We haven’t yet come up with a universally agreed-upon word to refer to someone we are living with before getting married.
至今还没有哪个词得到公认,可以用来称呼我们婚前同居的对象。
Once you decide though, “yes this is it, we’re going to get married,” the word fiancé becomes available.
而你一旦作出抉择,“定了,我们要结婚了”,fiancé(未婚夫)这个词就有了用武之地。
Fiancé only lasts a little while until the word husband or wife stuns you by being applicable to your own situation, instead of just to older people.
可惜身为“未婚夫(妻)”的日子十分短暂,你很快会被“丈夫”和“妻子”的称呼震惊,因为这两个词不再专属于年纪大的人,连你自己也可以用了。
English speakers have only had fiancés for about 150 years. The word betrothed goes back more like 700 years.
英语国家的人使用fiancé这个词的时间仅有大约150年。betrothed(订婚的,未婚夫/妻)则有700年左右的历史。
It is easy to see the word truth in the word betrothed and the same lineage of trust applies to the word fiancé.
我们很容易看到betrothed中含有truth(真实)这一词根,而fiancé的词源中也流着“信赖”的血统。
Even further back, 800 years ago in French, fiancé meant “trust” and came into English first with that meaning.
再把时间往前推一点,在800年前的法语中,fiancé的意思是信赖,一开始进入英语时也是这个含义。
From “trust” to “promise” is an understandable change in meaning and so the word fiancé turns up again a century or two before Shakespeare. In this case it shows up as a verb so that to fiancé was “to promise” and specifically to promise to wed.
我们容易理解单词从“信赖”到“誓言”的转变,是一两个世纪后,也就是莎翁时代之前,fiancé再度现身。fiancé这一次以动词形式出现,意为“承诺”,尤其有承诺结婚的意思。
Thus as the verb became obsolete the noun referring to the persons who had exchanged promises arose to take its place.
因此,当动词的含义淡出历史,fiancé作为名词、指代许下诺言的人的含义应运而生。
According to The Oxford English Dictionary the first person to be referred to in writing as someone’s fiancé was Blanche Mary Shore Smith who at the time was engaged to be married to Arthur Hugh Clough.
根据《牛津英语词典》的说法,首次在文字记录中被称为某人的fiancé的人是布兰奇•玛丽•肖•史密斯(Blanche Mary Shore Smith),她当时与亚瑟•休•克劳夫(Arthur Hugh Clough)订婚。
Since you likely don’t recognize either of those two lovebirds I will mention Blanche’s cousin, whose name you will recognize. Arthur worked for years as unpaid secretary for her.
可能你从未听说过这对鸳鸯鸟,那我就提一下布兰奇的表姐吧,你想必知道那个人。亚瑟无偿为她做了多年秘书。
She was Florence Nightingale.
她的名字叫佛罗伦斯•南丁格尔。