Vocabulary

不诚实的，不可靠的，鬼鬼祟祟的

"I sensed a sort of shifty glee, the energy of an exaggerator, but I didn't mind."

（引擎）发出噼啪声后熄火；（人）语无伦次地挣扎着说话；此处比喻生活中无力维持运转

"my sister had finally found her way to money ... but I was helpless, always sputtering."

使变得迟钝，削弱，降低（愉悦感/效果）

"I'm reluctant to say more for fear of dulling the pleasures of a first reading"

漂泊不定的，失去方向的，无所适从的

"Susannah, the story's narrator, is adrift."

经过提炼的，萃取的，浓缩精华的

"a lifetime of wisdom distilled and compressed into her firecracker sentences."

像爆竹一样紧凑、有力、令人惊艳的句子

"a lifetime of wisdom distilled and compressed into her firecracker sentences."

即将摊牌，快要揭示自己的底牌或真实意图

"You feel like she's always slyly on the verge of showing her cards."

狡猾地，诡秘地；此处指一种带有狡黠幽默的倾向

"You feel like she's always slyly on the verge of showing her cards."

毫不羞怯的，毫无保留的，不加掩饰的

"Consider the unabashed rhyme of: 'The sky screamed blue. I screamed too.'"

（文体）过分华丽的，辞藻堆砌的

"not in a precious or purple way, but in a way that challenges the reader to pay attention to a story’s surfaces even as they get caught up in its narrative."

（贬义）过分讲究的，矫揉造作的，刻意追求精致的

"not in a precious or purple way, but in a way that challenges the reader to pay attention to a story’s surfaces even as they get caught up in its narrative."

不垂直，偏离水平；引申为略微偏移常规或正常状态

"the quality of her attention has remained distinctly her own, not only lancet-sharp, but also, refreshingly, slightly out of plumb."

像手术刀般精准锋利，形容注意力极其敏锐

"the quality of her attention has remained distinctly her own, not only lancet-sharp, but also, refreshingly, slightly out of plumb."

作为更大体系缩影的小型世界或社会

"Even then, her work sparkled with a peculiar sensibility, one that shone not only in her wisdom and wit, but also in the way the microcosms of her stories were ever so slightly distorted by her characters as they moved through them."

极度的，彻底的；卑微的，可鄙的

"I could see that he liked my expression, whatever I was doing with my face to hide my abject greed."

卑鄙的，恶毒的，懦弱而阴险的

"Robbing the cradle is the expression people use, which sounds dastardly."

磨薄的，破旧的；引申为寒酸的，匮乏的

"He was threadbare and grungy, which didn't necessarily mean poor."

无法估量的事物；难以名状的奇珍异宝。复数形式，指那些无法称重、测量，因其奇异和罕见而被收藏的物品。

"Preserved specimens from Tartary began appearing in European collections, alongside geodes, starfish, fossils, animal skulls, amulets, shrunken heads, and any other imponderabilia that caught a collector’s eye."

自然的戏弄；自然界的怪物。拉丁语短语，指那些被认为是超出自然秩序之外的、畸形的或怪诞的生物或现象。

"That same year, the Italian scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger ridiculed the vegetable lamb even as he contributed to the legend’s textual record, classifying it as lusus naturae, monstrous phenomena not possible within the order of nature."

固着的；无柄的。生物学中指生物体固定在一个位置，无法移动。在本文中用于描述珊瑚、海葵等海洋生物。

"Sessile marine organisms served as its prime example, but others forgot Aristotle’s dictum regarding terrestrial fixity and fantasized about a paradigmatic zoophyte that would be at once a lamb and a plant."

动物植物；一种被认为同时具有动物和植物特征的生物。在本文中特指“植物羊”这类传说中的生物。

"All are “zoophytes”: a category that emerged in antiquity for organisms displaying both plant and animal qualities."

离奇的；不可思议的；令人不安的。描述某种事物既熟悉又陌生，从而引发一种诡异感。

"Even as it was being debunked all around, the vegetable lamb showed an uncanny tenacity for survival."

顽强；坚韧。在本文中描述“植物羊”这一观念尽管被反复证伪，却依然在文化记忆中顽固存续。

"Even as it was being debunked all around, the vegetable lamb showed an uncanny tenacity for survival."

文字记载；文本记录。指历史上流传下来的书面文献。

"That same year, the Italian scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger ridiculed the vegetable lamb even as he contributed to the legend’s textual record, classifying it as lusus naturae..."

词源；词源学。在本文语境中，它并非指语言学上的词源，而是作为一种隐喻，用于描述该传说的“根源”或“起源”。

"Thom Sliwowski traces the roots of this fabled zoophyte.→ 这里的“traces the roots”在标题和开篇中确立了探索起源的主题，为后文“etymology of the fable”的隐喻性使用做了铺垫。虽然本文未直接使用这个词的隐喻义，但“traces the roots”暗示了这一点。我选择这个词是因为整个文章的结构就是一次对神话的‘词源学’考古。"

困惑地，茫然地（副词形式）

"So what is this storm that sweeps Trump along, this force that he can only bemusedly watch?"

