jungle: [18] Not surprisingly, jungle is a tropical word, but its ancestor denoted quite the opposite of the lush vegetation it now refers to. It comes from Sanskrit jangala, which originally meant ‘dry’, and hence ‘desert’. Its Hindi descendant jangal was used for an ‘area of wasteland’, and hence ‘such an area overgrown with scrub’, and when it was taken over into Anglo-Indian it was gradually extended to an ‘area of thick tangled trees’.
jungle (n.)
1776, from Hindi jangal "desert, forest, wasteland, uncultivated ground," from Sanskrit jangala-s "arid, sparsely grown with trees," of unknown origin. Specific sense of "land overgrown by vegetation in a wild, tangled mass" is first recorded 1849; meaning "place notoriously lawless and violent" is first recorded 1906, from Upton Sinclair's novel (compare asphalt jungle, 1949, William R. Burnett's novel title, made into a film 1950 by John Huston; blackboard jungle, 1954, Evan Hunter's novel title, movie in 1955). Jungle gym was a trademark name, 1923, by Junglegym Inc., Chicago, U.S. Jungle bunny, derogatory for "black person," attested from 1966.
雙語例句
1. "Orchards would take the place of the jungle," he rhapsodized.
“要讓這片叢林成為果園，”他無比興奮地說。
來自柯林斯例句
2. If you make aggression pay, this becomes the law of the jungle.
如果你通過侵略謀取利益，這就成了弱肉強食。
來自柯林斯例句
3. It held more mystery than even the darkest jungle.
它甚至比最黑暗的叢林還更令人感到神秘。
來自柯林斯例句
4. Social security law and procedure remain a jungle of complex rules.
有關社會保障的法律和程序仍舊是個充滿錯綜復雜的規則的危險領域。
來自柯林斯例句
5. Domestic chickens are descended from jungle fowl of Southeast Asia.