Worlebury rises to a height of 357 feet above Weston, and although modern villas4 here and there impinge upon it, and the spire5 of Holy Trinity Church and the unlovely backs of houses are a thought too insistent6 from these grey ramparts of prehistoric7 times, it is in many ways as remote from the seething8 crowd beneath as its height would imply. The camp of twenty acres is divided into two unequal parts by a ditch. It is conjectured9 that the larger portion was the place of refuge, and the smaller the actual fortress, of the race who constructed it. The whole is irregularly enclosed by ramparts of 79loose pieces of limestone10 and rocky banks, roughly of live successive ranges, but here and there, in places thought weakest, of as many as seven. On the side facing the sea, where the limestone rocks of Worle Hill go precipitously down, and artificial defence was not required, there are no ramparts.
This hilltop was until about 1820 a barren spot, quite innocent of trees, but the plantations11 made at that time by the Smyth-Pigott of the period have by now resulted in a crown of beautiful woodlands of larch12, oak, and other trees. Amid these woods the extraordinary ancient ramparts of loose limestone fragments, the broadest of these defences about a hundred feet across, glimmer13 greyly, like petrified14 rivers. The flakes15 and knobs of stone, broken up and placed here in such immense quantities and with incredible labour, vary in size from about that of an ordinary brick to three times those dimensions, and are as clean and sharp to-day as though but recently quarried16.
It is not an easy matter to climb over these successive banks and ditches, and it is quite evident that those who at different periods stormed these defences and slew17 those who occupied them, must have been determined18 people, little daunted19 by the losses they must needs have suffered in the advance. The early defenders20 were men who used the sling21 for chief weapon of defence, and great numbers of slingers’ platforms—little flat spaces contrived22 in strategical 80positions along the sloping sides of the hill—remain, like so many primitive23 artillery24 emplacements; while quantities of their ammunition25—pebble-stones that are not in the course of nature found on the crests26 of limestone hills—may be picked up.
The first people, it is thought, who seized this hilltop, were Belgic tribes from over seas, who, landing in the shallow waters that then spread where the meadows below Kewstoke are now, or in the lakelike bay on whose side Weston now stands, fortified27 the summit and held it as a base from which to make further advances. The natives of these parts, whose lands those ancient raiders coveted28, were chiefly lake-dwellers, living on the many islets that then studded these marshy29 seas and salt-water lagoons30, or housed on pile-dwellings ingeniously constructed in the waters themselves. Larger communities of them lived for safety inside stockades31, whose fragments have been discovered of recent years at Meare, in the neighbourhood of Glastonbury, where evidence of the conflicts that followed the appearance of the raiders was found, in charred33 remains34 of wrecked35 homes. Evidence was not wanting that this was a conflict in which both sides suffered, and among the remains of a stockade32 unearthed36 recently was found the trophy37 of a woman’s head, which the science of ethnology proved to have been that of a person belonging to the raiders’ tribes. Thus it appeared that the lake-dwellers had seized and murdered one of their 81enemies’ women, and had fixed39 the head upon a stake of their defences, by way of derision.
Those who first seized Worle Hill, and made the camp of Worlebury, evidently intended to stay, for they constructed many well-like dwelling-pits in the hilltops. Some of these remain. They are about four feet deep, and had originally a surrounding wall, about two feet high. A roof of boughs40 and twigs41, kept in place by flat slabs42 of stone, completed a specimen43 dwelling. We know so much for a certainty, because in excavating44 examples of these houses the original roof has been found, with the boughs and twigs and the flat stone slabs that had been especially brought from the lias strata45 of Nailsea by these ancient folk. Plentiful46 signs remained that at some period this camp had been rushed and every dwelling burnt out, for charred barley47 was found, together with remains of burnt logs and wattle-work roofing. Under the remains of these roofs were pebble-stones, part of the ancient occupants’ sling ammunition; and relics48 of their last meals, in the shape of bones of birds and rabbits. Some flint arrow-heads also were discovered, and, secreted49 behind a rocky ledge50 in one of these pits, some iron ring-money. So, on some day of red ruin, at a date no man can give, the first camp of Worlebury was destroyed.
