大学英语六级词汇迅速记忆法之8天攻克8000词汇六_大学英语单词

大学英语六级词汇迅速记忆法之8天攻克8000词汇六

　　AMBLE:just walking around

　　According to the dictionary when you amble,youmove,ride,or walk at an easy and careless pace.The derivation is from the Latin ambulo,walk.You can also easily detect this same term ambulo in our word ambulance or,as the French used to call this vehicle at the time of the Crimean War,hospital ambulant,walking hospital.The English soon left off the hospital part and just called it an ambulance.And there is the perambulator,too,that we push the baby around in,and that also takes walking to do.

　　ANTICS:originally fantastic images

　　On the walls of the Baths of the Roman Emperor Titus some old and fantastic images were carved,representing people and animals and flowers all running together in the most grotesque fashion possible.The Italians applied their word antico,old,to these curious carvings,but because of the weird posturings of the figure antico came also to mean bizarre,and so gave us our word antic.Thus,when a person cuts up with some antics,it means that he is going through a lot of queer capers like those weir Roman figures,or like a clown in a circus.This Italian word antico derives from the Latin antiquus,and from this latter term through the French we received out word antique.Antiquus meantvenerableand so excelling in worth and value,which is what we hope for when we buy antiques.

　　ASSASSIN: once a drug-fiend

　　Some 800 years ago there was an East Indian sheik who was colorfully known as The Old Man of the Mountains. He was the supposed head of an early version of Murder, Inc., and his fanatical followers made it their business to slaughter the Christian Crusaders who were on their way to the Holy Land. The murderers got themselves into the proper frenzy for their job by chewing hashish, an Eastern variety of hemp that could produce a fine state of intoxication in any teetotalling Mohammedan. Today cifarettes called reefersare made out of this hemp and are smoked by marihuana addicts. In the ancient days of India word hashshashin entered Medieval Latin as assassinus, and so into English as our word assassin, which still retains its murderous history in its meaning.