It helps to start with the sound rather than the action, because this word may simply be that sound written down. A thump is low, heavy and closed: the noise a full box makes as it lands on a floor. It is not sharp like a click and not bright like a bang, and you usually feel a little of it through the floor as well as hearing it. Everything the word does grows out of that one noise. There is the hit that makes it, whether a fist on a table or rain on a window. There are feet that make it, so you hear someone coming before you see them. There is the same beat inside your chest when you are or . And there is the beat that reaches you through a wall when only the bass of a song gets through.
From the word’s history
The source dates the word to the mid sixteenth century and says it is probably imitative — that is, the word was made to sound like the noise. That fits the core: say it aloud and the closed mp at the end lands the way a heavy object lands.
來源說這個字大約出現在十六世紀中期,而且多半被認為是擬聲的——也就是這個字本來就是照著那個聲音造的。這跟核心畫面正好對得上:把 /θʌmp/ 念出聲,最後的 mp 收得又悶又重,就像重物落地的那一下。
Wiktionary entry for thump, supplied in this packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1067778546): 'Mid 16th century, probably imitative.'
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料9 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。
thumpnoun/θʌmp/
- 1
A blow that produces a muffled sound.
- ... and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.
- The watchman gave so very great a thump at my door last night, that I awakened at the knock.
- 2
The sound of such a blow; a thud.
- An interesting feature of the church is the invisible clock, which you can hear thumping away as you enter. Constructed in 1525, it is one of the oldest timepieces in England. It chimes the hours and the quarters, and every three hours it plays a hymn. But it has no faces.
- 3
datedUsed to replace the vulgar or blasphemous element in "what the hell" and similar phrases.
- Where the thump have you been?!
- 4
businessminingSynonym of bump (“sudden movement of underground strata”).
thumpverb/θʌmp/
- 1
To hit (someone or something) as if to make a thump.
- These bastard Bretons, whom our fathers / Have in their own land beaten, bobb'd, and thump'd.
- Kasper Schmeichel brilliantly denied Marouane Chamakh before Bacary Sagna thumped home a second, though Bradley Johnson's screamer halved the deficit.
- 2
To cause to make a thumping sound.
- The cat thumped its tail in irritation.
- 3
To thud or pound.
- 4
To throb with a muffled rhythmic sound.
- Dance music thumped from the nightclub entrance.
- Even without hovering drones, a lurking assassin, a thumping score and a denouement, the real-life story of Edward Snowden, a rogue spy on the run, could be straight out of the cinema. But, as with Hollywood, the subplots and exotic locations may distract from the real message: America’s discomfort and its foes’ glee.
- 5
(of a rabbit) to hit the ground with the back legs to signal agitation.
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。