| 单词 | suitcase |
| 例句 | suitcase noun •the old brown suitcase had survived two ocean voyages and more train and bus trips than she could ever calculate:travel bag, traveling bag, case, valise, overnight case, portmanteau, vanity case, garment bag, backpack, duffel bag | (suitcases) luggage, baggage.WORD NOTE portmanteau The image is arresting: a room in a Days Inn beside some endless American highway, and a soft-sided carrying case flung onto the bed by the weary traveler. There are two potential uses here of the term portmanteau —one of them forgotten, the other, generally unknown. The suitcase provides the first: the word portmanteau comes initially from the title of the French servant who carried the princely mantle, the clothes or raiment that were to be worn on the morrow. From clothes-carrying servant to clothes-carrying bag the word then evolved, until by the middle of the sixteenth century it had assumed the meaning "a suitcase." Sadly for so pretty a word it is a form seldom used today, with the inelegant garment bag assuming its role in all but the most pretentious situations (one imagines Ritz-Carlton Hotels, one of whose slogans is "Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen," expected their guests to own portmanteaus, or even portmanteaux). The suitcase is not all, however: the very building that houses the aforesaid bedroom has an even less familiar association with the word. A Days Inn is technically what is called a motel, and this word, it is often forgotten, is a grammatical construction that welds two together two words— motor and hotel —to give us a wholly new word that is properly described as a portmanteau term. Lewis Carroll was the inventor of the genre, of words which, just like the suitcase, pack things up together—and he formed familiar constructions such as slithy (from slimy and lithe), and mimsy (from flimsy and miserable). Luggage becomes grammar, in one easy step. — SWConversational, opinionated, and idiomatic, these Word Notes are an opportunity to see a working writer's perspective on a particular word or usage. |
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英语同义词词典收录了14896条英语词条，基本涵盖了全部常用同义词或反义词的辨析及翻译，是英语学习的有利工具。