时代经典用词人文篇 社会

业余厨师也赶时髦，借助２０多种食谱，全都是介绍辛辣的料理，包括墨西哥菜、

Thai and Cajun foods.

泰国菜与美南法式菜。

Following a 20-minute civil ceremony, the couple, accompanied by a brass band,

led their wedding party to a Creole turkey dinner at the city's landmark restaurant Arnaud's.

challenged

残障

And besides, no Bushie really had the stomach to attack Dole for telling the truth,

此外，布什阵营中也没有人愿意攻击多尔，

which is that the nation's educationally challenged Vice President was a bit wide of the mark when he charged that Ross as Boss would destroy the Constitution.

因为他说的是真话：美国那位有教育障碍的副总统有点无的放矢，乱批评佩罗说如果了当选会毁掉宪法。

come out (of the closet)

站出来，承认是同性恋

Frank said he has had a faithful male relationship since coming out of the closet, and he will seek re-election in 1990.

Ｆｒａｎｋ说他站出来以后一直和一名男伴保持忠诚关系，而且在１９９０年要竞选连任。

consciousness raising

提升意识

Throughout the 1970s, the movement was more consciousness raising in the classic sense.

整个７０年代，女权运动还是偏向传统的意识提升。

People were enunciating new issues. There were speakouts and demonstrations.

大家提出新问题，有演说、游行。这些动作到现在还在做，

That still goes on, but now that we have majority support, we're ready for institutional change.

可是我们现在既然已经得到多数人的支持，应该进入改革制度的阶段了。

University officials, and many students as well, are fighting to reverse the trend by cacking down on bigots and joining in consciousness-raising efforts.

大学校方与许多学生努力扭转这股潮流，声讨偏激分子，参与意识提升的活动。

dependency culture

依赖文化

Welfare's flaws are under scrutiny. For a fraction of recipients,

社会福利的缺点正在被检视，接受福利的人当中有一小部分因为拿到救济金，

the checks create a culture of dependency in which children grow up without ever seeing members of their family go to work.

而产生了一种依赖文化。这种家庭中小孩子从小到大从来不曾见到家人出外工作。

A Democrat uttering such sentiments would have been drummed out of the party a few years ago,

几年前如果民主党人说这种话可能会被赶出党外。

but the deepening culture of dependency has made an emphasis on personal responsibility palatable even to liberals.

可是依赖文化愈来愈严重，所以强调个人责任的观点就算是自由派人士也能接受了。

disadvantaged

弱势（群体）

In a study published last June, Bard College economist Dimitri Papadimitriou concluded that new laws were needed to head off "a bitter struggle between these new immigrants and disadvantaged segments of the U.S. population for increasingly carce low-skill,

在去年６月出版的一份报告中，巴德大学的经济学家帕帕季米特里乌的结论是需要立法来防止“这些新移民和美国弱势人口抢夺日渐稀少的低技术、

low-wage jobs."

低所得的工作。”

glitterati

知名人士，时髦、富有的阶级

Woody and Mia. No last names, please, for the king and queen of Manhattan's glitterati.

伍迪和米亚。请不要提姓。他们是曼哈顿区名人之中的国王皇后。

Long before the Literati invented Magic Realism, the people who worked in movie studios were living it.

在文学界人士发明魔幻现实主义之前很久，在电影公司工作的人老早就生活在其中了。

harbinger

前锋　预示

Signals is a good example of why White Oak's eclectic programming works - and may be a harbinger of dance's future.

Ｓｉｇｎａｌｓ是很好的例子，可以看出Ｗｈｉｔｅ　Ｏａｋ舞团兼容并蓄的曲目为何成功，同时它也可能是对舞蹈前途的预示。

The legal actions herald a major new offensive by America's antismoking forces.

这些法律行动预示了美国反烟阵营的一次大规模的新攻势。

The '90s has also ushered in some drug novelties.

