單詞

juggernaut

['d??ɡ?n?:t]

基本信息

英英釋義實用場景例句

n. 世界主宰；強大的破壞力

GRE暢通詞匯

詞態變化

復數:?juggernauts;

中文詞源

juggernaut 大型卡車，無法控制的強大機構

來自印度語Jagannath,宇宙之主，印度主神Vishnu的敬稱，來自梵語jagat,世界，宇宙，natha,主，上帝。拼寫受英語詞根naut影響俗化，來自PIE*nau,船，導航，詞源同nautical,navigate.該詞原指在印度奧里薩邦Puri地區舉行的的宗教節日，人們把主神Jagannath的巨大雕像放在巨大的推車上，然后從一座廟拉到另一座廟，由于車輪巨大的慣性，常有民眾因此喪生，甚至有虔誠的民眾自愿投身到滾滾車輪之下被碾死。因此引申詞義巨大的力量，無法控制的強大機構。比較西孟加拉邦宗教節日Durga Puja.

英文詞源

juggernaut: juggernaut: [17] Hindi Jagganath is a title of Krishna, one of the avatars, or incarnations, of the god Vishnu, the Preserver. It comes from Sanskrit Jagganātha, a compound of jagat- ‘world’ and nāthás ‘lord’. It is applied also to a large wagon on which an image of the god is carried in procession (notably in an annual festival in Puri, a town in the northeastern Indian state of Orissa).

It used to be said, apocryphally, that worshippers of Krishna threw themselves under the wheels of the wagon in an access of religious ecstasy, and so juggernaut came to be used metaphorically in English for an ‘irresistible crushing force’: ‘A neighbouring people were crushed beneath the worse than Jaggernaut car of wild and fierce democracy’, J W Warter, Last of the Old Squires 1854.

The current application to large heavy lorries is prefigured as long ago as 1841 in William Thackeray’s Second Funeral of Napoleon (‘Fancy, then, the body landed at day-break and transferred to the car; and fancy the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine’); but it did not become firmly established until the late 1960s.
juggernaut (n.): 1630s, "huge wagon bearing an image of the god Krishna," especially that at the town of Puri, drawn annually in procession in which (apocryphally) devotees allowed themselves to be crushed under its wheels in sacrifice. Altered from Jaggernaut, a title of Krishna (an incarnation of Vishnu), from Hindi Jagannath, literally "lord of the world," from Sanskrit jagat "world" (literally "moving," present participle of *jagati "he goes," from PIE *gwa- "to go, come" (see come (v.)) + natha-s "lord, master," from nathate "he helps, protects," from PIE *na- "to help." The first European description of the festival is by Friar Odoric (c. 1321). Figurative sense of "anything that demands blind devotion or merciless sacrifice" is from 1854.