So you're going to the beach. This is, we have been informed, a perfectly agreeable way to spend one's summer vacation. The beach is also, however, a place where not very much happens. If you have no dog-eared paperback that you have been planning to read, here's a parcel of words with which you may amuse yourself.

你這是要去海邊啊。嗯，我們都知道，要過暑假，去海邊是個超棒的消遣時間的方式。然而在海邊你要做的事情并不是很多。如果你沒在計劃著到了海邊，你要讀些已翻舊了的書的話，看看以下這些單詞--你會覺得挺有趣的。

Would you like to refer to your upcoming episode of sunburn and sand-sticking-in-unwelcome-places by another word? Inform people that you will be visiting  plage ("the beach of a seaside resort"), a lido ("a fashionable beach resort"), or the praya ("beach, strand, waterfront").

你跟別人講你要去海邊了，到時候你可能會被太陽曬傷，沙子會粘在你身上到處都是。你可以告訴他們，你去了plage(海濱沙灘勝地)，或者lido(時尚的海濱度假勝地)，又或是praya(沙灘，海岸，海濱)。

While you sit at the beach, amuse yourself by play the game "what's the word for that?" Our language is awash with words for things that most people never really thought about. We have words for "small waves"(ripple and riffle), and we also have an adjective, decuman, for describing a large wave.

當(dāng)你坐在沙灘上時，玩玩“這個東西的英文稱呼是什么”的游戲吧。英語詞匯里充斥著很多人們沒想到的日常事物的英文稱謂。海面上的小波浪，我們可以用ripple和riffle來稱呼。還有一個形容詞decuman，來形容大波浪。

The sea spray that blows off the ocean is called the spindrift, a word that can also be used to describe sand or snow that is blown by the wind, and the rush of water from a breaking wave that comes onto the beach is referred to as a swash. Swash may also refer to the sound made by these waves as they break upon the shore.

我們可以用spindrift來稱呼海浪拍打而起的飛沫。這個單詞同樣也能用來描述被風(fēng)吹起的沙土或雪花。受海浪推力而沖上沙灘的海水叫swash。swash同時也可以用來指代海水沖上沙灘而發(fā)出的沙沙響聲。

Lexicographers in the 17th century defined a great number of fanciful and fantastic words having to do with waves. Thomas Blount, in his 1656 Glossographia, and Elisha Coles, in his 1676 An English Dictionary, each included the words undisonant and fluctisonant, both of which mean "sounding or roaring like waves." Sadly, these specimens - and others such as fluctivagant "tossed by the waves"- are little used today, and tend to be found primarily in historical dictionaries.

17世紀(jì)的詞典編纂者們定義了很多與海浪有關(guān)的單詞，這些單詞富于幻想，十分新穎。Thomas Blount(1618-1679)在1656年出版的《詞集》和Elisha Coles(1640-1680)在1676年出版的《英語詞典》中都收錄了undisonant與fluctisonant，這兩個詞都指“像浪濤聲的”?？上У氖牵@些類型的詞--還有諸如fluctivagant(被海浪拋起的)的單詞--現(xiàn)在幾乎沒怎么被人使用了。這些詞大概只能在歷史詞典里被發(fā)掘出來。

If you are actually one of those people who enjoys all things beachy and plans on basking in the sun, then you are a heliophile (“one attracted or adapted to sunlight”). And yes, there is a word for the rest of us, those for whom the idea of a day at a warm sunny beach elicits a cold sweat: we are heliophobes.

如果你喜歡海灘喜歡曬太陽的話，那么你就是heliophile。是的，對于另外一些不喜歡海邊，聽說要在溫暖陽光的沙灘上呆上一整天就流出一身冷汗的人，也有個詞來形容他們，他們是heliophobes。