先有雞?先有蛋? 牛津詞典告訴你(雙語(yǔ))

There are two famous riddles about chickens. One investigates the reasoning behind the chicken’s desire to cross the road (“to get to the other side”), while the other poses the ontological quandary: “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

有兩個(gè)關(guān)于小雞的難解問(wèn)題，一個(gè)是為什么小雞喜歡過(guò)馬路，另一個(gè)就是先有雞還是先有蛋這個(gè)本體論難題。

We shan’t attempt to answer the question in a philosophical or biologicalmanner, but we can answer it lexicographically. And, looking in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), we can reveal that the answer is… not conclusive.

也許我們無(wú)法從哲學(xué)或生物學(xué)角度回答這個(gè)問(wèn)題，但是我們可以從詞匯涵義考慮它。但看過(guò)牛津英語(yǔ)詞典里的定義后我們發(fā)現(xiàn)答案是。。。無(wú)法確定。

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Chicken

雞

Interesting, the earliest recorded use of chicken in English refers to the ‘young of the domestic fowl’ in a simile. The word dates to an Old English interlinear gloss of the Lindisfarne Gospels: ‘Suæ henne somnigas cicceno hire.’ This is taken from Matthew 23:37, where Jesus says of Jerusalem that He has ‘longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings’ (in the New International Version).

有趣的是，英語(yǔ)中chicken一詞最早用來(lái)比喻還沒(méi)長(zhǎng)大的家禽。這一詞最早出現(xiàn)在《林迪斯法恩福音書(shū)》的注釋中。該注釋取自馬太福音23：37，書(shū)中耶穌這樣形容耶路撒冷，他說(shuō)他渴望保護(hù)子女就像母雞將小雞保護(hù)在羽翼之下一樣。（新國(guó)際版圣經(jīng)）

In this quotation, chicken is used to describe the young of the fowl, rather than the adult (chicken as a domestic fowl of any age is first found, according to current OED research, as late as the 19th century) – but the same verse is also one of the earliest recorded examples of hen (the adult female of the common fowl).

在該引用中chicken被用來(lái)形容未長(zhǎng)大的家禽而不是長(zhǎng)大了的家禽（據(jù)現(xiàn)在通用的牛津英語(yǔ)詞典記載直到19世紀(jì)chicken才用來(lái)指各個(gè)生理階段的家禽）但同樣在這一詩(shī)文中也第一次出現(xiàn)了hen 一詞（指同類成年雌性家禽）。

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Egg

蛋

Things get a bit more complex when we turn our attention to egg. One of the oldest examples of the word in English is found in an Old English excerpt that translates as ‘But if it be a fast-day, they are to be given a wey of cheese, and of fish, butter, and eggs, as much as they can get’. In this instance, listed alongside cheese, fish, and butter, it is clear that the egg is (as the OED definition phrases it) ‘an egg of a domestic fowl as an article of food’.

egg一詞的詞義可能更為復(fù)雜。英語(yǔ)中有關(guān)egg一詞的最早記錄出現(xiàn)在一個(gè)古老的英語(yǔ)摘錄中，摘錄中寫(xiě)道“但如果是齋戒日他們就能吃到自己想吃的一切，一韋（古時(shí)計(jì)量單位）奶酪、魚(yú)肉和雞蛋。該句中egg 與奶酪、魚(yú)和黃油放在一起顯然說(shuō)明了egg（正如牛津英語(yǔ)詞典里解釋的那樣）是指用來(lái)作為事物的家禽的蛋。

All well and good. But we are more interested (for the purposes of this riddle) in egg meaning ‘the (more or less) spheroidal body produced by the female of birds and other animal species, and containing the germ of a new individual, enclosed within a shell or firm membrane’. Well, this is found in another Old English document: ‘On æge bið gioleca on middan’ (‘In an egg there is a yolk in the middle’). Although the egg-as-offspring must predate the egg-as-culinary-fare, we do not know which was written about first.

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這樣的解釋當(dāng)然令人滿意，但我們還是對(duì)egg 一詞的另一個(gè)解釋（讓我們產(chǎn)生疑惑的原因）更感興趣，即由雌性鳥(niǎo)類或其他種類產(chǎn)下的（類似）球狀體，包括任何保護(hù)在堅(jiān)固的殼或膜里的新生動(dòng)植物的胚層。在一個(gè)古老的英文文獻(xiàn)中我們還發(fā)現(xiàn)了這樣的記載，即雞蛋的中央是蛋黃。雖然與有關(guān)蛋是一種烹飪食材的記載相比人們最先找到了有關(guān)蛋是禽類后代的文獻(xiàn)資料，但我們并不能確定哪種定義是最先問(wèn)世的。

A draw

模糊詞匯

So, when somebody asks you “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”, you can question what they mean by chicken and what they mean by egg, but you can’t offer a conclusive lexicographical answer; both date from the Old English period, so we’ll call it a draw. It is also worth noting that neither chicken nor egg have yet been revised in the ongoing creation of the third edition of the OED. It’s possible that this question will be resolved when the entries are updated, but for now we can’t be certain.

所以當(dāng)有人問(wèn)你是蛋生雞還是雞生蛋的時(shí)候，你就問(wèn)他雞和蛋指的是什么但不要給出這兩個(gè)詞的絕對(duì)定義，因?yàn)檫@兩個(gè)詞都起源于古英語(yǔ)時(shí)期所以我們可以把它們稱為模糊詞。因此在正在編撰的第三版的牛津英語(yǔ)詞典中也沒(méi)有必要對(duì)chicken 和egg的含義進(jìn)行修訂。也許等到詞典詞目得到更新后這一問(wèn)題會(huì)得到解決吧，但至少現(xiàn)在我們還不能確定。

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