breast

英 [brest] 美[br?st]

CET6TEM4考研核心詞匯CET4中頻詞

復數:?breasts;

breast 胸部

來自PIE *bhreus, 膨脹，鼓起。詞源同brisket, 胸肉。

breast: breast: [OE] Breast can be traced back via prehistoric Germanic *breustam to an Indo- European base *bhrus- or *bhreus-, whose other descendants, including Old Saxon brustian ‘bud’, Middle High German briustern ‘swell’, and Irish brú ‘abdomen, womb’, suggest that the underlying reference contained in the word may be to the growth and swelling of the female breasts. By the time it reached Old English, as brēost, it had already developed a more general, non-sex-specific sense ‘chest’, but the meaning element ‘mammary gland’ has remained throughout, and indeed over the past two hundred years ‘chest’ has grown steadily more archaic.
breast (n.): Old English breost "breast, bosom; mind, thought, disposition," from Proto-Germanic *breustam "breast" (cognates: Old Saxon briost, Old Frisian briast, Old Norse brjost, Dutch borst, German brust, Gothic brusts), perhaps literally "swelling" and from PIE root *bhreus- "to swell, sprout" (cognates: Middle Irish bruasach "having a broad, strong chest," Old Irish bruinne "breast"). The spelling conforms to the Scottish and northern England dialectal pronunciation. Figurative sense of "seat of the emotions" was in Old English.

1. The president beat his breast and called that deal a mistake.: 總裁捶胸頓足，稱那是個錯誤的交易。

5. Breast self-examination is invaluable for detecting cancer in its very early stages.: 乳房自檢對早期癌癥的發現是極為重要的。