Material 和 Materiel这两个词读音差不多相同,它们看起来也很相似,但是这两个英语单词的用法却不相同。
Material 和 Materiel的定义
Material,名词,是指物质本身,或者用来制成物质的材料。Material也可以指用于写东西的信息,如“研究材料 - research materials”。
作为形容词,material意味着相关的和重要的。在美国法律中,重要证人(material witness )是指其证据可能足以影响审判结果的人。
Material也可以延伸至指代身体而不是精神或智力。
Materiel,名词,也可写成 matériel,是指组织(特别是军事单位)使用的物资和设备。
Material 和 Materiel英语单词用法例句
例1:"Please note that academic learning is much more than merely memorizing. Reciting extracts from books, articles, lecture notes, or material on the web does not demonstrate that you have learned to think in the way that your teachers think, and may not even get you a pass mark." (请注意,学术学习不仅仅是背知识点。背诵网上能找到的书籍、文章、讲义等材料并不证明你已经学会了像老师一样思考问题,甚至很有可能会不及格。) - 来源:Peter Levin, Write Great Essays! 2nd ed. Open University Press, 2009
例2:"Martha sat in her bedroom in the mountain house she had made her own — no trace left of her traitor husband or her bitter black wind of a mother, not so much as a photograph of either of them — a plain, tall woman in a sleeveless blouse and a full skirt made of a coarse woven material like burlap." (玛莎自己在山上建了座房子,她坐在卧室里 – 那里没有负心丈夫,也没有整天一张苦脸抱怨的母亲的痕迹,就连照片都没有 - 一个普通的高个子女人,穿着无袖衬衫,粗纺的裙子像块粗麻布似的。)- 来源:Pam Durban, "Soon." The Southern Review, 1997
例3:"Evidence is material when it plays a significant part in proving a case. Examples of material evidence might be fingerprints of the accused that were found on the murder weapon, an eyewitness account of how the accused committed the crime, or stolen property found in the possession of the accused." (“证据是立案的重要材料,证据可以是凶器上被告人的指纹被,看到被告人实施罪行的目击者,或在被告人处发现的赃物。“ )- 来源:John J. Fay, Encyclopedia of Security Management, 2nd ed. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007
例4:The withdrawal from Iraq is a feat of logistics that has been called the biggest movement of military matériel since World War II.(从伊拉克撤军被称为第二次世界大战以来最大的军事物资运动。)
例5:"Many historians see the world wars chiefly as struggles of industrial production or technological innovation or both. None of these views, however, is sound. Real battle outcomes cannot be explained by materiel alone; in fact, materialfactors are only weakly related to historical patterns of victory and defeat." (许多历史学家认为世界大战主要是工业生产或技术创新或两者兼而有之。然而,这些观点都不合理。真正的战斗结果不能单靠物资来解释;事实上,物质因素与历史只有微弱的联系胜利和失败的模式。) - 来源:Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle. Princeton University Press, 2004
Material 和 Materiel英语单词用法说明
Material源自拉丁文materia,意味着制造某物所需的元素、成分,或物质。
Materiel源自于法语单词matériel,意味着机构组织(如军队)使用的设备、仪器、用品。
Material 和 Materiel被混淆主要是拼写上只差一个字母,Material是al,Materiel是el,这里我们可以借助化学知识去记住Material 和 Materiel英语单词用法的区别。AL在化学中是铝的符号,铝是一种物质,所以以al结尾的material就是普通物质、材料的意思。
Material 和 Materiel英语单词用法习题
(a) Officials insisted that the naval blockade had to remain in place to prevent the smuggling of weapons and other war _____.
(b) "Some of the workers would leave their sacks at the Store to be picked up the following morning, but a few had to take them home for repairs.
I winced to picture them sewing the coarse _____ under a coal-oil lamp with fingers stiffening from the day's work." – 来源:Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Random House, 1969
答案
matériel
material