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耳屎、鼻屎、眼屎 |
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Webmaster
 
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2006/1/16 17:41 From Taipei, 大羅天
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Buddy said something about 眼屎 in the shoutbox, so I will spend some time on terms for 耳屎、鼻屎 and 眼屎.
耳屎 is called earwax in daily life and its technical term is cerumen. 鼻屎 is called booger in American English and bogey in British English. You can describe it as "dried nasal mucus" or "dried snot" in ordinary English. As to 眼屎, there seems to have no technical term for it. Native speakers mostly call it "sleep." Many teachers in Taiwan might say it's called "gum" in English. This is true, but the problem is that you cannot find this definition in most dictionaries. You cannot find it in Webster's unabridged dictionaries. Even British dictionaries I have with up to 300,000 entries don't have it. You can only find it in the Oxford English Dictionary or the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. This definition can be found in most English-Chinese dictionaries. Is this odd? Shakespeare was the first one to use gum with this meaning. And this might be the reason you can see that definiton in English-Chinese dictionaries. Please bear in mind that many of those English-Chinese dictionaries are very impractical in this regard. So if you can, use an English-English dictionary instead. The following URL is the result of a dialect survey on this particular term. http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_82.html Tim
Posted on: 2006/4/4 17:12
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Re: 耳屎、鼻屎、眼屎 |
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Home away from home
 
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2006/1/20 18:03 From Taipei
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Lin Yutang's Contemporary Chinese-English Dictionary says
"眼屎 secretions of the eyes".
Posted on: 2006/4/4 17:52
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Re: 耳屎、鼻屎、眼屎 |
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Webmaster
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2006/1/16 17:41 From Taipei, 大羅天
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"Secretions of the eyes" is too generic. It could be tears, sleep or even pus.
From an Amoy dictionary published in 1873, it says "thickened matter about the eye." So the author also didn't know any specific term for it. The technical name for it should be "mucopurulent discharge." Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucopurulent_discharge for more info on it and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booger for more info on booger. It's so weird that English does not have a fixed term for it. Tim
Posted on: 2006/4/4 19:18
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Re: 耳屎、鼻屎、眼屎 |
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Quite a regular
 
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2006/1/21 6:31 Group:
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Quote:
Tim, thank you for your detailed explanation! How can I pay you back for your great help? Let me see....Umm, how about it’s my treat?  
Posted on: 2006/4/8 20:20
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