buttress 復習
The G7 has not been dealt a fatal blow – but the summit did damage …
The G7 has not been dealt a fatal blow; it still can and will play a role on the global stage – albeit a less important one. But that does not mean that the debacle in Canada will be cost-free. G7 members lost a valuable opportunity to develop common positions on issues about which they could agree, and the rest of the world was shown more evidence that the global system’s longstanding core-periphery relations are no longer reliably buttressed by unity among established economic and financial powers. At a time of considerable political and social fluidity, destabilising the remaining anchors represents a risk to the system as a whole.
今回取り上げる語は、buttress /bˈʌtrəs/ です。文脈から「強化する」という意味と推測しました。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、“to give support to or strengthen something” とあり、LDOCE には “to support a system, idea, argument etc, especially by providing money” と定義されていました。
次に語源を OED でみると、“Middle English: from Old French (ars) bouterez ‘thrusting (arch)’, from boter ‘to strike or thrust’ (see butt).” とありました。
以上のことから、buttress は「(経済的に)支える」という意味であることがわかりました。過去のブログでも取り上げられているので、確認してみてください。(OkaUchi)
