小词详解 | yearn

yearn 英 [jɜːn] 美 [jɜːrn]

CET6 TEM8 GRE

外刊例句

• Her zeal recalls that of another writer yearning for a lost past; Ida Tarbell, whose journalism helped end the monopoly of John Rockefeller, the oil baron who ruined her father.
  其意之切，让人想起另一位同样推崇旧时代的作家艾达·塔贝尔。塔贝尔的新闻调查导致摧毁了她父亲的石油大亨约翰·洛克菲勒的垄断终结。
  ——《经济学人》

• In fact, interviews with Travers suggest little more than that she couldn’t abide journalists and had little patience with people who yearned to elicit trivial, simplistic or self-evident answers from her.
  实际上，特拉维斯在受访中所透露的不过是，她不能忍受报社记者，也受不了一些人专问一些很琐碎、简单或不问自明的问题。
  ——《时代周刊》

基本释义

[verb] have an intense feeling of longing for something, typically something that one has lost or been separated from
[动词] 强烈渴望某物，通常是某人已经失去或与之分离的东西

深入解读

Yearn 是一个与熟词 learn 只隔首字母不同的单词。该词源自古英语 giernan （努力、渴望、寻求、乞求、要求），常作书面用语表示“渴望、渴求、切盼、思慕、向往”，主要指热切不安地强烈渴望某物，常意味着怀着热情或柔情（tender feelings）而持续地或苦苦地非常想要某个很难得到或者不能得到的东西，通常是某人已经失去或与之分离的东西，比如：

• 他渴望得到她的爱。但依我看她毫无魅力可言。
  He yearns for her love. But she's completely void of charm as far as I can see.

• 作为新手，我喜欢挑战别人拒绝做的工作。但她一心想着躲避办公室里的工作。
  As a novice, I relish the challenge of doing jobs that others turn down. But she yearns to escape from her office job.

名著用例

To be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that offered; to care for the remote, to dislike the near; it was Wildeve's nature always.
渴望难以得到的，厌倦送上门来的；喜欢可望不可及的，讨厌眼前的，这一直是韦狄的天性。

出自英国小说家托马斯·哈代（Thomas Hardy）的长篇小说《还乡》（The Return of the Native）。

同近义词

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