tobacco

• n. 煙草，煙葉；煙草製品；抽煙

來自西班牙語 tobaco,煙草，該詞或來自阿拉伯語 tabaq,一種草藥植物，或來自南美某土著語 詞的拚寫俗化。

tobacco

tobacco: [16] Tobacco was introduced to Europe from the Americas, and that is where its name came from too. It originated in a Carib word, and reached English via Spanish and Portuguese tabaco. What precisely the Carib word meant, however, is a matter of dispute. Some say that it referred to tobacco leaves rolled up into a cylindrical shape for smoking, while others maintain that it denoted a pipe for smoking the tobacco in.

The word has spread to virtually all European languages (French tabac, German, Dutch, Russian, and Czech tabak, Welsh tybaco, etc), and only a few remnants of alternative terms remain: Romanian tutun and Polish tytun, for instance, borrowings from Turkish tütün, which originally meant ‘smoke’, and Breton butun, which came from pety, the word for ‘tobacco’ in the Guarani language of South America (source also of English petunia [19], a close relative of the tobacco plant).

tobacco (n.)

1580s, from Spanish tabaco, in part from an Arawakan language of the Caribbean (probably Taino), said to mean "a roll of tobacco leaves" (according to Las Casas, 1552) or "a kind of pipe for smoking tobacco" (according to Oviedo, 1535). Scholars of Caribbean languages lean toward Las Casas' explanation. But Spanish tabaco (also Italian tabacco) was a name of medicinal herbs from early 15c., from Arabic tabbaq, attested since 9c. as the name of various herbs. So the word may be in part a European one transferred to an American plant. The West Indian island of Tobago was said to have been named by Columbus in 1498 from Haitian tambaku "pipe," in reference to the native custom of smoking dried tobacco leaves [Room].

Cultivation in France began 1556 with an importation of seed by Andre Thevet; introduced in Spain 1558 by Francisco Fernandes. Tobacco Road as a mythical place representative of rural Southern U.S. poverty is from the title of Erskine Caldwell's 1932 novel. Early German and Portuguese accounts of Brazil also record another name for tobacco, bittin or betum, evidently a native word in South America, which made its way into 17c. Spanish, French, and English as petun, petumin, etc., and which is preserved in petunia and butun, the Breton word for "tobacco."

Many haue giuen it [tobacco] the name, Petum, whiche is in deede the proper name of the Hearbe, as they whiche haue traueiled that countrey can tell. [John Frampton, translation of Nicolás Monardes' "Joyful Newes Oute of the Newe Founde Worlde," 1577]

1. Two leading law firms are to prepare legal actions against tobacco companies.

兩家很有名的律師事務所準備向煙草公司提起訴訟。

來自柯林斯例句

2. The tobacco industry has been trying to improve its image.

煙草行業一直在試圖改善其形象。

來自柯林斯例句

3. Try using lemon juice to remove tobacco stains from your fingers.

試試用檸檬汁去除手指上的煙漬。

來自柯林斯例句

4. I certainly think there should be a ban on tobacco advertising.

我確實認為應該禁止香煙廣告.

來自柯林斯例句

5. The room held the faint, sweet odour of pipe tobacco.

房間內有煙鬥煙絲的淡淡馨香。

來自柯林斯例句