Shakespeare didn't come up with most of the famous phrases in his plays but was credited with them because of a fault with the Oxford English dictionary, a leading scholar claims.
一位著名的學(xué)者稱，莎士比亞在他的作品中并沒有發(fā)明那些著名的短語，但是由于牛津詞典的錯(cuò)誤，很多人相信這些短語是莎士比亞發(fā)明的。

Mr McInnis argues that it is actually the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that has attributed the phrases to Shakespeare, but it is 'biased'.
麥金尼斯博士認(rèn)為事實(shí)上《牛津英語詞典》將這些短語歸功于莎士比亞，但是這是一種“偏見”。

'The Complete Works of Shakespeare was frequently raided for early examples of word use, even though words or phrases might have been used earlier, by less famous or less literary people,' he writes in the University of Melbourne magazine.
《莎翁全集》經(jīng)常被拿來當(dāng)做早期詞語用法的參考，盡管這些詞可能在更早之前被那些不是那么有名，或者不是那么具有文學(xué)性的人使用過了。

那么究竟有哪些短語明明不是莎翁發(fā)明，卻把功勞歸于他了呢？我們來舉幾個(gè)例子：

'Its' all Greek to me,' which appears in playwright Robert Greene's The Scottish History of James The Fourth before in Julius Ceaser.
“如聞天書”在《凱撒大帝》之前就已經(jīng)出現(xiàn)在羅伯特·格林的《蘇格蘭史：詹姆斯四世》中。

'A wild goose chase,' is credited as first appearing in Romeo and Juliet by the OED, but it had appeared at least six times in English poet Gervase Markham's book about horsemanship a few years earlier in 1593.
“徒勞無功”在《牛津英語詞典》中被認(rèn)為是第一次出現(xiàn)在《羅密歐與朱麗葉》里，但是這個(gè)短語1593之前幾年就在英國(guó)詩(shī)人哲瓦斯·馬克漢姆有關(guān)于馬術(shù)的書中至少出現(xiàn)過6次。

'Eaten out of house and home' is thought to first appear in Henry IV part two, written in the 1590s, but examples from as early as 1578 have been found.
“食大如?！北徽J(rèn)為第一次出現(xiàn)在《亨利四世》第二部分，寫于19世紀(jì)60年代，但是早于1578年就被發(fā)現(xiàn)有相關(guān)例子。

'Without rhyme or reason' was thought to come from As You Like it but earlier versions can be traced back to the 1400s.?
“無緣無故”被認(rèn)為是出自莎士比亞的《皆大歡喜》，但是最早的版本可以追溯到14世紀(jì)。

However, Shakespeare is thought to have made them more 'concise' and 'catchy'.He did still invent most of his famous quotations, including 'to make an ass of oneself'.'His audiences had to understand at least the gist of what he meant, so his words were mostly in circulation already or were logical combinations of pre-existing concepts,' writes Dr McInnis.
但是莎士比亞也被認(rèn)為將這些詞變得更加“簡(jiǎn)潔”和“郎朗上口”。他還發(fā)明了很多著名的語錄，比如“讓……看起來很蠢”。麥金尼斯博士寫道：“莎士比亞的讀者們必須要理解他到底在說什么，所以他使用的詞語大部分一定早已流行開來，要么就是一些現(xiàn)存概念的邏輯組合”。

相關(guān)閱讀：莎士比亞發(fā)明的10個(gè)常用英文單詞>>>

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