小词详解 | rife

rife 英 [raɪf] 美 [raɪf]

SAT GRE

外刊例句

• Child marriage, once rife, is ebbing.
  曾经盛行的童婚习俗正在消退。
  ——《经济学人》
• The political world is rife with brutality cascades. Let’s say you are a normal person who gets into Congress. You’d rather not spend all your time fund-raising. You’d like to be civil to your opponents and maybe even work out some compromises. But you find yourself competing against opponents who fund-raise all the time, who prefer brutalism to civility and absolutism to compromise. Pretty soon you must follow their norms to survive. 
  政界充斥着野蛮连锁效应。比如，假设你是一名当选议员的正常人。你不想把全部时间花在筹款上，你想文明地对待对手，有可能的话甚至做出一些妥协。但是，你发现自己的竞争对手整天都在筹款，比起文明和妥协来，他们更喜欢野蛮和专制。时间不长，你就发现，为了生存，你必须遵守他们的准则。
  ——《纽约时报》

基本释义

[adjective] (especially of something undesirable or harmful) of common occurrence; widespread
[形容词] （尤指不受欢迎或有害的东西）盛行；普遍存在

深入解读

Rife 是一个与 life, wife, fife （小横笛，用于军乐中与鼓合奏）仅首字母不同的单词，源自古北欧语 rifr （丰富的、充足的），现主要表示“盛行的、普遍的”，通常用于形容坏事或不良事物普遍流行，强调传播迅速或数量急剧增大，比如：

• 在他的四年总统任期内，那个国家腐败成风。
  Corruption in that country was rife during his four-year tenure as President.
• 痢疾和疟疾在难民营肆虐。
  Dysentery and malaria are rife in the refugee camps.

当某种坏事盛行的时候，往往也就意味着它到处都是，因此 rife 很自然地就被用来引申指“充斥、充满（坏事）”，常用 rife with sth 表达，比如：

• 办公室里恶毒的谣言层出不穷。
  The office was rife with vicious gossip.
• 她那站不住脚的借口错误百出。
  Her feeble excuse was rife with error.

值得注意的是， rife 很容易与 rifle （步枪、来复枪；快速翻找、搜寻）相混淆，在阅读写作时要小心区别。

名著用例

The nature of that prophecy is unknown, although speculation is rife that it concerns Harry Potter, the only person ever known to have survived the Killing Curse, and who is also known to have been at the Ministry on the night in question.
那个预言球的内容不明，不过人们纷纷猜测与哈利·波特有关，他是人们所知的惟一从杀戮咒中生还之人，而且据说事发那天夜里他也在魔法部。

出自英国作家J.K.罗琳创作的长篇小说《哈利·波特与混血王子》（Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince）。该小说是《哈利·波特》系列的第六部。

同近义词

• pervasive: (especially of an unwelcome influence or physical effect) spreading widely throughout an area or a group of people

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