| 释义 |
aphesis|ˈæfɪsɪs|
[a. Gr. ἄϕεσις a letting go, f. ἀϕιέναι, f. ἀϕ' off, away + ἱέναι to send, let go, suggested by the Editor in 1880.]
The gradual and unintentional loss of a short unaccented vowel at the beginning of a word; as in squire for esquire, down for adown, St. Loy for St. Eloy, limbeck for alimbeck, 'tention! for attention! It is a special form of the phonetic process called Aphæresis, for which, from its frequency in the history of the English language, a distinctive name is useful. Now also used in the sense of aphæresis.
1880J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 175 The Editor can think of nothing better than to call the phenomenon Aphesis..and the resulting forms Aphetic forms. 1930A. Western in Gram. Misc. Jespersen 135, I do not quite see the difference between aphesis and aphæresis, but use the former term as the shorter and therefore more convenient of the two. 1932W. L. Graff Lang. vi. 234 A loss at the beginning is called aphaeresis or aphesis..bishop ‹ Lat. episcopus, knife and write in which k and w were formerly sounded. |