gain

释义

• n. 增加；利润；收获
• vt. 获得；增加；赚到
• vi. 增加；获利
• n. (Gain)人名；(英、匈、法)盖恩

词源

gain

gain: [15] Gain is Germanic in origin, although English acquired it via Old French. Its distant ancestor is the Germanic noun *waithā. The etymological meaning of this was ‘hunting ground’ (it came ultimately from a prehistoric Indo-European base *wei-, which also produced Lithuanian vyti ‘pursue, hunt’ and Sanskrit veti, vayati ‘seeks, follows’), but gradually this extended via ‘place where food or fodder is sought’ to ‘grazing place’ (its modern German and Dutch descendant weide means ‘pasture’).From it was formed a verb *waithanjan ‘hunt’ and ‘graze, pasture’, which Vulgar Latin took over as *gwadanjāre. This preserved the semantic dichotomy that had grown up in Germanic: the agricultural sense developed to ‘cultivate land’, and it appears that the ‘hunting’ sense gave rise metaphorically to ‘win, earn’. Both passed into Old French gaaigner, but evidently by the time English acquired the word, the former meaning had all but died out (although it is interesting to note that it was introduced into English as a pseudo-archaism in the 17th and 18th centuries: ‘Of old to gain land was as much as to till and manure it’, Termes de la ley 1708).

例句

• 1. This is a cynical manipulation of the situation for short-term political gain. 这是为了获取短期政治利益而损人利己地对局势进行操纵。
• 2. White wines tend to gain depth of colour with age. 白葡萄酒年头愈久，颜色愈深。
• 3. I was able to gain invaluable experience over that year. 在那一年里我有幸获得了非常宝贵的经验。
• 4. Through superior production techniques they were able to gain the competitive edge. 凭借先进的生产技术，他们得以占据竞争优势。
• 5. I hoped to gain time by keeping him talking. 我希望让他一直说下去以争取时间。