for a glance of his boyish face.
无论这位留着碗状发型的青少年偶像走到哪里，他那一大群尖叫的粉丝都会疯狂地跑过街道，希望能看一眼他那少年气的脸庞。
pariah (noun)：被社会遗弃者；贱民
This word means an outcast. It comes from Hindi, one of the most prominent languages spoken in India. While India is on the other side of the world (at least from where I’m sitting), it should come as no surprise that we have acquired words from Hindi. After all, the British (remember, the people who “invented” English) colonized India and greatly influenced her for more than a century. The influence went both ways, as we now have words like pundit, meaning an expert in a particular area. And any pundit on geography and linguistics can tell you that another common language spoken in India is English.
这个词意为被遗弃者。它源自印地语，印地语是印度最主要的语言之一。虽然印度在世界的另一端（至少在我所处的位置看来是这样），但我们从印地语中吸收词汇也不足为奇。毕竟，英国人（记住，是“发明”了英语的人）殖民了印度，并对其产生了一个多世纪的巨大影响。这种影响是双向的，比如我们现在有“pundit”这个词，意为某一领域的专家。任何地理和语言学方面的专家都会告诉你，英语也是印度的常用语言之一。
The once eminent scientist, upon being inculpated for fudging his data, has become a pariah in the research community.
这位曾经杰出的科学家因被指控篡改数据，在研究界成了一个被遗弃的人。
nabob (noun)：富豪；权贵
This word is fun to say. It definitely wouldn’t be fun to see on the GRE, if you didn’t know what it meant. So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. A nabob is a wealthy, influential person. This word also comes from Hindi, and was originally used by Indians to describe a wealthy British person living in India. While it is not as common as pundit and pariah, nabob applies to many living here in the US, though I don’t think it a good idea to call Donald Trump a nabob to his face.
这个词读起来很有趣。但如果你在GRE考试中遇到它却不知道意思，那就一点都不有趣了。所以我们要确保这种情况不会发生。Nabob指的是富有且有影响力的人。这个词也源自印地语，最初被印度人用来描述住在印度的富有的英国人。虽然它不像pundit和pariah那样常见，但在美国也有很多人可以用这个词来形容，不过我觉得当面称唐纳德·特朗普为nabob不是个好主意。
The nabobs can be seen, heads a bobbing, driving by in their Italian sports cars, listening to techno.
可以看到那些富豪们，晃着脑袋，开着意大利跑车驶过，听着电子音乐。
zeitgeist (noun)：时代精神；时代思潮
Okay, German is by no means a distant tongue, or for that matter, an exotic one. Zeitgeist, however, doesn’t look anything like your typical English word. Translated literally from German, zeitgeist means “time-ghost”. In terms of an actual definition, zeitgeist means spirit of the times.
好吧，德语绝不是一种遥远的语言，也不是什么奇特的语言。然而，Zeitgeist看起来一点也不像典型的英语单词。从德语直译过来，zeitgeist意为“时间之灵”。就实际定义而言，zeitgeist指的是时代精神。
Each decade has its own zeitgeist—the 1990’s was a prosperous time in which the promise of the American Dream never seemed more palpable. The zeitgeist of the 2000’s was a curious admixture of fear and frivolity; when we were not anxious over the state of the economy and the world, we escaped into reality TV shows, either those on popular networks or the ones we would create ourselves on YouTube.
每个十年都有其独特的时代精神——20世纪90年代是一个繁荣的时期，美国梦的前景从未如此触手可及。21世纪初的时代精神是恐惧与轻浮的奇特混合；当我们不为经济和世界局势焦虑时，就会沉迷于真人秀节目，无论是主流电视台的还是我们自己在YouTube上创作的。
Search these words in the following puzzle:
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