Picture the pale line left on skin after a cut has closed. The wound is over — it does not hurt any more — but the surface never went back to how it was. That double fact, healed yet permanently marked, is what the word carries everywhere it goes: onto feelings, onto land, onto buildings.
From the word’s history
Etymonline traces the skin-mark scar to Old French escare 'scab', from Late Latin eschara, from Greek eskhara, the scab formed after a burn; it was probably reinforced by a separate Middle English noun scar 'crack, cut, incision' from Old Norse skarð. The cliff scar is a different word again: Old Norse sker 'isolated rock in the sea', from a root meaning 'to cut' — something cut off. One spelling, more than one history.
根據 Etymonline，皮膚上那道疤的 scar 來自古法文 escare（痂），再往上是晚期拉丁文 eschara、希臘文 eskhara——燒傷後結的痂；中古英文另有一個 scar「裂口、切口」（來自古諾斯語 skarð），兩者後來混在一起。而「峭壁」那個 scar 又是另一個字：古諾斯語 sker（海中孤立的岩礁），字根意思是「切」，也就是「被切下來的一塊」。同一個拼法，底下不只一條來歷——所以 0_4 和其他義項讀起來像兩個字，並不是你的錯覺。
Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com), entry 'scar' — https://www.etymonline.com/word/scar
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料10 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
scarnoun詞源 1/skɑɹ/
- 1
A permanent mark on the skin, sometimes caused by the healing of a wound.
- 2
A permanent negative effect on someone's mind, caused by a traumatic experience.
- Thus, it is wise to avoid cultivating an emotional scar, as it can play havoc with your happiness and success.
- 3
Any permanent mark resulting from damage.
- Her age-old weapons, flood and fire, left scars on the canyon which time will never efface.
- But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.
scarverb詞源 1/skɑɹ/
- 1
To mark the skin permanently.
- Yet I'll not shed her blood; / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow.
- 2
To form a scar.
- Iron and coal were the magnets that drew railways to this land of lovely valleys and silent mountains—for such it was a century-and-a-half ago, before man blackened the valleys with the smoke of his forges, scarred the green hills with his shafts and waste-heaps, and drove the salmon from the quiet Rhondda and the murmuring Taff.
- And black skin scars badly. Whatʼs left behind stays pink and angry, always.
- 3
To affect deeply in a traumatic manner.
- Seeing his parents die in a car crash scarred him for life.
scarnoun詞源 2/skɑɹ/
- 1
A cliff or rock outcrop.
- O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, / And thinner, clearer, farther going! / O sweet and far from cliff and scar / The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
- All round him the long scar smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another. “Hi!” it said. “Wait a minute!” The undergrowth at the side of the scar was shaken and a multitude of raindrops fell pattering.
- 2
A rock in the sea breaking out from the surface of the water.
- 3
A bare rocky place on the side of a hill or mountain.
scarnoun詞源 3/skɑɹ/
- 1
A marine food fish, the scarus or parrotfish (family Scaridae).
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。