困惑的，茫然的，不知所措的（通常带有一种轻微的幽默或疏离感）

"With all the bravado that tends to accompany Donald Trump, something else has been striking me recently—when faced with major decisions, there’s a way in which he carries himself like a wise fool in a Shakespeare play, bemused by all the tumult that’s going on around him."

骚乱，喧哗，动荡，混乱的局势

"With all the bravado that tends to accompany Donald Trump, something else has been striking me recently—when faced with major decisions, there’s a way in which he carries himself like a wise fool in a Shakespeare play, bemused by all the tumult that’s going on around him."

被厚厚地覆盖或包裹，比喻为某事精心装饰或粉饰

"Until quite recently, even fairly direct imperialist acts, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, tended to be lathered in multilateralism."

放弃，摒弃，决定不做某事

"What’s striking with an exchange like that between Miller and Tapper is the forgoing of any sort of liberal justifications, of Miller, on national television, removing the fig leaf and… well… sorry for the image."

（大批人的）离开，出走

"In other words, he is saying, Russia and China have shrewdly led the exodus from the rules-based liberal international order."

现实政治，实用政治，基于实力和实际考量而非道德或意识形态的政治

"And it is possible, in one’s darker moods, to argue that liberal internationalism is just a fig leaf for brute power relations. But that’s only half of what Morgenthau is saying and half of what liberal internationalism can offer—which is alliances, shared purposes, legitimacy, a balance of power, and (in the current status quo) American hegemony. So, yes Stephen, it’s a fig leaf, but it’s an important fig leaf. Honestly, you look better with it on."

非道德性，超然于道德之外，不涉及道德判断

"In the passivity of Trump towards the launching of his own war, and in the gleeful amorality of Stephen Miller—doing his best impression of a teenager who has just read Thus Spoke Zarathustra for the very first time—there is the sense of a wave, of a doctrine of “realism” passing like a baton from Putin to Netanyahu to Trump."

（命运的）变迁，盛衰，兴败

"And the United States, currently facing the vicissitudes of war in the struggle with Iran—with the strikes of the past twenty-four hours proving that Trump has much less control over events than he thought—may be discovering that they have badly misunderstood Morgenthau."

武力恫吓，炫耀武力

"And Hood and his ilk are of course more than pleased that the United States has now started to dance the Death Star dos-à-dos, engaging in regime change in Venezuela in January, attempting the same in Iran in February, and then deploying military resources around Cuba with enough saber-rattling to indicate that an attack might be imminent."

排除；阻止；预先处理（可能性）。在法律上指取消抵押品赎回权。这里比喻性地指“阻止了（相反的情感宣泄）”。

"Yōzō narrates his depression as if it’s someone else’s, foreclosing the opposite catharses of self-pity and schadenfreude."

以……为前提；预先假定；想当然。

"This critical foundation, personal though it seems, presupposes a reader equally knowable across anyone who can read at all—a predictable range of emotional responses rather than any particular mind."

同情，哀悼；分享（某人的）悲伤或痛苦。在本文语境中，指评论者与 Baker 一起对他因喜欢一本有问题的书而感到的“痛苦”表示共鸣。

"Instead, they commiserate with his distress that the book was pleasurable: “i read it too last year and also thought the writing was off but assumed that was the author’s writing style 😭”"

我的错；公开的认错或道歉。

"Case in point: few of the comments on Baker’s Shy Girl mea culpa even criticize the book, let alone Baker’s acuity as a critic."

（在压力、要求或诱惑下）屈服、投降、放弃抵抗。

"What’s new is that now the reader’s appraisal of the work, regardless of its ambition, caves into their emotional response to it."

那些感到大吃一惊、目瞪口呆的人。

"The most vocal flabbergastees were those who first made the book a sensation."

因过于情绪化（如感动、悲伤）而说不出话来。

"Videos in the highest range of likes often involve BookTokers reading from the book or clutching it verklempt."

（尤指在比喻意义上）使（某事物）恢复活力或生命力，就像用除颤器使心脏恢复正常跳动一样。

"Their creators formed the subcommunity BookTok during the pandemic, when the reading habits of locked-down Americans briefly defibrillated the industry: the U.S. book market grew 21 percent from 2019 to 2023 after growing at rates of just 3 to 4 percent pre-pandemic, according to Vox."

限制；约束；划定界限。

"Circumscribing readerly pleasure around relatability is its own engine of hazards."

密切相关的；切题的。

"…peopled with characters flirting through the fogged-up glass of socioeconomically germane politesse."

先驱；创始人；祖先。这里指“现代言情小说的先驱”。

"This includes the modern progenitors of BookTok’s top genre, romance, with novels from Austen and the Brontës to du Maurier and Rhys..."