９０年代也引起了一些新药。

hobo

流浪汉，流动性工人

Ironweed, the grim and shadowed second novel of the eries, retreats a few years and fleshes out Billy's father Francis,

once a major-league baseball player, later a hobo who exiled himself because, while drunk,

he accidentally dropped and killed an infant son.

hooligan

流氓，混混

In a hail of rocks and Molotov cocktails, kinheads and neo Nazis in the eastern German port of Rostock tried to storm an apartment block housing 200 asylum-seeking Romanian Gypsies,

beginning an ugly battle that would last all week. After officials moved the Gypsies,

the hooligans trapped 100 Vietnamese guest workers in a neighboring building and set it ablaze.

jet set

喷气客机族

At the dinner hour one evening, Maguy Le Coze, co-owner of Miami's chic Brasserie Le Coze,

was recounting tales of European friends who are investing in Miami,

including a Jetset residential club on South Beach.

The unseemly image of charity officials living high on the hog threatened to dampen future donations and tarnish the squeaky-clean image of the nation's premier nonreligious charity.

慈善机构官员却过着骄奢的生活，这种不好的形象可能会造成未来的捐款减少，同时这个全国第一的非宗教性慈善机构一向清白的名声也可能会染上污点。

knock-off

伪制品

Shows like America's Most Wanted and Reporters have resorted to tabloid sensationalism,

《美国头号通缉犯》和《记者群像》之类的电视节目已经向小报的耸动手法看齐，

while Totally Hidden Video is a tacky knock-off of Candid Camera.

另外《完全隐藏镜头》则是把《真实摄影机》庸俗化的模仿品。

Fox's hit high school show, Beverly Hills 90210, begot a doleful dormful of knock-offs,

福斯公司热卖的高中生电影《比佛利高中９０２１０号》衍生出一大堆可悲的仿制品，好像塞得满满的学生宿舍，

all vying for the young audience.

全都在竞争年轻观众市场。

ku klux klan

三K党

Southern blacks, hounded by poverty and a rampaging Ku Klux Klan,

南部的黑人饱受贫穷之害与三Ｋ党猖狂之苦，

were moving to the North in large numbers.

大量向北部迁移。

So there in the middle of Rockport Park stood a massive burlap-wrapped,

所以在Ｒｏｃｋｐｏｒｔ公园中央竖着一支庞大的十字架，

kerosene-soaked cross surrounded by Klansmen, and even a few Klanswomen, their robes billowing in the soft breeze.

上面缠绕粗帆布，浸了柴油，周围都是三Ｋ党员，甚至还有女性党员，长袍在微风中摆动着。

Movement, the

６０年代的左派运动

Martin Luther King Jr., not Kennedy, was the moral leader of the civil rigts movement-rights confirmed only in Lyndon Johnson's tenure.

小马丁·路德·金博士才是民权运动的道德领袖，而非肯尼迪。这个运动所追求的人权到了约翰逊总统任内才达成。

Many of the first black mayors, like Stokes and Hatcher,

许多首任的黑人市长，像斯托克和哈契尔，

were charismatic veterans of the civil rights movement who became national spokesmen for the pligt of the inner cities.

从前都是有领导魅力的民权运动老兵，之后成为代表苦难贫民区的全国性代言人。

Murphy's Law

墨菲定律

In December astronauts are scheduled to ride the shuttle into orbit to repair the star-crossed Hubble Space Telescope.

宇航员预订在１２月乘航天飞机进入轨道来修理遇到灾星的哈勃太空望远镜。

Should the unprecedentedly complex mission go exactly as planned,

如果这项有史以来最复杂的任务完全依计划进行，

NASA could regain some credibility. But if history is any guide, it probably won't.

国家航天和航空局将可重拾一些信誉。可是按照以往经验来看，很可能不会那么顺利。

Space is a harsh and unforgiving place, where Murphy's Law is paramount.

太空是严苛、不能出错的地方，而墨菲定律在那里是最高准则。

punk

庞克

Meshing the angry nihilism of punk and heavy metal with the synthetic sheen of techno,

新唱片《下旋》里面揉合了庞克和重金属两种乐风的虚无主义以及科技摇滚的电子合成器光泽，

The Downward Spiral is a 14-song, 65-minute howl of somebody falling into the void.

