One picture carries this whole word. It is April, the winter coats are going into a box, and you drop in a few small hard balls with a sharp smell. Nothing is being thrown away. The lid goes on, the box goes up on the shelf, and the smell stands guard while the months pass. Then one cold morning the box comes down, the coats come out, and there are no holes in them. Storing, not scrapping — and the promise of coming back — is what every use of this word is built on.
From the word’s history
The source records the noun as moth + ball, and says the verb comes from the noun. So the verb is not a separate word; it is the same box, the same care, applied to bigger things.
來源把名詞記成 moth（蛾）+ ball（球），並且說動詞是從名詞來的。所以動詞不是另一個字，它就是同一個箱子、同一份小心，只是拿去用在更大的東西上。
Wiktionary entry 'mothball' (kaikki snapshot 3f6f69a190036ae4): "The noun is derived from moth + ball. The verb is derived from the noun."
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。