Shotaro Ikemaniの小説 "Ninja Justice" を読んでいます。
"Where the hell is that bastard going to stay?"
"It's getting late so I expect he's planning to stay at Tanabe."
"Is it far?"
"Only another league or so."
"league" は日本語でも、特にスポーツ界で、何々リーグの形で使われますが、上記引用文でも意味は明らかに距離の単位です。時代物なので原文はおそらく「里」だと推測できます。英語でも "league" は距離の単位なのでしょうか？
・Oxford English Dictionary: (old use) a unit for measuring distance, equal to about 3 miles or 4 000 metres
・Collins Dictionary: an obsolete unit of distance of varying length. It is commonly equal to 3 miles
・Vocabulary.com: The two meanings of league are quite different — either it’s a group or federation joined for a common purpose (say, your bowling league or the League of Nations) or it’s a rough measurement of about three miles, usually at sea.
One would hope that two such different meanings of the same word would have some deep connection far back in word history, but it does not seem to be the case here. The word meaning "an agreement of groups" appears to be related to the French word ligue, also found in ligature ("thing that ties"), while the league of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (an excellent adventure book if you’re in the mood) is from Middle English. We call words like these homographs — since spelling is all they seem to share!
やはり古い時代に使われていた距離の単位で、日本の里が示す約4kmでしたね。
"homonym" は知っていましたが、最後に引用した辞書の最後出てきた "homograph" は知らなかったのでついでに覚えましょう。
"Where the hell is that bastard going to stay?"
"It's getting late so I expect he's planning to stay at Tanabe."
"Is it far?"
"Only another league or so."
"league" は日本語でも、特にスポーツ界で、何々リーグの形で使われますが、上記引用文でも意味は明らかに距離の単位です。時代物なので原文はおそらく「里」だと推測できます。英語でも "league" は距離の単位なのでしょうか？
・Oxford English Dictionary: (old use) a unit for measuring distance, equal to about 3 miles or 4 000 metres
・Collins Dictionary: an obsolete unit of distance of varying length. It is commonly equal to 3 miles
・Vocabulary.com: The two meanings of league are quite different — either it’s a group or federation joined for a common purpose (say, your bowling league or the League of Nations) or it’s a rough measurement of about three miles, usually at sea.
One would hope that two such different meanings of the same word would have some deep connection far back in word history, but it does not seem to be the case here. The word meaning "an agreement of groups" appears to be related to the French word ligue, also found in ligature ("thing that ties"), while the league of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (an excellent adventure book if you’re in the mood) is from Middle English. We call words like these homographs — since spelling is all they seem to share!
やはり古い時代に使われていた距離の単位で、日本の里が示す約4kmでしたね。
"homonym" は知っていましたが、最後に引用した辞書の最後出てきた "homograph" は知らなかったのでついでに覚えましょう。
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