儒琴英语词汇选自欧美报刊文章以及英语原文小说。坚持学习英语今日词汇，有助于阅读和理解当今欧美主流媒体的新闻时事报道和英语文学作品。
儒琴英语词汇（English Words and Phrases of the Day）
今天CNN详细跟踪报道土耳其对叙利亚北部发起的军事行动。目前西方很多国家发对土耳其出兵打击叙库尔德武装。 土耳其总统埃尔多安 （Erdogan ）却对欧洲发出严重警告，威胁欧洲，说如果欧洲反对，他就打开大门，让目前在土耳其境内的360多万叙利亚难民涌入到欧洲去。记者报道的时候使用了“not mince word”词组，强调了总统埃尔多安的决心。
Not mince (your) words
to say what you mean clearly and directly, even if you upset people by doing this (Cambridge)
直截了当地说，直言不讳; 打开天窗说亮话
原文如下：
The Turkish President didn’t mince words Thursday, warning European countries he would allow millions of Syrian refugees to travel into Europe if they criticized his military operation.
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以色列总统内塔尼亚胡 （Netanyahu）也罕见发声，强烈谴责土耳其对叙利亚北部的军事行动，警告土耳其的种族清洗，并承诺必要时进行人道主义支援。 记者使用了 ethnic cleansing。
ethnic cleansing
noun [ U ]
the organized, often violent attempt by a particular cultural or racial group to completely remove from a country or area all members of a different group （Cambridge）
种族清洗
cleanse 与 clean 在使用最大的区别是cleanse 能引申抽象的“清洗”, 而clean 一般只表达具体的‘“清洗”。
ethnic cleansing 的cleanse 意思是： to remove a group of people from an area。
原文如下：
“Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies,” Netanyahu said, speaking on the issue for the first time since US President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw US forces from Syria.
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据报道 库尔德武装挫败了土耳其一次地面入侵的企图。记者在表达“挫败”时，分别使用了 scupper, repel, foil, defeat。报道小标题使用了“scupper”.
scupper verb
to cause something such as a plan or an opportunity to fail
使失败；使泡汤 (cambridge)
词源学家一直没有找到scupper作为动词的词源。它的名词用法已经有500多年的历史， 是船甲板上的排水孔的意思 （opening in a ship’s side at deck level to let the water flow out）。有专家说它的动词来源于19世纪一个军事俚语： All we know for sure is that scuppermeant “to ambush and massacre” in 19th-century military slang.
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另外，记者还用很大的篇幅介绍库尔德人， 库尔德武装，以及他们一直致力于建立的他们未来的国家：库尔德斯坦 Kurdistan， 目前是全世界最大的无国籍国家之一 stateless nations.
stateless
adjective
A stateless person has no country that they officially belong to.
无国籍的 (Cambridge)
stateless nations 的组合也很好阐述了“state” 与“nation” 的区别。
原文如下：
In the early 20th century, the Kurds began working toward the creation of homeland known as Kurdistan — now one of the world’s largest stateless nations, a non-governmental region whose people have no official homeland or country. Today, Kurdistan is comprised of territory in five different countries: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Armenia.