Centuries passed, and the hilltop apparently51 was given over to solitude52, and nature buried these relics of a desperate day under moss53 and grass. Whether, as sometimes has been supposed, the 82Romans at a later age stormed a British camp on this height, is at least uncertain. The only things Roman ever found here were some coins, and they may well have belonged to the Romanised Britons who, after the withdrawal54 of the Roman garrisons55 of Britain, fell a prey56 to the more virile57 barbarians58 from the north of Europe, and retreated before them, being driven mercilessly from one fortified post to another, and slain59 in many thousands. The last great struggle in Worlebury took place at this period. Arthur, the half-legendary King Arthur of so many romances, the great warrior60-king of more than three hundred years earlier date than Alfred the Great, had been at length slain, in A.D. 542; and the Saxon onset61, checked by his successes, was renewed. Ceawlin, the great Bretwalda of the powerful and rapidly growing kingdom of Wessex, overthrew62 the Britons at the bloody63 battle of Barbury Hill, near Swindon, in A.D. 556, and in A.D. 577, with great slaughter64, gained the battle of Dyrham, between Bath and Bristol; all those parts we now know as Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, together with parts of Somerset, being thereby65 added to the kingdom of Wessex. Soon after the battle of Dyrham, Ceawlin captured Worlebury, where the Britons had taken refuge, and the evidence of what was then wrought66 here was still visible in 1851, when arch?ologists systematically67 excavated68 and examined the turf that covered the ancient pit-dwellings. In one pit were found three skeletons, doubled up and 83lying across one another, evidently just as they had been flung there after the fierce onset of the storming party. The skull69 of one was cleanly gashed70 in two places, as though by a sword; doubtless in this case the “saexe,” the short sword the Saxons used, and from which, indeed, their name derives71. Another had a wound in the thigh72 and an iron spear-head was found embedded73 in the spine74. Evidently this was the framework of a warrior who had been taken in the rear while engaging in executing a strategical retreat; or, as we used to say at school, “doing a bunk75.” Unfortunately he had not started early enough. The third skeleton was that of a bolder man of war, who had stayed to see it out and scorned to run, with the result that he received a huge stone in the skull, and his collarbone was driven up into his jaw76. It was then too late to leave, and in fact his bones remained here for close upon thirteen hundred years, with these evidences of his ill-advised stand, plain to see. But his soul goes marching on.
Other pit-dwellings contained skeletons, portions of rusted77 arms, potsherds of a rude type of earthenware78 vessels79, and beads80; many of them superimposed upon the infinitely81 older relics of the earlier defenders. Many of them are to be seen in the collections of the Somerset Arch?ological Society at Taunton. There is prominently displayed the skull of a slaughtered82 warrior with no fewer than seven gashes83 in it. He must have been a bonny fighter, to have attracted all 84this hewing84 and slashing85 that at last put him out of action; or else the crowd concentrating their efforts on him wasted those energies that might with greater advantage have been distributed more evenly over the stricken field. We can know nothing of who he was. No monument was ever raised to his memory. But, although it may at first sight seem to be an indignity86 that his shattered skull should be exposed here, yet, when you more closely consider the rights and the wrongs of it, is this not his best monument—showing that he fought for all he was worth, and was only slain by overpowering odds87? Dulce et decorum est pro38 patria mori!
