2020-12-18
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด R – Ravaging & ravishing & ravenous
แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น
ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค
Dictionary.com
ออกเสียง Ravage = ‘RAV-ij’
ออกเสียง ravish = ‘RAV-ish
ออกเสียง ravenous = ‘RAV-uh-nuhs’
Dictionary.com
SYNONYM STUDY FOR RAVAGE
Ravage, devastate, lay waste
all refer, in their literal application,
to the wholesale destruction of a countryside by an invading army
(or something comparable).
Lay waste has remained the closest to the original
meaning of destruction of land:
The invading army laid waste the towns along the coast.
But ravage and devastate are used
in reference to other types ofviolent destruction
and may also have a purely figurative application.
Ravage is often used of the results of epidemics:
The Black Plague ravaged 14th-century Europe;
and even of the effect of disease
or suffering on the human countenance:
a face ravaged by despair.
Devastate, in addition to its concrete meaning
(vast areas devastated by bombs),
may be used figuratively: a devastating remark.
SYNONYM STUDY FOR RAVENOUS
Ravenous, ravening, voracious
suggest a greediness for food and usually intense hunger.
Ravenous implies extreme hunger,or a famished condition:
ravenous wild beasts.
Ravening adds the idea of fiercenessand savagery,
especially as shown in a violent manner of acquiring food:
ravening wolves.
Voracious implies craving oreating a great deal of food:
a voracious child; a voracious appetite.
It may also be used figuratively: a voracious reader.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Choose the Right Synonym for ravage
Verb
RAVAGE, DEVASTATE, WASTE, SACK, PILLAGE, DESPOIL
mean to lay waste by plundering or destroying.
RAVAGE implies violent often cumulative depredation and destruction.
a hurricane ravaged the coast
DEVASTATE implies the complete ruin and desolation of a wide area.
an earthquake devastated the city
WASTE may imply producing the same result by a slow process
rather than sudden and violent action.
years of drought had wasted the area
SACK implies carrying off all valuable possessions from a place.
barbarians sacked ancient Rome
PILLAGE implies ruthless plundering at will but without the completeness suggested by SACK.
settlements pillaged by Vikings
DESPOIL applies to looting or robbing without suggesting accompanying destruction.
the Nazis despoiled the art museums
Choose the Right Synonym for ravenous
VORACIOUS, GLUTTONOUS, RAVENOUS, RAPACIOUS
mean excessively greedy.
VORACIOUS applies especially to habitual gorging with food or drink.
teenagers are often voracious eaters
GLUTTONOUS applies to one who delights in eating or acquiring thingsespecially beyond the point of necessity or satiety.
an admiral who was gluttonous for glory
RAVENOUS implies excessive hunger and suggests violent or grasping methodsof dealing with food or with whatever satisfies an appetite.
a nation with a ravenous lust for territorial expansion
RAPACIOUS often suggests excessive and utterly selfish acquisitiveness
or avarice. rapacious developers indifferent to environmental concerns
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
ravishing or ravenous?
Ravenous and ravishing are not synonyms,
and mixing these two words may lead to potentially awkward writing or conversation.
Ravenous is commonly used with the meaning
“very eager or greedy for food, satisfaction, or gratification,”
and ravishing means “unusually attractive, pleasing, or striking.”
If you find yourself hungry
and standing in front of a spectacular-looking meal
you would say (of the food) “that looks ravishing,”
and (of yourself) “I am ravenous.”
You may, of course, describe yourself as ravishing,
but should be aware that you are commenting on your appearance
rather than your hunger.
Common Errors In English Usage Dictionary
Ravaging & ravishing & ravenous
To ravage is to pillage, sack, or devastate.
The only time “ravaging” is properly usedis in phrases like
“when the pirates had finished ravaging the town, they turned to ravishing the women.”
Which brings us to “ravish": meaning to rape,or rob violently.
A trailer court can be ravaged by a storm(nothing is stolen, but a lot of damage is done) but not ravished.
The crown jewels of Ruritania can be ravished(stolen using violence) without being ravaged (damaged).
To confuse matters, people began back in the fourteenth century
to speak metaphorically of their soulsbeing “ravished” by intense spiritual or esthetic experiences.
Thus we speak of a “ravishing woman” (the term is rarely applied to men) today not because she literally rapes men who look at her
but because her devastating beauty penetratestheir hearts in an almost violent fashion.
Despite contemporary society’s heightened sensitivity about rape,
we still remain (perhaps fortunately) unconscious of many of the transformations of the root meaning in words with positiveconnotations such as “rapturous."
Originally, “raven” as a verb was synonymous with “ravish”
in the sense of “to steal by force.”
One of its specialized meanings became “devour,”
as in “the lion ravened her prey.”
By analogy, hungry people became “ravenous” (as hungry as beasts),
and that remains the only common use of the word today.
