常時英心:言葉の森から 1.0

約10年間,はてなダイアリーで英語表現の落穂拾いを行ってきました。現在はAmeba Blogに2.0を開設し,継続中です。こちらはしばらくアーカイブとして維持します。

spree killing 復習

New York Timeの社説から取り上げます。
先日カリフォルニアで起きた銃撃事件をはじめ、近年のアメリカでは銃乱射事件が絶えません。ここでは筆者の銃社会に対する思いが綴られています。

End the Gun Epidemic in America

It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.
But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.
It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidemic-in-america.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

今回取り上げる表現は “spree killing”です。
“spree”もともと「①浮かれ[ばか]騒ぎ;酒盛り②犯罪行為」を意味しますが(『ジーニアス英和辞典第4版』)、以前の記事では “a shooting spree”「乱射事件、銃撃事件」や “crime spree”「(連続した無差別の)犯罪行為」が挙げられており、共起する単語によって意味を成すようです。

今回の “spree killing”自体の意味を辞書で見つけることはできませんでしたが、 “spree killer”で「無差別殺人鬼」を示すということは分かりました。(『ジーニアス大英和辞典』大修館書店) よって “spree killing”は「無差別殺人」(indiscriminate killing)のことを意味すると推測できます。 (Inaho)

“a shooting spree” http://d.hatena.ne.jp/A30/20130410/1365541939
“crime spree” http://d.hatena.ne.jp/A30/20140119/1390132940