Worle (locally “Wurle”) itself is a detestable village of vulgar and poverty-stricken shops and out-at-elbows cottages, a blot88 on its surroundings. As Weston rose from insignificance89, Worle, which was anciently its market-town and centre of supplies, sank into obscurity, and now the sole interest of the place is its pretty church, containing some good miserere seats. It was of old the property of Worspring Priory, and Richard Spring, one of its later Priors, was at the same time vicar of Worle. He resigned the Priory in 1525. His initials are found carved on one of the misereres. A small stone in the churchyard is inscribed90:
60 years old
JOANNA
1644
85The registers contain some curious items, among them, under date of 1609, the following note:
“Edward Bustle92 cruelly murthered by consent of his owne wyfe, who, with one Humfry Hawkins, and one other of theyre associates, were executed for the same murther, and hanged in Irons at a place called Shutt Shelfe, neere Axbridge, and the body of the said Bustle barberously used, viz., his throte cutt, his legs cutt of, and divers93 woundes in his body, and buryed in a stall, was taken up and buryed in the church yard at Worle, March Xth. A good president (sic) for wicked people.”
Apparently the degree of criminality of the unhappy Edward Bustle’s wife was not great, for she not only escaped this hanging which, according to the wording of the above note, she suffered, but married in the following October a certain bold man, by name Nicholas Pitman.
A violent, but unexplained, local antipathy94 to lawyers was formerly95 manifested at Worle, by the contumelious drumming out of any member of the legal profession who chanced to be discovered in the village. Some embittered96 page of local history is no doubt concerned in this now obsolete97 custom, but this is probably almost as far removed in the annals of the place as those distant ages when Worle was by way of being a seaport98. Where the flat meadows now spread, maplike below the village, and where the Great Western Railway runs, ships in dim bygone ?ons 86rode at anchor. Proof of that forgotten fact was accidentally discovered of recent years, when, in digging the foundation of a new brewery99, an ancient anchor was unearthed from the sandy subsoil.
点击收听单词发音
1 ebullient | |
adj.兴高采烈的,奔放的 | |
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2 fortress | |
n.堡垒,防御工事 | |
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3 dwelling | |
n.住宅,住所,寓所 | |
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4 villas | |
别墅,公馆( villa的名词复数 ); (城郊)住宅 | |
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5 spire | |
n.(教堂)尖顶,尖塔,高点 | |
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6 insistent | |
adj.迫切的,坚持的 | |
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7 prehistoric | |
adj.(有记载的)历史以前的,史前的,古老的 | |
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8 seething | |
沸腾的,火热的 | |
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9 conjectured | |
推测,猜测,猜想( conjecture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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10 limestone | |
n.石灰石 | |
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11 plantations | |
n.种植园,大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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12 larch | |
n.落叶松 | |
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13 glimmer | |
v.发出闪烁的微光;n.微光,微弱的闪光 | |
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14 petrified | |
adj.惊呆的;目瞪口呆的v.使吓呆,使惊呆;变僵硬;使石化(petrify的过去式和过去分词) | |
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15 flakes | |
小薄片( flake的名词复数 ); (尤指)碎片; 雪花; 古怪的人 | |
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16 quarried | |
v.从采石场采得( quarry的过去式和过去分词 );从(书本等中)努力发掘(资料等);在采石场采石 | |
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17 slew | |
v.(使)旋转;n.大量,许多 | |
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18 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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19 daunted | |
使(某人)气馁,威吓( daunt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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20 defenders | |
n.防御者( defender的名词复数 );守卫者;保护者;辩护者 | |
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21 sling | |
vt.扔;悬挂;n.挂带;吊索,吊兜;弹弓 | |
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22 contrived | |
adj.不自然的,做作的;虚构的 | |
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23 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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24 artillery | |
n.(军)火炮,大炮;炮兵(部队) | |
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25 ammunition | |
n.军火,弹药 | |
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26 crests | |
v.到达山顶(或浪峰)( crest的第三人称单数 );到达洪峰,达到顶点 | |
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27 fortified | |
adj. 加强的 | |
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28 coveted | |
adj.令人垂涎的;垂涎的,梦寐以求的v.贪求,觊觎(covet的过去分词);垂涎;贪图 | |
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29 marshy | |
adj.沼泽的 | |
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30 lagoons | |
n.污水池( lagoon的名词复数 );潟湖;(大湖或江河附近的)小而浅的淡水湖;温泉形成的池塘 | |
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31 stockades | |
n.(防御用的)栅栏,围桩( stockade的名词复数 ) | |
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32 stockade | |
