手機版
According to John Ayto’s A to Z of Food and Drink:
根據約翰•埃托的《飲食指南》：
“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.”
“這些新月形狀的油酥小卷，似乎是在十九世紀末才首次被引入英美，并被端上人們早餐餐桌的。”
He goes on to cast aspersions on the stories told about the invention of these yummy baked goods. Wikipedia disses the stories too.
接著，他批評了那些關于croissants的故事。在其中，這種美味烘烤面點的由來，被吹得神乎其神。同樣，維基百科對此類故事也不屑一顧。
I’ll tell that tale in a moment, but I want first to point out that Ayto accurately called croissants new-moon-shaped.
不過，在我講述那個故事之前，我想指出，埃托一字不差地說，croissants有著新月的形狀（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.
約翰•埃托已經出了好幾本關于單詞及其來源的書了。因此，我認為，他對于遣詞造句一定是非常小心謹慎的。
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.
當然，呈現出這個形狀的月亮常常被我們稱為一輪crescent moon。而單詞crescent與croissant的確是同一個單詞的兩種表現形式；crescent于十四世紀從法語進入英語，croissant及其所指稱的油酥面點一道在十九世紀末，同樣從法語進入英語。
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.
不過，當我提到一輪crescent moon的時候，我通常只是想描述它的形狀，像一片被剪下的、彎彎的手指甲。此時，它既可以指一輪殘月，也可以指一輪眉月。
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.
而新月形狀（new-moon-shaped）只是指娥眉月，或者正在成長的月亮。這么說的原因就在于單詞crescent有一個與（娥）眉月相關的詞源。
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.
一輪新月開始時只有一條銀白色的細弧，之后它慢慢地成長，直到成為滿月。而我們在探究的就正是這一成長過程。
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《每日一詞》一期關于recruit的文章里，我曾經提到過一個意為成長（to grow）的印歐語系詞根ker。這個詞根在拉丁語中以crescere的面目出現，它在后來被用來指稱正在成長的月亮。因此，這一形狀就有了一個名稱，即像犄角一樣的月亮外形。
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.
這個形狀也是一個伊斯蘭的標志，而那個極不靠譜的故事——關于牛角面包的由來——就與這個伊斯蘭的新月（標志）聯系在一起。
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.
據稱，有一天清晨，正當那些——不是居住在維也納就是布達佩斯的——面包師們開始忙活著揉生面團，給爐子生火的時候，他們聽到了挖地洞的聲音。
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.
他們向守城的軍隊報了警。而后，守軍粉碎了土耳其人攻城的企圖——這些穆斯林想通過從城墻下挖地道的戰術攻打進城。作為獎賞，面包師們被允許——或是被請求——創造出一種外形類似于伊斯蘭新月形狀的美食，用來慶祝這一次勝利。
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.
問題是，這些土耳其人對西歐的進攻發生在公元十七世紀末期，而在我們手頭的資料里，牛角面包第一次被提及的日期要比那晚了將近170多年。根據《牛津英語字典》，這個詞是在1899年才首次出現在英語中的。
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.
它的使用者是一個來自于阿拉巴馬，名叫威廉•詹博斯•莫羅的平庸小作家。他寫了一本書，介紹100多年前學生在巴黎的生活情況。在該書中，單詞croissant竟出現了三次——他對這個單詞的熱衷程度，由此可見一斑。
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，每當說英語的人用croissant來稱呼這道精美面點的時候，這可并不意味著他們此時才初次品嘗到牛角面包。在13年前，（同樣被用于指稱牛角面包的）Crescent rolls就已經被當作美語詞匯所引用了。
相關閱讀：法式牛角面包