stand-up 復習
アメリカのコメディアンで活動家であったディック・グレゴリー氏が19日に亡くなりました。重度の感染症が悪化したためとされています。
Comedian, civil rights activist Dick Gregory dies
Dick Gregory, the comedian and activist and who broke racial barriers in the 1960s and used his humor to spread messages of social justice and nutritional health, has died. He was 84.
Gregory died late Saturday in Washington, D.C. after being hospitalized for about a week, his son Christian Gregory told The Associated Press. He had suffered a severe bacterial infection.
As one of the first black stand-up comedians to find success with white audiences, in the early 1960s, Gregory rose from an impoverished childhood in St. Louis to win a college track scholarship and become a celebrated satirist who deftly commented upon racial divisions at the dawn of the civil rights movement.
"Where else in the world but America," he joked, "could I have lived in the worst neighborhoods, attended the worst schools, rode in the back of the bus, and get paid $5,000 a week just for talking about it?"
Gregory's sharp commentary soon led him into civil rights activism, where his ability to woo audiences through humor helped bring national attention to fledgling efforts at integration and social equality for blacks.
取り上げる単語は"stand-up"です。句動詞の"stand up"だと「立ち上がる」という意味ですが、ハイフンが付いて形容詞になるとどのような意味になるのでしょうか。『ジーニアス英和辞典』第４版（大修館）で調べてみると、「（喜劇役者が）舞台で一人で演ずる、独演で客を笑わせる」とあり、名詞でも「一人で演じる喜劇」という意味になります。"do stand-up comedy"で「一人で漫談をする」と表現できます。つまり、ディック・グレゴリー氏は漫談芸人であったことが分かります。LDOCEでは "stand-up comedy involves one person telling jokes alone as a performance"と定義されています。(Akim)
