goad
カリフォルニア州で起きた銃乱撃事件の容疑者はイスラム国を支持していたということが明らかになり、オバマ大統領は演説でイスラム国の壊滅を表明しました。さらに、イスラム国側もアメリカとその同盟国を地上戦へと引きずり込むことを望んでいる様子が以下の記事から読み取れます。
U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State
As the debate on how best to contain the Islamic State continues to rage in Western capitals, the militants themselves have made one point patently clear: They want the United States and its allies to be dragged into a ground war.
《中略》
Proponents of a ground assault argue that an even bigger recruiting drive than the militants’ end-of-times prophecy is their promise of an Islamic state.
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“They actually, it seems to me, have two objectives,” said Jessica Stern, one of the authors of the book “ISIS: The State of Terror.” “One is to goad us into a ground war. And the other is to run a state, and they are contradictory.”
In the most recent issue of Dabiq, an essay alleged to have been written by the British hostage John Cantlie discussed similar options, with the first being that the Islamic State is allowed to continue to expand while the West does nothing. The second alternative was to drag the United States into war by carrying out a deadly attack on American soil.
“Then again,” the essay concludes, the Americans “may well come to Dabiq on their own without the Islamic State needing to blow up any dirty bombs in Manhattan.”
ここで取り上げる表現は “goad”です。『ジーニアス英和辞典第4版（大修館書店）』では「〈人・動物〉を駆り立てる；〈人〉を刺激[扇動]して〔…〕させる」とあり、LDOCEでは “to make someone do something by annoying or encouraging them until they do it”と定義づけられていました。
“goad”は名詞で「(家畜を追うための)突き棒、刺し棒」という意味があり、その行為自体も示します。おそらくここから転じて上記の「駆り立てる」という意味になったと考えられます。因みに「槍、突き棒」を意味する古英語 “gād”が語源です。
類義語として “provoke” “stir up” “incite” “agitate” などが挙げられます。（Inaho）
