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。

sui generis

フィクション作品ではありますが,シャーロックホームズの作品からは多くの論理的思考法を学ぶことができます。

What Sherlock Holmes taught us about the mind

The century-old detective stories are being studied by today’s neurologists – but why? As it turns out, not even modern technology can replace their lessons in rational thinking.

Soon after Andrew Lees embarked on his medical career at University College Hospital London, one of his superiors gave him a rather strange reading list. Rather than the usual fusty anatomical volumes, it included The Complete Sherlock Holmes.

〈中略〉
Both Gowers and Holmes also warned against letting your preconceptions fog your judgement. For both men, cool, unprejudiced observation was the order of the day. It is for this reason that Holmes chastises Watson in The Scandal of Bohemia: “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.” Or in the words of Gowers: “The method you should adopt is this: Whenever you find yourself in the presence of a case that is not familiar to you in all its detail forget for a time all your types and all your names. Deal with the case as one that has never been seen before, and work it out as a new problem sui generis, to be investigated as such.”

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160107-what-sherlock-holmes-tells-us-about-the-mind

今回気になった表現は “sui generis” /súːɑɪ dʒénərɪs/です。『ジーニアス英和辞典第4版』(大修館書店)では「独特の,特殊な」とあり,ラテン語から来ている表現であることが分かりました。

Online Etymology Dictionaryでもう一度確認してみますと “1787, Latin, literally "of one's own kind, peculiar." First element from sui, genitive of suus "his, her, its, one's," from Old Latin sovos, from PIE root *swe-, pronoun of the third person”と定義されており, “sui”はもともと古ラテン語の所有格だったようです。(Inaho)