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。

sarcasm 復習

 An “antsy and bored” Donald Trump reportedly attempted to bring his summit with Kim Jong-un of North Korea forward by a day, asking aides after his arrival in Singapore last Sunday: “We’re here now. Why can’t we just do it?” … 
 Trump told Fox on Friday: “He’s the head of a country, he’s the strong head, don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” He later told a reporter he had been “kidding”. The reporter didn’t “understand sarcasm”, he said. (Skip the rest)

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/15/antsy-and-bored-trump-nearly-left-kim-summit-in-peril-report-says

 今回取り上げる語は、sarcasm /sάɚkæzm/ です。文脈から「嫌味」と推測することができます。以下で意味等を確認していきます。
 まず意味を Cambridge Dictionary でみると、“the use of remarks that clearly mean the opposite of what they say, made in order to hurt someone's feelings or to criticize something in a humorous way” とあり、LDOCE には “a way of speaking or writing that involves saying the opposite of what you really mean in order to make an unkind joke or to show that you are annoyed” と定義されていました。
 次に語源を OED でみると、“Mid 16th century: from French sarcasme, or via late Latin from late Greek sarkasmos, from Greek sarkazein ‘tear flesh’, in late Greek ‘gnash the teeth, speak bitterly’ (from sarx, sark- ‘flesh’).” とあります。
 最後に類義語である irony との違いを確認します。Cambridge Dictionary をみると “a situation in which something which was intended to have a particular result has the opposite or a very different result” と定義されており、sarcasm と比較すると「相手を非難したり、傷つけたりするという目的」がないことがわかります。この点が両者を区別していました。(OkaUchi)