手機版
A teenager I know was recently at a weekend party up at a lake. Evidently two of the girls there had an altercation and one pushed the other off the wharf and into the water. This was reported to me in the following terms:
一個我所認(rèn)識的十來歲的孩子最近去了一個在湖邊舉行的周末派對。顯然，那里的兩個女孩子互相有了爭執(zhí)，所以其中一個人把另一個人從泊船的地方推下了水。我的那位小朋友用了如下的詞匯向我報道了這個小事件：
“Suzie and Nancy really had beef.”
“蘇茜和南希真的打了一架（Suzie and Nancyreally had beef）。”
This was a new one on me.
對我來說，這可是一個全新的用法。
For a second I wondered if they had shared a nice steak.
在那一刻，我甚至還納悶，是不是這兩個女孩共享了一份美味的牛排。
Good word beef; interesting history.
Beef的確是個好詞，而且它還有一段有趣的歷史。
Cows have been around people for some time. Long enough that there was an Indo-European word for cow gwou.
牛作為人類的家畜已經(jīng)有相當(dāng)?shù)拈L一段時間了。這段時間很長，以至于在印歐語系里就有個對應(yīng)于cow的單詞gwou。
This reached us as cow via Old English. But while it was getting here it was also getting to Latin by a parallel route to arrive there as bov. By the time William the Conqueror arrived in England in 1066 the French had turned the Latin into beuf.
隨著時間的推移，這個詞透過古英語進(jìn)入到我們目前的語言，成為了單詞cow。然而，就在單詞gwou融入進(jìn)到古英語（成為一開始的cū——譯注）的時候，它也同時融入到了拉丁語中，成為單詞bov。到了1066年征服者威廉抵達(dá)英格蘭的時候，隨之而來的法語把這個拉丁語單詞變成了beuf。
So there was William looking out the window of his castle and in the adjacent field he saw an animal he’d call a beuf. While out in the field the guy with the pitchfork looked at the same beast and thought it was a cow.
因此，那個時候就出現(xiàn)了如下的情況——國王威廉從他城堡的窗戶向外望去，在一塊鄰近的地里，他看到了一頭他稱之為beuf的動物；而在那塊地里，一個手握干草叉的農(nóng)夫也望著同樣一頭動物，心里想著，這是一頭cow。
Since William and his court spent more time with beuf after it had been sliced up into steak, the word for the meat of this animal took on the name beef. But the guy with the pitchfork still had to manage these ponderous creatures and so the Old English name stuck to the live versions.
由于威廉和他的宮廷成員與beuf相處了更長時間——beuf被片成牛排，烹飪后，端到他們的餐桌上——這個對應(yīng)于上述動物肉類的單詞就被稱作beef。而那個手持干草叉的老兄卻仍然得照料這些體態(tài)笨拙的動物，因此古英語單詞cow仍舊保留了它原來鮮活的叫法。
It took a little while for the French word to creep into writings that we can now accepted（？譯注） as English. French arrived as the official language of England in 1066 but it was almost the year 1300 before beef has its first citation as an English word.
又過了挺長一段時間，法語單詞beef才成功地博得了廣泛的認(rèn)可，混進(jìn)了英語書面語——如今，我們已經(jīng)把它看作是一個英語單詞了。法語在1066年成為英格蘭的官方語言，但是，幾乎到了公元1300年，作為英語單詞的beef才第一次有了書面引證。
So that explains why I thought these two girls were having steak. But how did my teenage friend get to understand the word beef to mean “fight”?
上述的這段語言發(fā)展歷程解釋了，我為什么覺得那兩個女孩子共享了一份牛排。不過，我的那個少年朋友到底是如何把單詞beef理解為“打斗（fight）”的呢？
Well, in 1869 Harper’s Magazine reported on the exploitation of some buffalo for their meat and used the word beef in its article with a meaning of “slaughter.”
原來，在1869年，一期《哈潑斯雜志》對于野牛牛肉的開發(fā)進(jìn)行了報道。在文中，作者使用單詞beef來表示“屠宰（slaughter）”的意思。
The buffalo were to be beefed.
這群野牛將要被屠宰（beefed）。
The OED reports that this sense fed a slang expression where to beef someone was to knock them down; showing first in writing in 1926.
《牛津英語詞典》也提到，這層意思也促成了一種俚語表述方式——要beef某人就是說把這個人打倒；這個用法在1926年首見于書面語。
I don’t believe that this directly fed into my teenage friend’s use of the word beef to mean “fight” but in 1888 and 1889 we have the first two citations for beef meaning “to complain,” as in “what’s your beef.”
我并不相信，這個解釋直接為我那位少年朋友把beef用作“打斗”的說法提供了依據(jù)。不過，在1888年和1889年里，含有“抱怨”意思的beef首先出現(xiàn)在了兩條引證中，比如“你有什么抱怨（what’s your beef）”。
This is as far as my understanding of the word beef goes; which is to say I’m right up to date with the jargon of 120 years ago.
以上就是我在力所能及的范圍內(nèi)，對單詞beef所做的理解；也就是說，到目前為止，我將這個（意指“打斗”的）行話追溯到120年前的論述是站得住腳的。
But Urbandictionary does have entries that support my teenage friend’s use of beef meaning to argue or fight. The implication is that this is from gangster rap and likely evolved from the “complaint” meaning to also encompass a meaning of “grudge” as well as “fight.”
不過，對于我的少年朋友使用beef來表示“爭吵（argue）”和“打斗（fight）”的說法，城市字典里的相關(guān)條目的確為此提供了支持。其中就提到，此類用法源于街頭的黑幫說唱歌，而且它似乎也是從“抱怨（complaint）”的意思發(fā)展而來的，到最后還包含有“怨恨（grudge）”和“打斗（fight）”的意思。