Self taught English everyday: black

Last time I said the word night, and then it mentioned dark night. Why do we say it is dark night, instead of black night?

In fact, it's just an idiom. Black night is more like the Chinese meaning of dark night. If you say "black night" to people in English speaking countries, they think you mean "black knight - dark knight" (the pronunciation is exactly the same, and the written word is a K short).

Well, back to the point, we will start a series to talk about color in English. The first phase is black.

black

a. Black; Dark; Black; Filthy; Evil; depressed; Sullen; sulky; Extremely confidential

n. Black; Black vt. blacken; Apply black wax; Resistance vi. blackening

The most common meaning of Black is "black", which is used as an adjective to describe colors, such as black T-shirt; Invisible, such as black market; Illegal, black list, etc., everyone knows. Here we will talk about some black usages that are very easy for Chinese people to mistake:

1. Black eyes × dark eyes √

We yellow people have yellow skin and black eyes. How do you say "black eyes" in English? It is estimated that many people's first reaction is "black eyes", but if you tell foreigners about "black eyes", they will make up for your black eyes, because in the eyes of foreigners, black eyes=black eyes after being hit, while in the eyes of Chinese people, black eyes=black eyes.

For example: They had an awesome fight that resulted in black eyes They fought so hard that their eyes were black and their nose swollen.

The description of black eyes is dark brown in English, that is, darkeye. In English, darkeye=black eyes.

For example: He look at me with his big dark eyes He looked at me with his big black eyes.

2. Black horse × dark horse √

black horse， The black horse emphasizes the color. dark horse， The dark horse emphasizes the potential.

Dark horse is originally used to refer to a horse that wins unexpectedly in a race. Because it is unexpected, it is used because it means "secret and unknown". Now, dark horse is usually used to refer to the player who wins unexpectedly in the competition.

Let's look at the usage of two different meanings in the sentence:

For example: The farmer has a black horse The farmer has a black horse.

Trust me, she will be a dark horse in the contest.

3. Black sheep

？？？ Many people are confused when they see this translation. Why does sheep translate into a horse? Why not use darks? Isn't Dark generally used in an extended sense?

Then we translate "black sheep" into "black sheep", which has nothing to do with horses? In fact, the black sheep originally refers to the bad horse that harms the horses. Now it is an extended meaning to refer to the person who harms the society or the collective.

The 18th century was the golden age when the British Industrial Revolution flourished, especially when the textile industry needed a lot of wool. Because there is a recessive gene in the body of black sheep, which makes them grow black wool, and black wool can't be dyed into other colors basically, black sheep is considered the most useless, so the term "black sheet" came into being, which mostly refers to the black sheep in a family or organization.

4. Black: black

Black, does that sound good? But in many foreign countries, people use black to represent black people. Imagine that you, a yellow person, were introduced to you by a friend and said, "He is Black, sometimes it really makes the other person confused.".

Well, that's all. Let's preview. Next time, let's say the opposite of black, white.