牛津詞典評(píng)出2014年度熱詞:Vape當(dāng)選

As 2014 draws to a close, it’s time to look back and see which words have been significant throughout the past twelve months, and to announce the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year. Without further ado, we can exclusively reveal that the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2014 is….

站在2014的尾巴上，是時(shí)候回顧一下在過去的12個(gè)月里最有影響力的單詞，宣布其為年度牛津詞典詞王。我們可以當(dāng)即宣布2014年度牛津詞典單詞僅屬于……

Vape

吸電子煙

Although there is a shortlist of strong contenders, it was vape that emerged victorious as Word of the Year.

雖然有力的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)者有一大單，年度單詞的勝利還是歸屬于‘vape(吸電子煙)’。

What does vape mean?

Vape是什么意思?

So, what does vape mean? It originated as an abbreviation of vapour or vaporize. The OxfordDictionaries.com definition was added in August 2014: the verb means ‘to inhale and exhale the vapour produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device’, while both the device and the action can also be known as a vape. The associated noun vaping is also listed.

那么，vape是啥意思呢?它源于vapour(蒸汽)或vaporizer(蒸發(fā))的縮寫。其釋義于2014年8月錄入牛津詞典網(wǎng)：動(dòng)詞的意思為“吸入或呼出電子煙亦或相似裝置的蒸汽”，且裝置和吸呼的動(dòng)作也可被稱作“vape”。相關(guān)名詞vaping也被提名了。

Why was vape chosen?

為什么選擇vape?

As e-cigarettes (or e-cigs) have become much more common, so vape has grown significantly in popularity. You are thirty times more likely to come across the word vape than you were two years ago, and usage has more than doubled in the past year.

隨著電子煙(簡(jiǎn)寫為e-cigs)越來越普及，吸電子煙也被變得越來越大眾。你發(fā)現(xiàn)vape這個(gè)單詞出現(xiàn)的頻率比兩年前高出30倍，也比去年用的頻率翻了一倍。

Usage of vape peaked in April 2014 – as the graph below indicates – around the time that the UK’s first ‘vape café’ (The Vape Lab in Shoreditch, London) opened its doors, and protests were held in response to New York City banning indoor vaping. In the same month, the issue of vaping was debated by The Washington Post, the BBC, and the British newspaper The Telegraph, amongst others.

如下圖顯示，Vape的使用頻率到2014年4月到達(dá)頂峰。英國(guó)的第一家”吸電子煙咖啡廳”(位于倫敦肖迪奇的“吸電子煙實(shí)驗(yàn)室”)在此時(shí)開張，針對(duì)紐約禁止室內(nèi)抽電子煙的抗議也被發(fā)起。在同月，吸電子煙的問題被華盛頓郵報(bào)、BBC和英國(guó)電訊報(bào)及其他媒體爭(zhēng)相討論。

The language of vaping

vaping的語言

Vape is also the modifier for other nouns, creating new compound nouns which are growing in popularity. The most common of these are vape pen and vape shop, and there is also recent evidence for vape lounge, vape fluid, vape juice, and others. Related coinages include e-juice, carto, and vaporium – as well as the retronym tobacco cigarette for traditional cigarettes. (A retronym is a new term created from an existing word in order to distinguish the original word from a later development – for example, acoustic guitar developing after the advent of the electric guitar.)

Vape也是其他名詞的修飾語，創(chuàng)建了越來越多的新流行的復(fù)合名詞。其中最常見的是vape pen(鋼筆改裝的電子煙)和vape shop(電子煙商店)，也有最近流行的vape lounge, vape fluid, vape juice等等。相關(guān)的新詞匯包括e-juice, carto,和vaporium，還有傳統(tǒng)香煙的返璞詞煙草香煙。(返璞詞就是從一個(gè)已有的詞中創(chuàng)出一個(gè)新詞，這是為了將原始詞和隨后的變形區(qū)分開來——舉個(gè)例子，電子吉他出現(xiàn)后有了原聲吉他。)

Vape before vaping

在vaping前的vape

You may be surprised to learn that the word vaping existed before the phenomenon. Although e-cigarettes weren’t commercially available until the 21st century, a 1983 article in New Society entitled ‘Why do People Smoke?’ contains the first known usage of the term. The author, Rob Stepney, described what was then a hypothetical device:

你會(huì)驚奇的發(fā)現(xiàn)單詞vaping在此現(xiàn)象出現(xiàn)前已經(jīng)存在了。雖然直到21世紀(jì)電子煙才能在市場(chǎng)上買到，在1983年，《新社會(huì)》上一篇題為“人們?yōu)楹纬闊?”的文章第一次用到了這個(gè)單詞。作者羅伯·斯特普尼解釋了這個(gè)假想裝置：

“an inhaler or ‘non-combustible’ cigarette, looking much like the real thing, but…delivering a metered dose of nicotine vapour. (The new habit, if it catches on, would be known as vaping.)”

“一只吸入器或者說“不可燃煙”看上去和真貨沒差，但是……輸出了一定劑量的尼古丁蒸汽。(這個(gè)新嗜好，如果流行起來，就會(huì)被稱為vaping。)”

However, despite these early beginnings, Oxford Dictionaries research shows that it wasn’t until 2009 that this sense of vape (and vaping) started to appear regularly in mainstream sources.

然而，盡管這個(gè)嗜好很早就有了，牛津詞典調(diào)查研究顯示直到2009年vape(和vaping)這個(gè)詞才固定的出現(xiàn)在主流媒體中。