Harebrained为什么是没脑子-英语点津

我们平时说某人行为做事很愚蠢，可能会用“没脑子”或者说某人的脑子是某种动物的脑子，总之，就不是正常的human brain。在英语里，他们把“愚蠢的”行为称为harebrained（野兔脑子），估计跟咱们说的“猪脑子”意思差不多。至于后来为什么演变成hairbrained，看了下面的解释就明白了。

The first use of harebrained dates to 1548. The spelling hairbrained also has a long history, going back to the 1500s when hair was a variant spelling of hare. The hair variant was preserved in Scotland into the 18th century, and as a result it is impossible to tell exactly when people began writing hairbrained in the belief that the word means "having a hair-sized brain" rather than "with no more sense than a hare."

Harebrained的用法最初见于1548年。而hairbrained这个拼法也有很长的历史，可以追溯到16世纪，那时候hair是hare的另一种拼法。苏格兰一直将hairbrained这个拼法保留到18世纪，因此，人们到底从什么时候开始使用hairbrained，意即“头发丝那么细的脑子”，来取代原本表示“跟野兔一样没脑子”的harebrained也就无从考证了。

While hairbrained continues to be used, it should be avoided in favor of harebrained which has been established as the correct spelling.

虽然hairbrained还在继续使用，但是，既然harebrained是最初的正确拼法，我们就应该避免这种混淆使用的情况。