thrall 復習
In the past week, the spectacle of the American gun lobby facing down the bereaved families of Parkland, Florida, has been difficult to watch. So close to the latest tragedy, the insistence on the sanctity of the right to bear arms has looked not only wrong-headed but wildly perverse. The weight of evidence, which grows shooting by shooting, goes a long way to proving that the second amendment has the diametrically opposite effect from that – keeping families safe – in which its proponents place their faith. The disconnect invites a question that seems increasingly insistent in our lives: on big issues, why is it so very hard for people to change their minds? …
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the reason for the stubborn polarising of opinion is the increasingly tribal nature of our debate. We seem to be forgetting what pragmatism and compromise and listening hard to the other point of view even feel like.
Intransigence is confused with leadership. We seem increasingly in thrall to leaders who offer the seduction of unwavering solutions to complex and evolving problems. Activists on both sides of the political spectrum police allies and elected representatives for purity of thought and action, issuing anonymised threats to those who seek to express nuance or deviation. (Skip the rest)
今回取り上げる語は、thrall / θrˈɔːl / です。“We seem increasingly in thrall to leaders who …” の箇所をみると、who 以下に好ましくない内容がきているので、「我々は (who 以下の) 指導者らにますます惑わされているようだ」と訳せないかと推測しました。実際にマイナスの意味で使われているかどうかも踏まえて、以下で確認していきます。
まず OED をみると、“The state of being in someone's power, or of having great power over someone” と “A slave, servant, or captive” という定義がされていました。また、LDOCE や Cambridge Dictionary を確認したところ、今回のように in thrall to と使われることが多く、LDOCE の場合、“controlled or strongly influenced by someone or something” となっていました。念のため『ウィズダム英和辞典』(三省堂)を確認すると、「Aの束縛を受けて、Aにとらわれて」とあります。
またこの語の語源を OED でみると、“Old English thrǣl ‘slave’, from Old Norse thræll.” とあり、古英語であることがわかりました。
以上のことから、in thrall to は「〜の奴隷である」という直訳から「〜にとらわれている」という意味になり、マイナスのニュアンスも持つという結論に至ります。(OkaUchi)
