2. 外语
  3. Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to refer t

Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to refer t

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问题     Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to refer to things or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in expression. Such special dialects, or jargon, are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood by the devotees of the particular science or art, they have the precision of a mathematical formula. Besides, they save time, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather on the outskirts of the English language than actually within its borders.
    Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts and other occupations, such as farming and fishing, that have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very fibre of our language. Hence, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood than most other technicalities. The special dialects of law, medicine, and philosophy have also become pretty familiar to cultivated person, and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet, every vocation still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has been much increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political sciences and in the mechanic arts. Hence new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned with indifference when they have served their turn. Most of the new coinages are confined to special discussions and seldom get into general literature or conversation. Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a closed guild. The lawyer, the physician, the man of science, and the cleric associates freely with his fellow creatures, and does not meet them in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called popular science makes everybody acquainted with modem views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported in the newspapers, and every body is soon talking about it as in the case of the Roentgen rays and wireless telegraphy. Thus, our common speech is always taking up new technical terms and making them commonplace.
The author’s main purpose in writing the passage is to ______.
选项 A、describe a phenomenon
B、argue about a belief
C、propose a solution
D、stimulate an action
答案A
解析
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