【基本意思】:
- courage的意思是“勇气”,前缀dis-的意思是not。discourage的基本意思是“使气馁,使沮丧”,指人失去信心、失去勇气,产生恐惧,减少鼓足勇气的一切力量,主要用作及物动词,其宾语主要是人。
- discourage引申可作“劝阻”解,指对别人的某一举动进行劝阻,希望其能够接受,但这种劝阻或阻止未必一定会成功,如果劝阻无效,则可在discourage前加上want to, mean to, try to等。
- discourage在作“劝阻某人勿做某事”解时,其宾语后面可接“from+ v -ing”,但不可接动词不定式。例如:
她劝阻她的丈夫不要吸烟。误:She discouraged her husband not tosmoke.正:She discouraged her husband fromsmoking.
【例句】:
- Inflation discourages saving.
通货膨胀阻碍储蓄的积累。 - A new law has been brought in to discourage racial prejudice.
一项反对种族歧视的新法律已被提出。 - Try to discourage such familiarities from your subordinates.
不要让属下对你这样不拘礼仪。 - I was never discouraged against learning English.
我从未对学习英语失去信心。 - He is easily discouraged by difficulties and obstacles.
他遇到困难和阻碍就容易泄气。
【词源解说】:【常见句型】:
用作动词 (v.)用作及物动词 S+~+ n./pron.
- Don’t let one failure discourage you.
勿因一次失败而气馁。 - The difficult work discouraged Alan and he left school.
难学的功课使艾伦失去信心,因此他退学了。 - The long winter and the lack of fuel discouraged the settlers.
冬日漫漫,又缺乏燃料,使定居者感到泄气。 - The political instability of the region has discouraged investment by big companies.
这一地区的政治不稳定已使一些大公司打消投资的念头。 用于be ~ed结构 - Never be discouraged with life.
切莫对生活失去信心。 - We were discouraged at the bad news.
我们听到那个消息都很沮丧。 - He is easily discouraged by difficulties and obstacles.
他遇到困难和障碍时很容易气馁。 - If you fail your driving test the first time, don’t be discouraged.
如果你考驾驶执照第一次没有通过,别因此而泄气。
S+~+ v -ing
- We discourage smoking in this school.
在这所学校里我们劝阻吸烟。
【词义辨析】:
- Inflation discourages saving.