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A screenshot of Wikipedia.com, taken on March 15, 2007.
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If you think "wiki" doesn't sound like English, you are right. But it's English now. This word born on the Pacific Island of Hawaii finally got an entry into the latest edition of the online Oxford1 English Dictionary along with 287 other new words.
It has earned it.
"Words are included in the dictionary on the basis of the documentary evidence that we have collected about them. A while ago this evidence suggested that wiki was starting to make a name for itself," OED chief editor John Simpson said in a statement.
"We tracked it for several years, researched its origins and finally decided2 it was time to include it in the dictionary."
But "Wiki Wiki", meaning "quick" in Hawaiian, has a very different meaning in its new host language: a type of Web page designed so that its contents can be edited by anyone who accesses it.
That the word acquired a new meaning is attributed to the fact that commenting and editing on Internet Web sites became faster, the OED's principal editor of new words, Graeme Diamond said.
"There was no delay in submitting a comment," Diamond said.
The most famous example is the popular Internet encyclopaedia3 Wikipedia. Diamond said new Internet-age concept of "wiki" fits well with the 120-year-old dictionary.
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如果你觉得wiki(维基)的发音听起来不太像英语,那就对了。但它现在已成为英语中的一员。这个诞生于太平洋夏威夷群岛的词终于和其它287个新词一起被收入最新版在线牛津英语大词典。
这可是它自己赢得的“地位”。
《牛津英语大词典》主编约翰·辛普森在一份声明中说:“我们一般都是根据收集到的资料证据来收录新词。不久前,有资料显示,wiki已经开始有了知名度。”
“我们花了几年的时间来追踪这个词、考察它的起源,最终决定现在将它收入字典。”
但在夏威夷语中意为“快”的"Wiki Wiki"在英语中可是另有所指,指的是读者可以自行编辑的网页。
据《牛津英语大词典》新词主编格莱姆·戴蒙得介绍,wiki的这个新含义主要是源于在互联网上进行评论和编辑的速度越来越快这一事实。
他说:“人们可以在网页上快速发表评论。”
Wiki最著名的例子当属如今十分流行的互联网百科全书Wikipedia(维基百科)。戴蒙得说,wiki是互联网时代的一个全新概念,它完全有资格进入这本有120年历史的英语字典。
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