penury 復習
The latest NHS reorganisation has reawakened fears of privatisation. Only a Labour government can bury them once and for all …
Here’s a Sunday Telegraph editorial: “So voracious is its appetite and so great expectations and demand … it would work so much better if we were prepared to adopt more systematically the best practices from around the world.” The existential threat to the NHS is that its present penury is used as “proof” that Aneurin Bevan’s great free plan has failed. NHS defenders need to be eternally vigilant. And so they are. (Skip the rest)
今回取り上げる語は、penury / pénjʊri / です。まず意味を確認します。LDOCEをみると、"the state of being very poor” とあり、Cambridge Dictionaryには、"the state of being extremely poor” と定義されていました。また、『ウィズダム英和辞典』(三省堂)をみると、「貧乏、赤貧」とあります。
次に語源を確認します。OEDをみると、"Late Middle English: from Latin penuria ‘need, scarcity’; perhaps related to paene ‘almost’.” とありました。(OkaUchi)
