Podcast

intoxicate podcast

intoxicate v. [in-TAHK-suh-kayt]

下毒；使…陶醉

Definition

1: poison
1：毒

2 a: to excite or stupefy by alcohol or a drug especially to the point where physical and mental control is markedly diminished
a：通过酒精或者毒品时兴奋甚至失去知觉，尤其是到达了生理上或者精神上明显的失去控制的程度

b: to excite or elate to the point of enthusiasm or frenzy.
b：兴奋到了激情或者疯狂的程度

注：elate：使兴奋，使得意；frenzy：狂乱，狂暴，狂怒

Did You Know?

For those who think that alcohol and drugs qualify as poison, the history of intoxicate offers some etymological evidence to bolster your argument. Intoxicate traces back to toxicum, the Latin word for “poison” — and the earliest meaning of intoxicate was as an adjective describing something (such as the tip of an arrow or dart) steeped in or smeared with poison. That meaning dates to the 15th century; the related verb, meaning “to poison,” occurs in the 16th. Both senses are now obsolete. Today, we talk about such harmless things as flowers and perfume having the power to intoxicate. Toxicum turns up in the etymologies of a number of other English words including toxic (“poisonous”), intoxicant (“something that intoxicates”), and detoxify (“to remove a poison from”), as well as a number of names for various poisons themselves.

词源词根演化：toxicum (L. “poison”) —> intoxicate

对于那些认为酒精和毒品是有毒物质的人，intoxicate的词源演化史证据或许可以支撑你的论点。intoxicate可以追溯到拉丁单词toxicum，意思是“有毒物质” — 而且intoxicate早期是一个形容词，用于描述“被浸泡在毒液中或者涂抹了毒汁的东西（例如箭身或飞镖的头部）”，这个意思一直用到了15世纪；在16世纪有了动词意思“毒害”。不过现在这两个意思都已经过时不再使用了。在现代，我们谈到一些完全无害的东西，例如花朵或者香水，也可以具有intoxicate的能力。toxicum在词源方面也为英语贡献了几个单词：toxic（有毒的），intoxicant（可以毒害的物质），和detoxify（解毒），以及数个有毒物质的名称。

注：bolster：支持，鼓励；steep：浸泡，沉浸，笼罩；smear：涂抹，弄脏，诽谤

Examples

“But, even as a child, [George] Benjamin preferred classical music: Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring,’ Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain,’ Dukas’s ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,’ and Beethoven above all. He was ‘intoxicated by music,’ he told me, noting, ‘If I had an afternoon off, I would spent it looking at scores, practicing the piano, writing music… .’”
— Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 17 Sept. 2018

但是，即便还是小孩子，George Benjamin也喜欢古典阴雨：Stravinsky的《春之祭》，Mussorgsky的《荒山之夜》，Dukas的《魔法师的学徒》以及Beethoven等。他完全沉浸在音乐当中，他告诉我说，“如果我能空闲一个下午，我会花时间看乐谱，练习钢琴，作曲…”。

注：score：乐谱
Stravinsky：史特拉芬斯基（composer who was born in Russia but lived in the United States after 1939 (1882-1971)）
Mussorgsky：穆索斯基(Russian composer of operas and orchestral works (1839-1881))
Dukas：杜卡(French composer (1865-1935))
“I ate the berries myself, my tongue carefully and eagerly pressing each one to my palate. The sweet, aromatic juice of each squashed berry intoxicated me for a second.”
— Varlam Shalamov, “Berries” in Kolyma Stories, 2018

我吃了一些浆果，我的舌头小心地又贪婪地将每一个果子压向我的上颚。每个被压碎的果子的香甜的果汁都让我陶醉一秒钟。