构成１４首歌、６５分钟的吼叫，好像发自一个掉进虚空的人之口。

"I was taking it all out on these innocent people," he concluded.

“我拿那些无辜的人出气”他表示。

"I would call them bitch, whore and punk just like I was called. It made me fell powerful."

“我叫他们母狗、婊子和小混混，好像别人叫我的一样。这样叫叫，我就觉得很了不起。”

shantytown

违章建筑区、贫民区

The happy ending is cold comfort:a ruck of bony children trying to sleep in a shantytown.

书中的快乐结局也没有带给人多少安慰：一群瘦巴巴的小孩在贫民区中设法安睡。

There, the visitors found a second city of cardboard condos,

访客在此可看到一个纸板公寓的城中城，

clogged with the traffic of shopping carts through makeshift living rooms,

购物推车川流不息，通过临时凑合的客厅，

outfitted with easy chairs and dresser drawers.

摆设有便椅和五斗柜。

Social Security

社会安全制度

The government issued revised estimates on the solvency of Social Security and Medicare.

政府对社会安全制度与医疗保健的偿债能力发布新的预估，

Both remain in trouble:the Social Security old age and disability trust funds are expected to run out of money in 2029,

两项都仍有困难：社会安全制度的老年与伤残信托基金预计在２０２９年会无力支付，

the Medicare hospital trust fund in 2001.

医疗保健的医院信托基金则是在２００１年。

Guaranteed-benefit programs currently eat up 49% of the federal budget, a whopping $738 billion.

保障福利的专案目前占掉联邦政府预算的４９％，金额高达７３８０亿。

The largest chunk is Social Security ($319 billion), but entitlements also include Medicare,

其中占大宗的是社会安全制度（３１９０亿），可是特别福利还包括医疗保健、

Medicaid, veterans' benefits, government pensions, unemployment insurance and farm subsidies.

医疗补助、退伍军人福利、公务员退休金、失业保险与农业补贴。

teetotaler

滴酒不沾的人

A teetotale with a consuming passion for food in all its varieties,

他滴酒不沾，可是是个酷爱各色美食的老饕。

he is a well-known workaholic; he supposedly sails for relaxation,

他是有名的工作狂，据他说他玩帆船是为了放松，

but he sails alone.

可是他却一个人出海。

Off the job or on, a political boozer is apt to be a loser.

不论是否在工作岗位上，酗酒的政客常常都是失败者。

That's not to say teetotaling assures success.

当然滴酒不沾也不一定就会成功。

telecommuting

电讯通勤

Companies must adopt flexible work schedules and "telecommuting"-taking advantage of the electronic revolution so that a bank's back-room operations,

公司行号得采行有弹性的工作时间以及“电讯通勤”－利用电子革命带来的好处，

for example, can be located far from its headquarters.

使得譬如银行的非柜台性作业可以距离总部很远的地方进行。

yuppie

雅皮

After all, the problem of these Harvard women could simply be the yuppie, baby-boomer hubris that says this generation of upscale Americans is going to make easy what their parents found hard.

毕竟，这些出身哈佛的女人的问题所在，很可能只是雅皮、雅皮、战后婴儿潮这一代的狂妄自大，自称他们这一代的美国上流社会可以轻易解决上一代解决不了的问题。

The Rocky Mountain home of cowboys and lumberjacks has become a magnet for lone-eagle telecommuters and Range Rover-driving yuppies.