If a woman smashes your apartment up, she ravagesit.
If she looks stunningly beautiful, she is ravishing.
If she eats the whole platter of hors d” oeuvres you’ve set out for the party before the other guests come, she’s ravenous.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Word History
The Story of 'Ravenous' and 'Ravishing'
Hungry for beauty?
One consequence of the fact that much of English vocabulary
is either Germanic or Latin in origin is that
we have many instances of two different words that
mean essentially the same thing
—one each from these two different root languages.
Few are exact synonyms, of course, but even given differingconnotations, these words that cover similar semantic groundmake striking pairs
that highlight the unusual richness of the language:
motherly/maternal
greed/avarice
sparkle/scintillate
childish/puerile
kingly/royal
Much less common are cases of two words from these
different root languages that are spelled exactly the same way.
The noun raven (pronounced \RAY-vin\)
and the verb raven (pronounced \RAH-vin\)
are completely different words, with differentroots,
different pronunciations, and differentmeanings.
That they are homographs is simply a coincidence.
The noun is much more common,
meaning “a large, glossy-black bird” that resembles a crow.
It comes from an Old English word
and its related adjective means “shiny and black” (as in “raven hair”).
The verb means “to devour greedily,” “to prey” or “to prowl for food,” and, more figuratively, “to plunder.” It came to English through French from Latin.
When used in reference to feeding,
raven is most often associated with wolf, as in “ravening wolf.”
It is usually used of animals
—even very small ones, if their potential for
causing pain or damage is great:
Come hither, boy, we'll hunt today The book-worm, ravening beast of prey
— Thomas Parnell (1679-1718), The Book-Worm
When used to mean “to plunder,”
raven is also applied to people:
I answer, that I believe all this about pillage, and ill-gotten treasure, and greedy ravening, is pure invention, not countenanced by any authority whatever.
— Samuel Roffey Maitland, Notes on the Contributions of the Rev, George Townsend To The New Edition of Fox’s Martyrology, London, 1841
In Middle French—that is, the language
as it was used from roughly the 1300s to the 1500s
—the verb raviner meant “to rush forward” or “to stream.”
This sense was applied to water,
and the word ravine meaning
a “a small canyon usually worn by running water”
came directly from it.
When not applied to water,
raviner could mean “to rush” and “to take by force.”
The oldest English word
derived from this root is the archaic noun ravin,
which means “plunder” or “something seized as prey,”
and it also gives us ravenous,
which went from meaning “devouring with voracious eagerness”
—used of animals seizing another animal as prey
—to meaning just “very hungry”;
the notion of appetite has been retained over time
without the notion of violence,
such that ravenous is today
welcome in polite company at dinner parties,
unlike so many of its etymological cousins.
Ravin and ravine ultimately derive from the Latin word rapere,
which is also the root of other English words
that evoke violence of some kind:
ravish, originally meaning “to seize,” “to plunder,” or “to rape,”
the word rape itself, rapine (“pillage, plunder”),
and rapacious,which can mean “living on prey” or simply “very hungry”
—meanings that are very close to ravenous.
As rapacious and ravenous share basic meanings,
so do ravish and yet another cousin, rapture.
Ravish can also be used to mean“to remove from one place or state to another (as from earth to heaven)”
or “to transport spiritually,” meanings perfectly congruent to the noun rapture.
Rapt,usually used today to mean “engrossed” (as in “rapt attention”),
originallymeant “lifted up and carried away” or “enraptured.”
This meaning of ravish, a change from one state to another,
developed into “to fill with joy or delight” (“ravished by the scenic beauty”)
and connects with the more commonly encountered adjective ravishing,meaning “very beautiful.”
So, although a raven could be described as ravenous,
the words are unrelated.
One could present a plausible case that
ravens appear particularly avid or hungry when eating
(though, in nature, it’s hard to imagine any animal that doesn’t).
After all, crow is used to mean “to brag exultantly or blatantly” and magpie has been used as a verb meaning “to pilfer and hoard.”
Since wolf is used as a verb based on its eating habits, why not raven?
The simple answer is:
etymology is based on linguistic history, not wishes.
Intriguingly, Shakespeare juxtaposed raven and ravening in Romeo and Juliet:
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
A damned saint, an honourable villain!
We don’t know whether Shakespeare conflated the etymologies
or was just being cheeky (Will was often cheeky).
Conflating the usage of some of these closely related words
might be a more serious matter for us today,
however: ravenous and ravishing aren’t interchangeable.
You may send mixed messages
—or at least be reasonably accused of confusing your appetites
—if you use ravenous (“hungry”) to mean ravishing (“beautiful”).
The fact that these words come from the same source
but have developed to mean very different things
shows that, for practical purposes,
sometimes a word’s history is etymological water under the bridge.
