《头号玩家》原著中的30+实用表达
Ready Player One是科幻作家Ernest Cline的第一本小说,于2011年出版,和电影版的故事情节有很大不同。小说的语言直白,阅读难度低。有声书版本是由演员出身的Will Wheaton朗读,适合用来练听力和跟读。
今天和你分享我在阅读过程中收集的一些表达,不管你读不读这本书,下面这些表达都值得学习并使用。建议把每一个句子都读上两遍后再看我的补充讲解,如果对某个表达还有不清楚的地方,一定要自己动手查查字典。
1. Fifty years after the decade had ended, the movies, music, games, and fashions of the 1980s were all the rage once again.
all the rage表示“变得流行”,可以用来替换popular,类似的表达还有in vogue。
我们看书的时候要注意收集类似的表达,没学一个新词就复习一下旧词。后文有一句The idea cuaght on in a big way. 读到catch on的时候我就想:它和前面的all the rage就很类似。
2. Anorak is dressed in his trademark black robes, with his avatar's emblem embroidered on each sleeve.
trademark在书中出现了5次,表示“具有标志性的”,例如花臂和top knot就是我的trademark。
He flashed his trademark Cheshire grin.
...with unkempt hair and his trademark horn-rimmed eyeglasses.
类似的表达还有signature,比如signature dishes就是“招牌菜”。
3. Everyone else around here has to pay rent. I'm tired of you leeching off of me.
leech是“吸血鬼” “寄生虫”,在这里用作了动词leech off。类似的表达还有live off,mooch off,我们想表达“啃老” “蹭吃蹭喝”时就可以用到它们。
4. Then he and Aunt Alice walked out, already discussing how much the computer might fetch at a pawnshop.
fetch在这里表示“卖得”,这里how much the computer might fetch at a pawnshop是说“这个电脑能在当铺当多少钱”。
5. I mixed these together in a bowl, then dumped in a generous serving of Fruit Rocks cereal. Once I'd wolfed it down, I retrieved an old plastic Star Trek lunch box I kept hidden under the van's crushed dashboard.
wolf down表示“狼吞虎咽”,很好玩的一个词。我们也可以直接用down表示drink:
I ordered a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from the female Klingon bartender and downed half of it.
6. His eyes narrowed. He was, of course, stumped.
be stumped表示“被难住” “一筹莫展”。这段话在书中出现的场景是两个人在互怼,读到stumped时,我的第一个念头是“他被怼的哑口无言”。
7. If I didn't spend so much time offline, getting laid, I'd probably know just as much worthless shit as you two do.
get laid表示“have sex”,记得《搏击俱乐部》中一位癌症患者在support group中说:I am in a pretty lonely place. No one will have sex with me. I'm so close to the end, and all I want is to get laid for the last time.
8. He sported an infectious grin, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows.
sport除了表示“运动”外还可以用作动词表示“穿戴”,和wear差不多。wear可以用来表示“留头发” “流露出...表情”,sport也可以这样用。
9. I knew the crush I had on Art3mis was both silly and ill-advised.
ill-是个需要掌握的前缀,在这里ill-advised表示“不明智的” “欠缺考虑的”。书中还出现了:“my limited wardrobe consisted entirely of ill-fitting clothes from thrift stores and donation bins”,ill-fitting就是“不合身的”。
10. I was awestruck.(awestruck表示“肃然起敬的”)
11. The visor also housed two built-in stereo voice.
Archaid housed thousands of classic video arcades.
house也可以作为动词使用,表示“容纳”,这时候它念/haʊz/。
12. I didn't have that kind of spare dough to blow.
“钱”除了用money,还可以用dough,moola(moolah)。
blow表示“挥霍”,例如我花了3块钱的巨款买了一袋辣条,就可以说I blew 3 yuan on Latiao.
13. Their environments ran the gamut. ( 涉及…的全部范围)
14. By all accounts, James was a bright boy, but socially inept.
As the year went on, Halliday's already-stunted social skills seemed to deteriorate even further.
