關鍵字彙:
anniversary/ autopsy/ bereave/ bereaved/ bereavement/ catacomb/ condole with/ cremate/ demise/ dirge/ dowry/ elegy/ epitaph/ hearse/ inter/ matrimonial/ mortician/ nuptials/ obituary/ perish/ posthumous/ pyre/ sepulcher/ toll/ urn
1. 正式用語中,「(有關)婚姻的」用matrimonial。另外,「婚禮」有個浮誇的用字nuptials:
•He longed for matrimonial bliss right after his divorce.
•She said she had seen nothing more splendid than the king's nuptials.
2. 「嫁妝」叫dowry;結婚等特別且重要的「週年紀念日」叫anniversary:
•She came to her marriage with no dowry.
•Jack and Kim celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary in January.
•A huge parade was held on the anniversary of the 1959 revolution.
•Next Friday is the anniversary of the day I first met you.
3. 在法律用語中,經常用demise表示「死亡」。另外,災難、意外、衝突等中的「傷亡人數」叫toll;在文言的敘述中,「突然死亡」或「死於暴力」可用perish:
•Upon his demise the title passed to his son, who became Lord Tweedsmuir.
•Upon the demise of the dictator, a bitter dispute about succession to power developed.
•The flood took a heavy toll of lives and property.
•Those who wield the sword will perish by the sword.
4. 「死後的」叫posthumous;「驗屍」叫autopsy:
•Many an artist, impoverished while living, came to posthumous fame.
•They carried out/ performed an autopsy to discover the cause of the man's mysterious death.
5. 「親人去世」叫bereave;「喪親之痛」叫bereavement;「喪親者」叫the bereaved。失去親人者若只一人,動詞用單數;超過一人則用複數:
•The widow has just been bereaved/ bereft of her husband.
•Bereavement is often a time of great grief.
•The bereaved was full of grief for his dead wife.
•The bereaved were full of grief for their dead child.
6. 「訃聞」叫obituary;「弔唁往生者」或慰問其親友用condole with:
•The old man never missed reading the obituaries in the paper.
•Victims of the earthquake condoled with each other in their grief.
•We condole with the families of the deceased.
7. 喪禮上所唱的「輓歌」叫dirge。英文中另有elegy一字,一般雖也翻譯作輓歌,但它其實是文人舞文弄墨的一種文類。藉著透過elegy悼念某位重要人物(通常也是文人)之名,詩人們更常做的是抒發其個人的心緒,因此英、美文學中所謂的四大輓歌,個中所含的就是這樣的內容與韻味。同時,elegy也可以指對某不復存在事物或某不幸所詠的悲歌:
•The funeral dirge stirred the mourners to tears.
•Shelley's elegy on the death of Keats reaches a length of about five hundred lines.
•This is an elegy to the loss of the countryside's peacefulness.
•Several elegies about the Haiti earthquake have been composed.
8. 「殯葬業者」叫mortician;「靈車」叫hearse:
•Those morticians are certified.
•Crowds of mourners were saluting when the late president's hearse passed.
•The king's hearse was plainly decorated.
9. 在正式用法中,inter是「埋葬」bury的代用字。另外,「火葬」叫cremate;火葬用的柴堆叫pyre;裝骨灰的甕叫urn:
•They are going to inter the body tomorrow.
•My dad had recently been cremated.
•When she dies, she wants to be cremated, not buried.
•In an ancient Greek funeral, the dead body was placed on the pyre and burned.
•They used urns to hold the ashes of the dead.
10. 在舊用法或聖經中,「墳墓」叫sepulcher。另外,「地下墓穴」叫catacomb;「墓誌銘」叫epitaph:
•A great genius who died young was rested in the sepulcher.
•They went down into catacombs beneath the church.
•In his will, he dictated the epitaph to be engraved on his tombstone.