| 释义 |
œ
(in the earliest times, and now often, written separately oe) was in Early Old English the symbol of the i-umlaut of ó, o, as in fœt, foet, soecan, œhtan, oehtan, doubtless originally sounded like Ger. ö, œ, but afterwards written (and sounded) simply é, e, in which form it came down into Middle English.
In modern Eng. œ, oe reproduces the usual L. spelling of Gr. οι, which often in med.L., and in Romanic, was treated like simple ē. In words that have come into Eng. through med.L. or Fr., or other Romanic langs., Eng. has usually a simple e, as in economy, F. économie, L. œconomia, Gr. οἰκονοµία; penal, F. pénal, L. pœnālis, f. pœna, Gr. ποινή; cemetery, L. cœmeterium, Gr. κοιµητήριον; but in recent words derived immediately from L. or Gr., œ, oe is usually retained, esp. (1) in proper names, as Œdipus, Eubœa, Phœbe; (2) in words referring to classical antiquities, as œcist, Pœcile (in which, however, some represent Gr. οι by oi, as oikist); (3) in scientific and technical terms, as amœba, œnothera, œstrus, diœcious, diarrhœa, homœopathy, pharmacopœia, onomatopœic; but there is a tendency, stronger in America than in Great Britain, to substitute e for œ in these words when they pass into popular use or become familiar, e.g. diarrhea, esophagus, homeoid. This œ, being orig. a diphthong and subsequently a long vowel, is usually pronounced as ‘long e’ |iː|, rarely as ‘short e’ |ɛ|; when changed to e, it submits to the same usages as ordinary e from Gr. and L.
In French, œ is an occasional etymological or orthographical substitute for e in the diphthongs œi, œu, as in œil, œuf, cœur; when these words are borrowed in Eng. they retain the Fr. spelling. œ, oe also occasionally represents Ger. ö, œ, oe (Goethe), and the ö, ø of Scandinavian tongues (Faroe). |