| 释义 |
ps-
Words beginning with this consonant combination (with the exception of a few interjectional monosyllables, psa, pshaw, pst) are all taken or formed from Greek, in which language the combination is frequent, and has been represented from about 550 b.c. by the single letter Ψ, ψ. In words beginning thus the only pronunc. current is that with initial |s|; the indication of an alternative |ps| in the following main entries would be misleading and is accordingly not shown.
The only words in ps- which go back to Old English times are the ecclesiastical terms psalm n. and vb., and psalter. Psalterion and psaltery appear in the 13th c.; pseudo, and some five of its compounds, occur in Wyclif. All the other ps- words are of Modern English formation, few before 1600, the great majority of the 19th c. In psalm the initial p was dropped already in OE., as in OF. and the cognate languages, and in English has never been restored in pronunciation (as it has been in French and German). This appears to have served as a precedent for dropping the p in the pronunciation of other words, an unscholarly practice often leading to ambiguity or to a disguising of the composition of the word. As the p is now pronounced in French, German, and other languages, as well as by Englishmen in reading Greek, and by many scholars in English also (there being no organic defect in the English mouth to prevent it), it is here marked, except in the psalm, psalter group, as an optional pronunciation which is recommended especially in all words that retain their Greek form (e.g. psora, psyche), and in scientific terms generally, which have not been irretrievably mutilated by popular use. |