We haven’t yet come up with a universally agreed-upon word to refer to someone we are living with before getting married.
至今還沒有哪個詞得到公認,可以用來稱呼我們婚前同居的對象。
Once you decide though, “yes this is it, we’re going to get married,” the word fiancé becomes available.
而你一旦作出抉擇,“定了,我們要結婚了”,fiancé(未婚夫)這個詞就有了用武之地。
Fiancé only lasts a little while until the word husband or wife stuns you by being applicable to your own situation, instead of just to older people.
可惜身為“未婚夫(妻)”的日子十分短暫,你很快會被“丈夫”和“妻子”的稱呼震驚,因為這兩個詞不再專屬于年紀大的人,連你自己也可以用了。
English speakers have only had fiancés for about 150 years. The word betrothed goes back more like 700 years.
英語國家的人使用fiancé這個詞的時間僅有大約150年。betrothed(訂婚的,未婚夫/妻)則有700年左右的歷史。
It is easy to see the word truth in the word betrothed and the same lineage of trust applies to the word fiancé.
我們很容易看到betrothed中含有truth(真實)這一詞根,而fiancé的詞源中也流著“信賴”的血統。
Even further back, 800 years ago in French, fiancé meant “trust” and came into English first with that meaning.
再把時間往前推一點,在800年前的法語中,fiancé的意思是信賴,一開始進入英語時也是這個含義。
From “trust” to “promise” is an understandable change in meaning and so the word fiancé turns up again a century or two before Shakespeare. In this case it shows up as a verb so that to fiancé was “to promise” and specifically to promise to wed.
我們容易理解單詞從“信賴”到“誓言”的轉變,是一兩個世紀后,也就是莎翁時代之前,fiancé再度現身。fiancé這一次以動詞形式出現,意為“承諾”,尤其有承諾結婚的意思。
Thus as the verb became obsolete the noun referring to the persons who had exchanged promises arose to take its place.
因此,當動詞的含義淡出歷史,fiancé作為名詞、指代許下諾言的人的含義應運而生。
According to The Oxford English Dictionary the first person to be referred to in writing as someone’s fiancé was Blanche Mary Shore Smith who at the time was engaged to be married to Arthur Hugh Clough.
根據《牛津英語詞典》的說法,首次在文字記錄中被稱為某人的fiancé的人是布蘭奇•瑪麗•肖•史密斯(Blanche Mary Shore Smith),她當時與亞瑟•休•克勞夫(Arthur Hugh Clough)訂婚。
Since you likely don’t recognize either of those two lovebirds I will mention Blanche’s cousin, whose name you will recognize. Arthur worked for years as unpaid secretary for her.
可能你從未聽說過這對鴛鴦鳥,那我就提一下布蘭奇的表姐吧,你想必知道那個人。亞瑟無償為她做了多年秘書。
She was Florence Nightingale.
她的名字叫佛羅倫斯•南丁格爾。