小词详解 | legible

legible 英 [ˈledʒəbl] 美 [ˈledʒəbl]

TOEFL TEM8 TOEIC

外刊例句

• On February 5th Mr Friedman announced that a three-person team had been awarded $700,000 for successfully extracting four passages of text, each at least 140 characters long, and with at least 85% of the characters legible, from a scroll known as Banana Boy.
  2月5日，弗里德曼宣布一个三人团队获得了70万美元的奖金，因为他们从一个叫作“香蕉小子”的卷轴中成功辨认出四段文本——每段至少包含140个字母，且至少辨认出85%的字母。
  ——《经济学人》
• It's legible no matter how you flip it. 
  不论你如何翻转它，它都清晰易读。
  ——《纽约时报》

基本释义

[adjective] (of handwriting or print) clear enough to read
[形容词] （指字迹或印刷）足够清晰可读的

深入解读

Legible 是一个与小站（微信公众号：田间小站）推送过的 eligible 有着相同结尾的单词，两者可以一并联想记忆。

从词源上来看， legible 源自拉丁语 legere （阅读），14世纪末由晚期拉丁语 legibilis （可读的、书写清晰的）进入英语，也是用来表示字迹、印刷等“清晰的、清楚的、易读的”，侧重指手写或印刷的文字清晰或工整从而易于识别，而非模糊或潦草难认。比如：

• 那个身着蓝色天鹅绒服装的女士是名义上的首脑，不过偶尔签字批准法律法规。她写的字几乎无法辨认。
  The lady clad in blue velvet is titular head, and merely signs laws occasionally. Her handwriting is barely legible.

从这个概念出发， legible 还可以用来引申指“容易辨认的、容易觉察的”。比如：

• 他面露杀机。
  Murder was legible upon his face.

名著用例

Hagrid's note was dry this time, no tears had splattered it, yet his hand seemed to have shaken so much as he wrote that it was hardly legible.
海格的便条这次是干的，上面没有洒上泪水，但是他的手可能抖得厉害，所以这张字条很难认。

出自英国作家J·K·罗琳的奇幻小说《哈利·波特》系列的第三本《哈利·波特与阿兹卡班的囚徒》（Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban）。

同近义词

• readable: able to be read or deciphered; legible
• understandable: able to be understood
• intelligible: able to be understood; comprehensible