| 词组 | turbid, turgid |
| 释义 | turbid, turgid Some words seem to have been specially created to encourage the use of dictionaries. Turbid and turgid are two such words. Not only do they look alike and sound alike, but they tend to be used in similar ways. Compounding the difficulty is their unfa-miliarity: few people other than scientists and book reviewers have frequent occasion to describe anything as "turbid" or "turgid." All things considered, it is not surprising that these two words are sometimes confused. The distinction in their literal senses is that turbid means "muddy, clouded," and turgid means "swollen, distended." A turbid stream is a muddy stream; a turgid stream is a swollen, flooded stream. In their figurative senses, turbid means "unclear, confused, obscure," and turgid means "overblown, grandiloquent." Turbid prose is obscure prose; turgid prose is grandiloquent prose. Of course, a flooded stream is often muddy, and grandiloquence and obscurity often cohabit in the same writing. Thus, it is sometimes difficult to tell exactly what is meant by turbid and turgid: • ... they seem to share a certain turbid homogeneity of thought and phrase which perhaps explains their popularity —Wilfrid Sheed, The Good Word and Other Words, 1978 • ... the Pentagon study is long, the documents turgid, and the summer had already begun —Peter Schräg, Saturday Rev., 13 Nov. 1971 Chances are excellent that turbid and turgid are being used in their time-honored senses in these passages, but the context does not make their meanings obvious. Sometimes one word is clearly being used when the other is called for. The tendency is to replace turbid with turgid, which is relatively the more common word: • The background is laid in the murky, turgid England of Roger Bacon —Time, 29 Oct. 1945 • The turgid water is pumped over the top of the bed. The water percolates through the bed, and the solids are retained in the sand —McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 1960 The best way to avoid such mishaps is to keep a dictionary handy. |
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