写到Halliday社交能力低的时候,作者用到了socially inept这种典型的“副词+形容词”的表达,这样的表达比较政治正确,例如盲人一般会被称为visually impaired。
后面也用到stunted,stunt表示“阻碍(生长/发展)”,是个可以在雅思托福考试中用到的好词。
15. Over the next decade, the small company took the videogame industry by storm, releasing a series of bestselling action and adventure games...
take...by storm表示“大获成功”,中间一般加一个领域,这里是说这个小公司在电玩领域大获成功。我能想到的类似表达还有: put...on the map, make one's mark (in), make a splash。
16. The visor was light-years ahead of the clunky virtual-reality goggles available prior to that time, and it represented a paradigm shift in virtual-reality technology.
故事背景发生在2045年,那个时候的科技远超现在还很笨拙的VR,表示“远超”,作者夸张地用到be light-years ahead of。
后面还用到了paradigm shift,“范式转移”,表示那时的科技和现在的截然不同,有了质的飞跃。
17. In addition to the billions of dollars that GSS raked in selling land that didn't actually exists they made a killing selling virtual objects and vehicles.
rake in和make a killing都表示“赚了许多钱”。
18. I got creamed. (cream在这里是“打败”, 类似的表达还有smoke)
19. Suffice it to say, I have not communicated with James Halliday in over ten years. (suffice it to say是固定表达,用在句首表示“简而言之” “无需多说”。
20. A famous eccentric, Halliday had harbored a lifelong obsession with the 1980s, the decade during which he'd been a teenager, and Anork's Invitation was crammed with obscure 80s pop culture references.
I'm logged in from a germ-ridden public OASIS booth right now.
... an underground labyrinth infested with undead monsters.
表示“充满”,书中用到了be crammed with, -ridden, be infested with
23. I was always hard-up for cash, no matter how frugal I tried to be.
“手头紧”就可以说be hard-up for cash,类似的表达还有strapped。
24. Eventually, I found my groove.
groove表示“最佳的精神状态”,常用表达有in a/the groove。我们常说的“不在状态” “没感觉”里的“感觉”和“状态”就是groove。例如你很长时间没打球了,你需要完上一会才能找到舒服的节奏和感觉,这时候就是find your groove。
25. The very thought filled me with nervous excitement. (注意fill的用法)
26. Both avatars looks Japanese, and they bore a striking resemblance to one another, like snapshots of the same young man taken five years apart.
27. 这些表达要掌握,因为很实用:
You know the drill. (你懂的)
hold your horses (先别急)
call it quits (放弃了,注意这里的quits一定是复数)
I beg to differ. (不同意)
everything under the sun (天下万物)
28. 下面这些话也值得背下来:
Guilty as charged.
字面意思是“罪名成立”,我们可以用来开玩笑表示“你说的对”。例如你问我:Eric,这篇文章是你自己写的吗?我就可以说“Guilty as charged”。
He didn't seemed to have aged a day.
见到老朋友,想夸ta你还是那么年轻啊!就可以说You haven't aged a day.
For him, making games was as necessary as breathing.
对Halliday来说,制作游戏和呼吸一样重要。我们想表达“热爱某事” “某事很重要”就可以这样说。例如对我来说, reading and writing are as necessary as breathing.
29. 注意语法
I was going to reach the Third Gate, or die trying.
He had died a sixty-seven-year-old bachelor.
关于这个语法点,请读:对于英语学习材料,要长点心
30. 读一段话
“I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life, right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.”
我读了一遍书,读的过程中做了简单的标记,读完后整理成这篇文章,附上自己的讲解分享给你。这就是我“读书,顺便学英文”的核心方法。
在阅读中注意收集同义表达,联想自己学过的表达可以提高学习效率。最重要的是要把这些表达用起来,不愿意写就说,没地方说就自己口头造句。见多了用多了就自然掌握了。
Now you know the drill, so start reading and have fun!
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