英語小常識：Silly, Foolish 和 Stupid

英語中對於“不聰明”的描述，常用的有三個字：silly, foolish 和 stupid。這三個字的含義相當接近，許多人往往弄不清楚，鬧出笑話來。

雖然從語義上看，這3個詞都有“蠢”的含義，但語氣上，stupid 最強，foolish 次之，silly最弱。

Stupid一般指某人缺乏正常的理解力，智力上有天生的缺陷，所以這是一個貶義詞，幾乎是罵人的粗口了。

Foolish通常形容由於缺乏常識，判斷能力有限而做出不恰當的決定。如：

It is foolish of her to spend so much money on her shoes.

而silly則是一個無傷大雅，甚至顯得童稚可愛的詞匯，比如小孩子常和父母說：Daddy (or Mommy), you are silly. 反過來，父母也可以這麽說孩子，但沒有一個父母會認為自己的孩子foolish 或stupid。

語言的準確翻譯是很苦難的，如果硬要翻譯，我想大概可以這麽歸納：

Silly——小笨蛋

Foolish——傻瓜

Stupid——蠢驢

可以參考這個句子：Don’t ask so many silly questions. She is a bit foolish but not stupid.

至於那句名言“Stay foolish” 如何翻譯，就隻能見仁見智了。我想，還是準確理解最重要。我自己的體會是，別太認真了，傻一點，呆一點，木一點,快樂一點才能生活的好一點。太較真了在這個世界上活得會很累。 

比如我們上網，如果每一個帖子都要打開看，每一個跟貼都要回，別人的批評謾罵每一句都要來來回回對峙，豈不浪費生命自己和自己過不去嗎？這才真的是stupid!

隨心所欲，大智若愚——Stay foolish.

Make yourself silly, but not stupid!

 

[樂維]

謝謝分享！

Stay foolish 可以翻成“難道糊塗”

[縱然平行]

I think that your clarifying explanations of three English words, in terms their linguistic relativity, make good sense.

However, I’d like to bring up some of other possible angles within the legit interpretations of these three words as food for your thought.

Under some circumstances, the word “stupid” may not contain any derogatory connotation at all. For instance, in the acronym, KISS, - Keep it simple, stupid! “Stupid” actually means the opposite of being stupid, it actually gives implication to be smart or prudent instead.

As per your interpretation of Job’s famous phrase “ Stay foolish”, I personally believe that what he might mean is that people should think out of box which often confines us with our social and engineering norms. Further, unlike what you’d conceive as to play “dumb” or stay in low-key for the word foolish, Jobs might hint us to be courageous in challenging the establishments and conventional wisdom, to which, any deviation from normal conventions and traditions would be considered as unorthodox and foolish. Allow me to give you an example to illustrate my point, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) an accomplished astronomer and physicist was trying to persuade the Roman Catholic Church to accept heliocentric theory. Obvious, he was label by people some of them were powerful then as a foolish fool. Well, since you’ve already know the end of the story, so I’d leave it here. :)

In short, the meaning(s) of a English word may not be always as tantamount as we would perceive per its face values. In fact, an English word may often changes or redefines its original definitions to convey the new apprehensions when time, context, speaker, tone, subculture and other factors come to play.

As you may know already, English is an interesting revolving language though it long history. So, learning and using it as an effective tool to express ourselves precisely and persuasively is definite challenging time to time, but it can be fun as well.

Thanks you for share your understanding with us, appreciated!

[曉青]

學習了。