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According to John Ayto’s A to Z of Food and Drink:
根据约翰•埃托的《饮食指南》：
“These new-moon-shaped puff-pastry rolls seem first to have been introduced to British and American breakfast tables towards the end of the nineteenth century.”
“这些新月形状的油酥小卷，似乎是在十九世纪末才首次被引入英美，并被端上人们早餐餐桌的。”
He goes on to cast aspersions on the stories told about the invention of these yummy baked goods. Wikipedia disses the stories too.
接着，他批评了那些关于croissants的故事。在其中，这种美味烘烤面点的由来，被吹得神乎其神。同样，维基百科对此类故事也不屑一顾。
I’ll tell that tale in a moment, but I want first to point out that Ayto accurately called croissants new-moon-shaped.
不过，在我讲述那个故事之前，我想指出，埃托一字不差地说，croissants有着新月的形状（new-moon-shaped）。
John Ayto has written several books about words and their origins and so I’m sure that he chose his words there very carefully.
约翰•埃托已经出了好几本关于单词及其来源的书了。因此，我认为，他对于遣词造句一定是非常小心谨慎的。
Of course we call that shape of moon a crescent moon and of course the words crescent and croissant are really two flavors of the same word; crescent arriving in English from French in the 1300s and croissant along with the pastry in at the end of the 1800s, also from French.
当然，呈现出这个形状的月亮常常被我们称为一轮crescent moon。而单词crescent与croissant的确是同一个单词的两种表现形式；crescent于十四世纪从法语进入英语，croissant及其所指称的油酥面点一道在十九世纪末，同样从法语进入英语。
But when I refer to a crescent moon I’m usually just intending to communicate its fingernail-clipping shape. It could just as easily be a waning moon as a waxing moon.
不过，当我提到一轮crescent moon的时候，我通常只是想描述它的形状，像一片被剪下的、弯弯的手指甲。此时，它既可以指一轮残月，也可以指一轮眉月。
But new-moon-shaped refers only to waxing, or growing moons, and this is as is should be because the very word crescent has an etymology related to the growing moon.
而新月形状（new-moon-shaped）只是指娥眉月，或者正在成长的月亮。这么说的原因就在于单词crescent有一个与（娥）眉月相关的词源。
A new moon begins with a very thin sliver of a crescent that grows and grows until it’s a full moon. It’s that growing we’re looking for.
一轮新月开始时只有一条银白色的细弧，之后它慢慢地成长，直到成为满月。而我们在探究的就正是这一成长过程。
I mentioned in the podictionary episode on recruit that an Indo-European root ker meant to grow. This same root turns up as crescere in Latin and was then applied to the growing moon. The shape thus took its name from this horned appearance of the moon.
在《每日一词》一期关于recruit的文章里，我曾经提到过一个意为成长（to grow）的印欧语系词根ker。这个词根在拉丁语中以crescere的面目出现，它在后来被用来指称正在成长的月亮。因此，这一形状就有了一个名称，即像犄角一样的月亮外形。
This same shape is an Islamic symbol and the much discredited story of the invention of the edible croissant is tied to this Islamic crescent.
这个形状也是一个伊斯兰的标志，而那个极不靠谱的故事——关于牛角面包的由来——就与这个伊斯兰的新月（标志）联系在一起。
Supposedly the bakers in either Vienna or Budapest were up early one morning going at it with their bread dough and stoking up their ovens when they heard a digging noise.
据称，有一天清晨，正当那些——不是居住在维也纳就是布达佩斯的——面包师们开始忙活着揉生面团，给炉子生火的时候，他们听到了挖地洞的声音。
They alerted the army who then prevented the Turks from entering the city by tunneling under the city walls. As a reward the bakers were allowed to, or asked to create celebratory goodies in the shape of the Islamic crescent.
他们向守城的军队报了警。而后，守军粉碎了土耳其人攻城的企图——这些穆斯林想通过从城墙下挖地道的战术攻打进城。作为奖赏，面包师们被允许——或是被请求——创造出一种外形类似于伊斯兰新月形状的美食，用来庆祝这一次胜利。
Trouble is that these Turkish attacks happened back around the end of the 1600s and the first reference we have to the pastries doesn’t come until something like 170 years later. The first time the word was used in English was in 1899 according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
问题是，这些土耳其人对西欧的进攻发生在公元十七世纪末期，而在我们手头的资料里，牛角面包第一次被提及的日期要比那晚了将近170多年。根据《牛津英语字典》，这个词是在1899年才首次出现在英语中的。
The user was a small time author from Alabama named William Chambers Morrow. He used it pretty enthusiastically too since it appears three times in his book about how students lived in Paris 100 and some-odd years ago.
它的使用者是一个来自于阿拉巴马，名叫威廉•詹博斯•莫罗的平庸小作家。他写了一本书，介绍100多年前学生在巴黎的生活情况。在该书中，单词croissant竟出现了三次——他对这个单词的热衷程度，由此可见一斑。
But this use of croissant for the delicacy didn’t mean that was the first time English speakers were experiencing them. Crescent rolls are cited as an Americanism 13 years before.
然而，每当说英语的人用croissant来称呼这道精美面点的时候，这可并不意味着他们此时才初次品尝到牛角面包。在13年前，（同样被用于指称牛角面包的）Crescent rolls就已经被当作美语词汇所引用了。
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