喜樂美語

Picture cleaning a room and actually going all the way through it — under the bed, behind the door, inside the drawers — instead of just the parts that show. Nothing is left untouched, because you went from one end to the other. That is the picture: work that reaches every corner, and by extension the kind of person who works that way.

可以想成：打掃一個房間，而且是真的「從頭走到尾」——床底下、門後面、抽屜裡都翻過，不是只擦看得到的地方。沒有一個角落被跳過，因為你整間走完了。thorough 的意思就像從這個畫面長出來的：先是「做到每個角落的事情」，再來是「做事會這樣做的人」。

From the word’s history

Thorough began as a stressed form of the same Middle English word that gave us through; the idea inside it is 'going all the way through'. In Middle English it already meant 'perfect, complete' — an adjective built from an adverb of motion from end to end. So the modern sense is the old picture kept intact.

thorough 其實跟 through 是同一個字的兩種讀法：中古英文的 thurgh 重音化之後分出了 thorough，字裡的想法就是「一路穿過去、從這頭到那頭」。中古英文時期它已經有「完整、無缺」的意思，是從一個表示「從一端到另一端」的副詞造出來的形容詞。所以現代的「徹底」不是後來加上去的比喻，而是那個穿過去的畫面一直留著。

Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com), entry "thorough"

登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。

容易混在一起的字在訂閱裡。容易混在一起的字需要訂閱帳號。

同家族的字

比較級 more thorough最高級 most thorough

原始詞典資料5 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。

Thoroughname

  • 1

    historicalChristianityA scheme devised in 17th-century England by Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford to establish absolute monarchy in England, involving the appointment of Arminian clergy.

thoroughadj/ˈθʌɹə/

  • 1

    Painstaking and careful not to miss or omit any detail.

    • The Prime Minister announced a thorough investigation into the death of a father-of-two in police custody.
    • Not enough! Your work has to be thorougher than this.
  • 2

    Utter; complete; absolute.

    • Dr. Oldfield once said to me, 'You talk to me quite all right, but why is it that you never open your lips at a committee meeting? You are a drone.' I appreciated the banter. The bees are ever busy, the drone is a thorough idler.

thoroughprep/ˈθʌɹə/

  • 1

    archaicThrough.

    • Ye might haue ſeene the frothy billowes fry Vnder the ſhip, as thorough them ſhe went […]
    • You are contented to be led in triumph Thorough the streets of Rome?

thoroughnoun/ˈθʌɹə/

  • 1

    dialectalA furrow between two ridges, to drain off the surface water.

    • The Ignorance and Idleness of the Plowman, who either goes so shallow, or plows his Thoroughs so wide, or misses Part of the Ground.

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。