sleaze

英 [sliːz] 美[sliz]

畅通词汇

sleaze: sleaze: [20] It is common practice to name fabrics after their place of manufacture, and from the 17th century that applied to cloth made in Silesia (a region in east-central Europe, now mainly within Poland), and in particular to a type of fine linen or cotton. It did not take long for Silesia to be worn down to Slesia or Sleasia and finally to Sleasie. Also in the 17th century we find sleasie being applied as an adjective to fabrics that are thin or flimsy, and although a connection between the two usages has never been proved, the closeness of meaning seems unlikely to be coincidental.

Soon sleasie (or sleazy) was being used metaphorically for ‘slight, flimsy, insubstantial’. It took a sudden sideways semantic leap in the 1930s and 40s when it began to be used as a term of moral disapproval, denoting squalor, depravity or slatternliness, and it was in this sense that the back-formed noun sleaze first emerged in the 1960s. Then in the 1980s the word shifted its target from sex to financially motivated misdemeanours, notably the taking of bribes (the new usage is first recorded in ‘The sleaze factor’, a chapter heading in the book Gambling with History (1983) by the US journalist Laurence Barrett).
sleaze (n.): "condition of squalor," by 1967, back-formation from sleazy. Meaning "person of low moral standards," and the adjectival use, are attested from 1976.

1. The candidate was seriously damaged by the sleaze factor.: 那位候选人的形象因丑闻而受到严重损害。

2. She claimed that an atmosphere of sleaze and corruption now surrounded the Government.: 她宣称一股肮脏腐败之风充斥着整个政府。

3. The President denounced the press for engaging in "sleaze" and called the story a lie.: 总统谴责媒体参与了肮脏交易，称该报道是谎言。

4. There was a lot of sleaze going on at that night club.: 那夜总会的表演有很多是低三下四的.

5. There is no direct connection between the financial turmoil and political sleaze.: 金融动荡和政治丑闻之间不存在直接联系.