词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Anu Garg: A.Word.A.Day

Broadcast: March 6, 2003

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- our guest is Anu Garg, the man behind a popular e-mail service called A.Word.A.Day.

RS: And for the past nine years, that's exactly what subscribers have gotten for free: Monday through Friday, one word a day, not just defined, but complete with a full "biography."

AA: Anu Garg talked to us from Seattle, Washington, where part of his home doubles as his office, a space filled with dictionaries and other books on words.

RS: He says he developed a passion for the English language as a young boy in his native India.

GARG: "I learned it when I was in sixth grade. My mother tongue is Hindi. But what I found interesting was English has a lot of words from Hindi, and later on I discovered that it has words from almost all the languages in the world."

AA: "I'm curious [about] a couple of examples of Hindi words in English."

GARG: "A lot of common words like shampoo, what you do to your hair in the morning. It came from Hindi, 'champee.' In Hindi 'champee' means to massage¹ the head. Words like jungle or guru or nirvana -- a lot of words from Hindi, or ultimately from Sanskrit."

RS: "So how many people from how many countries are now receiving their daily lexicon² from you?"

GARG: "Right now there are about five-hundred-and-fifty-thousand subscribers. They are in more than two-hundred countries."

AA: "That's basically the entire world."

GARG: "Yeah, almost -- including as far away as Antarctica."

RS: "How are you able to connect with them on a daily basis?"

GARG: "I have found ways to conserve³ time. For example, I don't watch TV and I just enjoy it so much, it doesn't feel like I work, I feel like I'm just having fun playing."

RS: "Do you have another job that you get paid to do, or is this something that has become a source of income, too?"

GARG: "My background is in computer science, and I was working as a computer engineer until last year. Now I am a full-time⁴ writer. My book has come out and fortunately it has been doing very well, and I get royalties⁵ from the book. I have some paying subscribers, people who sign up to receive mailings without advertisements, and also people who contribute voluntarily."

AA: "So now can you take us through a typical day -- when do you begin and how do you find your word of the day?"

GARG: "There is no typical day. I feel like an explorer discovering new fossils or new gems⁶ every day. Every morning I wake up and open the dictionary and I find new words. Sometimes I'm reading a book and I'll find an unusual or interesting word and I will make note. And eventually they build up. On a typical day I will be reading e-mail, responding to some of the e-mails, taking care of the Web site, making sure hackers⁸ can't hack⁷ in, playing with my daughter, answering her questions. 'So Daddy, tell me, why do we call a dog a dog?' So I say 'OK, let's look it up.'"

AA: "And what did you find?"

GARG: "Well, 'dog' came from Old English, 'docga.' Currently the English language has about five-hundred-thousand words, but new words are coming into the language every day."

AA: "And five-hundred-thousand makes it larger than any other language out there."

GARG: "Yes, English has the largest word stock of any language, and not only new words are coming in, but the existing words, they change shades of meanings."

RS: "Do you have a favorite word, or is it just so hard to pick among all these children."

GARG: "I find that all words are fascinating. You have to find their histories to see how they came about."

RS: "Come on, give me a favorite."

GARG: "One word that really resonates with people is 'mondegreen.' A mondegreen is when you mishear something. A lot of songs, when we hear, we mishear them. There is one song, a lot of people hear it as "there is a bathroom on the right.'"

MUSIC: "Bad Moon Rising"/Creedence Clearwater Revival⁹

RS: In this 1969 classic by John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival, the phrase is not "there's a bathroom on the right." The phrase is, "there's a bad moon on the rise." The song is called "Bad Moon Rising."

AA: To learn how to sign up for A.Word.A.Day, you can go to Anu Garg's Web site. It's wordsmith dot o-r-g. And he's collected some of his words into a book called "A Word A Day."

RS: And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our Web site is voanews.com/wordmaster. And our e-mail address is [email protected]. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

1 massage   

n.按摩，揉；vt.按摩，揉，美化，奉承，篡改数据

参考例句：

• He is really quite skilled in doing massage.他的按摩技术确实不错。
• Massage helps relieve the tension in one's muscles.按摩可使僵硬的肌肉松弛。

2 lexicon   

n.字典，专门词汇

参考例句：

• Chocolate equals sin in most people's lexicon.巧克力在大多数人的字典里等同于罪恶。
• Silent earthquakes are only just beginning to enter the public lexicon.无声地震才刚开始要成为众所周知的语汇。

3 conserve   

vt.保存，保护，节约，节省，守恒，不灭

参考例句：

• He writes on both sides of the sheet to conserve paper.他在纸张的两面都写字以节省用纸。
• Conserve your energy,you'll need it!保存你的精力，你会用得着的！

4 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

5 royalties   

特许权使用费

参考例句：

• I lived on about £3,000 a year from the royalties on my book. 我靠着写书得来的每年约3，000英镑的版税生活。 来自辞典例句
• Payments shall generally be made in the form of royalties. 一般应采取提成方式支付。 来自经济法规部分

6 gems   

growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长

参考例句：

• a crown studded with gems 镶有宝石的皇冠
• The apt citations and poetic gems have adorned his speeches. 贴切的引语和珠玑般的诗句为他的演说词增添文采。

7 hack   

n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳

参考例句：

• He made a hack at the log.他朝圆木上砍了一下。
• Early settlers had to hack out a clearing in the forest where they could grow crops.早期移民不得不在森林里劈出空地种庄稼。

8 hackers   

n.计算机迷( hacker的名词复数 )；私自存取或篡改电脑资料者，电脑“黑客”

参考例句：

• They think of viruses that infect an organization from the outside.They envision hackers breaking into their information vaults. 他们考虑来自外部的感染公司的病毒，他们设想黑客侵入到信息宝库中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Arranging a meeting with the hackers took weeks againoff-again email exchanges. 通过几星期电子邮件往来安排见面，他们最终同意了。 来自互联网

9 revival   

n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振

参考例句：

• The period saw a great revival in the wine trade.这一时期葡萄酒业出现了很大的复苏。
• He claimed the housing market was showing signs of a revival.他指出房地产市场正出现复苏的迹象。