sconce

英 [skɒns] 美
  • n. 头;头盖;突出的烛台
  • vt. 遮蔽;受罚请客
  • n. (Sconce)人名;(英)斯康斯

畅通词汇

词态变化


复数: sconces;

英文词源


sconce
sconce: Effectively, English now only has one word sconce in general use, although others have come and gone in the past. That is the noun meaning ‘candlestick’ or ‘wall bracket for a light’ [14]. It originally denoted a ‘lantern’ or ‘covered candlestick’, and came via Old French esconse from medieval Latin absconsa. This was short for laterna absconsa, literally ‘hidden lantern’; absconsa was the feminine past participle of Latin abscondere ‘hide’ (source of English abscond [16]), a compound verb formed from the prefix ab- ‘away’ and condere ‘put, stow’.

It may be that sconce ‘lantern, lamp’ lay behind the now obsolete slang sconce ‘head’ [16], and there are grounds for believing that this in turn inspired the old university slang term sconce ‘penalty of drinking a large amount of beer for a breach of the rules’ [17] (the underlying notion being of a poll tax or ‘head’ tax). A fourth sconce, now altogether defunct, was a military term for a ‘small fort’ [16].

This was borrowed from Dutch schans, which came via Middle High German schanze from Italian scanso ‘defence’. This in turn was a derivative of the verb scansare ‘turn aside, ward off’, which was descended from Vulgar Latin *excampsāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and campsāre ‘turn round, sail by’. A memory of the word survives in English, however, in the derived verb ensconce [16] (etymologically ‘hide behind a fortification’).

=> abscond; ensconce
sconce (n.)
late 14c., "candlestick with a screen," a shortening of Old French esconse "lantern, hiding place," from Medieval Latin sconsa, from Latin absconsa, fem. past participle of abscondere "to hide" (see abscond). Meaning "metal bracket-candlestick fastened to a wall" is recorded from mid-15c.

双语例句


1. Solution: Install a wall sconce inside your linen closet or storage cabinet.
解决方法: 在你的壁橱或者存储的柜橱里装置一个墙面突出的烛台.

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2. By knocking his sconce against them, sure.
用他的头脑撞过, 准是的.

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