落基山上的地域，传统上是牛仔与伐木工人的家，现在变成极具吸引力的地方，吸引了独行侠的电讯通勤族以及开着路宝吉普车的雅皮。

Welfare:A White Secret

TIME, Dec. 16, 1991, p.84 By Barbara Ehrenreich

Come on, my fellow white folks, we have something to confess.
No, nothing to do with age spots or those indoor-tanning creams we use to get us through the winter without looking like the final stages of TB.
Nor am I talking about the fact that we all go home and practice funky dance moves behind drawn shades.
Out with it, friends, the biggest secret known to whites since the invention of powdered rouge:
welfare is a white program. Yep. At least it's no more black than Vanilla Ice is a fair rendition of classic urban rap.
The numbers go like this:61% of the population receiving welfare,
listed as "means-tested cash assistance" by the Census Bureau, is identified as white,
while only 33% is identified as black. These numbers notwithstanding,
the Republican version of "political correctness" has given us "welfare cheat" as a new term for African American since the early days of Ronald Reagan.
Yet if the Lakers were 61% white and on a winning streek, would we be calling them a "black team"?
Wait a minute, I can hear my neighbors say, we're not as slow at math as the Asian Americans like to think.
There's still a glaring disproportion there. African Americans are only 12% of the population as a whole,
at least according to the census count, yet they're 33% of the welfare population - surely evidence of a shocking addiction to the dole.
But we're forgetting something. Welfare is a program for poor people, very poor people.
African Americans are three times as likely as whites to fall below the poverty level and hence to have a chance of qualifying for welfare benefits.
If we look at the kind of persons most likely to be eligible - single mothers living in poverty with children under 18 to support - we find little difference in welfare participation by race:
74.6% of African Americans in such dire straits are on welfare, compared with 64.5% of the poor white single moms.
That's still a difference, but not enough to imply some congenital appetite for a free lunch on the part of the African-de-rived.
In fact, two explanations readily suggest themselves: First, just as blacks are disproportionately likely to be poor,
they are dispropotionately likely to find themselves among the poorest of the poor,
where welfare eligibility arises.
Second, the black poor are more likely than their white counterparts to live in cities,
and hence to have a chance of making their way to the welfare office.
So why are they so poor? I can see my neighbor asking as visions of feckless idlers dance before his narrowed eyes.
Ah, that is a question white folks would do well to ponder.
Consider, for a start, that African Americans are more likely to be disabled (illness being a famous consequence of poverty) or unemployed (in the sense of actively seeking work)
and far less likely to earn wages that would lift them out of the welfare-eligibility range.
As for the high proportion of black families headed by single women (44%, compare with 13% for whites):
many deep sociohistoric reasons could be adduced, but none of them is welfare.
A number of respected studies refute the Reagan-era myth that a few hundred a month in welfare payments is a sufficient incentive to chuck one's husband or get pregnant while in high school.
If it were, states with relatively high welfare payments-say, about $500 a month per family - would have higher rates of out-of-wedlock births than states like Louisiana and Mississippi,
which expect a welfare family to get by on $200 a month or less. But this is not the case.
So our confession stands:white folks have been gobbling up the welfare budget while blaming someone else.
But it's worse than that. If we look at Social Security, which is another form of welfare,

although it is often mistaken for an individual insurance program, then whites are the ones who are crowding the trough.

We receive almost twice as much per capita, for an aggregate advantage to our race of $10 billion a year-much more than the $3.9 billion advantage African Americans gain from their disproportionate share of welfare.

One sad reason:whites live an average of six years longer than African Americans,

meaning that young black workers help subsidize a huge and growing "overclass" of  white retirees.

I do not see our confession bringing much relief. There's a reason for resentment,

though it has more to do with class than with race.

White people are poor too, and in numbers far exceeding any of our more generously pigmented social groups.

And poverty as defined by the government is a vast underestimation of the economic terror that persists at incomes-such as $20,000 or even $40,000 and above - that we like to think of as middle class.

The problem is not that welfare is too generous to blacks but that social welfare in general is too stingy to all concerned.

Naturally, whites in the swelling "near poor" category resent the notion of whole races supposedly frolicking at their expense.

Whites, near poor and middle class, need help too - as do the many African Americans,

Hispanics and "others" who do not qualify for aid but need it nonetheless.

So we white folks have a choice. We can keep pretending that welfare is a black program and a scheme for transfering our earnings to the pockets of shiftless, dark-skinned people.

Or we can clear our throats, blush prettily and admit that we are hurting too - for cash assistance when we're down and out,

for health insurance, for college aid and all the rest.

Racial scapegoating has its charms, I will admit:the surge of righteous anger,

even the fun - for those inclined - of wearing sheets and burning crosses.

But there are better, nobler sources of white pride, it seems to me.

Remember, whatever they say about our music or our taste in clothes, only we can truly, deeply blush.