inveterate
北朝鮮がオバマ大統領の呼びかけに反論しました。言葉の選択にトゲのある表現が並んでいます。そのうちのひとつ、the inveterate conceptionのinveterateはわたしも久しぶりに見ました。
これは病気やくせなどが「慢性の、常習的な」という意味合いで使われることが多く、「感情が根深い、ヘビのように執念深い」というニュアンスもあります。辞書にはinveterate habit/smoker/diseaseなどの例が載っていると思います。手持ちの用例ファイルには以下の例があります。
Monday, 28 March, 2005
Zimbabwe has called one of its leading clerics an "inveterate liar", after he called for a peaceful uprising against President Robert Mugabe.
外交でこのレベルの形容が使われるときには悪意させ感じます。言葉だけの応酬ですめばよいのですが...（UG）
North Korea said Tuesday that it would not abandon its plan to carry out a satellite launch next month despite recent warnings from President Barack Obama over the move.
The North "will not give up the satellite launch for peaceful purposes, which is a legitimate right of a sovereign state and requirement essential for economic development," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency reported, citing the country's foreign ministry.
During his visit to South Korea this week, Obama has said that if North Korea moves forward with the launch -- which Washington and Seoul say would breach U.N. Security Council resolutions through the use of a long-range missile -- it will further deepen its isolation, damage relations with its neighbors and face additional sanctions that have already strangled the country.
The North Korean report Tuesday said that Obama's stance "reflects his wrong conception" of the situation.
"The U.S. says that it has no hostility" toward North Korea, the news agency cited the ministry as saying. "But it has not yet departed from the inveterate conception of confrontation. That is why it regards the launch of a satellite for peaceful purposes as a launch of long-range missile."
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/27/world/asia/korea-nuclear-summit/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
PS ちなみに最後の部分のCNN jpの訳です。「トゲ」が抜いてあるのはなぜでしょうか。
これに対し北朝鮮外務省の声明は、米国は状況を見誤っていると反論。米国は北朝鮮に対し敵意はないと言いながらも抜きがたい敵対政策をいまだに脱していないとし、これが平和目的の衛星打ち上げを長距離ミサイル発射と受け止める原因になっていると主張した
