billow 復習
埼玉県新座市の地下のケーブルから出火し、同市の変電所が停止したことで東京都内で大規模停電となりました。
Power blackout hits 350,000 Tokyo homes, brings trains to a halt
A massive blackout cut power to as many as 580,000 households for a short period in central Tokyo on Wednesday afternoon, disrupting trains and traffic lights and bringing elevators to a halt.
The blackout hit houses and office buildings in 11 of Tokyo’s wards, including Minato, Chiyoda and Shinjuku, but most of them had supplies restored within 10 minutes.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said the outage was likely caused by the fire at a Tepco facility in Niiza, Saitama Prefecture.
Later in the day, the utility held a news conference and apologized for the trouble. “The site is surrounded by a fence, and we believe (the problem) was not caused by a third-party intrusion,” a company official told reporters.
Economy minister Hiroshige Seko directed the utility to investigate the cause of the problem, and to take further actions to prevent any recurrence.
As firefighters tackled the blaze, videos posted on Twitter showed thick black smoke billowing from the ground and flashes of flame. The smoke was so dense that it resembled that of rubber burning.
“billowing”を取り上げます。古ノルド語 bylgjaの「波」が語源で『ジーニアス英和辞典』によると「勢いよく噴き出る」という意味がありました。LDOCEでは“if a cloud or smoke billows, it rises in a round mass”と定義されています。
他に噴き出るという意味の単語を見てみると、“spout”という単語を目にしたので違いを調べてみると、LDOCEを見てみると“to send out liquid or flames very quickly in a powerful stream”とあり、火山から噴き出る液体や炎に使われ、煙となるとbillowが適切であることがわかりました。(lua)