n.栅栏,围栏;v.用栅栏防护 | |
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33 charred | |
v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式);烧焦 | |
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34 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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35 wrecked | |
adj.失事的,遇难的 | |
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36 unearthed | |
出土的(考古) | |
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37 trophy | |
n.优胜旗,奖品,奖杯,战胜品,纪念品 | |
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38 pro | |
n.赞成,赞成的意见,赞成者 | |
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39 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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40 boughs | |
大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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41 twigs | |
细枝,嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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42 slabs | |
n.厚板,平板,厚片( slab的名词复数 );厚胶片 | |
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43 specimen | |
n.样本,标本 | |
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44 excavating | |
v.挖掘( excavate的现在分词 );开凿;挖出;发掘 | |
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45 strata | |
n.地层(复数);社会阶层 | |
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46 plentiful | |
adj.富裕的,丰富的 | |
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47 barley | |
n.大麦,大麦粒 | |
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48 relics | |
[pl.]n.遗物,遗迹,遗产;遗体,尸骸 | |
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49 secreted | |
v.(尤指动物或植物器官)分泌( secrete的过去式和过去分词 );隐匿,隐藏 | |
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50 ledge | |
n.壁架,架状突出物;岩架,岩礁 | |
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51 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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52 solitude | |
n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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53 moss | |
n.苔,藓,地衣 | |
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54 withdrawal | |
n.取回,提款;撤退,撤军;收回,撤销 | |
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55 garrisons | |
守备部队,卫戍部队( garrison的名词复数 ) | |
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56 prey | |
n.被掠食者,牺牲者,掠食;v.捕食,掠夺,折磨 | |
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57 virile | |
adj.男性的;有男性生殖力的;有男子气概的;强有力的 | |
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58 barbarians | |
n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 );外国人;粗野的人;无教养的人 | |
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59 slain | |
杀死,宰杀,杀戮( slay的过去分词 ); (slay的过去分词) | |
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60 warrior | |
n.勇士,武士,斗士 | |
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61 onset | |
n.进攻,袭击,开始,突然开始 | |
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62 overthrew | |
overthrow的过去式 | |
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63 bloody | |
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染 | |
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64 slaughter | |
n.屠杀,屠宰;vt.屠杀,宰杀 | |
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65 thereby | |
adv.因此,从而 | |
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66 wrought | |
v.引起;以…原料制作;运转;adj.制造的 | |
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67 systematically | |
adv.有系统地 | |
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68 excavated | |
v.挖掘( excavate的过去式和过去分词 );开凿;挖出;发掘 | |
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69 skull | |
n.头骨;颅骨 | |
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70 gashed | |
v.划伤,割破( gash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71 derives | |
v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 );(从…中)得到获得;源于;(从…中)提取 | |
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72 thigh | |
n.大腿;股骨 | |
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73 embedded | |
a.扎牢的 | |
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74 spine | |
n.脊柱,脊椎;(动植物的)刺;书脊 | |
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75 bunk | |
n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位;废话 | |
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76 jaw | |
n.颚,颌,说教,流言蜚语;v.喋喋不休,教训 | |
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77 rusted | |
v.(使)生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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78 earthenware | |
n.土器,陶器 | |
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79 vessels | |
n.血管( vessel的名词复数 );船;容器;(具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的)人 | |
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80 beads | |
n.(空心)小珠子( bead的名词复数 );水珠;珠子项链 | |
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81 infinitely | |
adv.无限地,无穷地 | |
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82 slaughtered | |
v.屠杀,杀戮,屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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83 gashes | |
n.深长的切口(或伤口)( gash的名词复数 )v.划伤,割破( gash的第三人称单数 ) | |
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84 hewing | |
v.(用斧、刀等)砍、劈( hew的现在分词 );砍成;劈出;开辟 | |
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85 slashing | |
adj.尖锐的;苛刻的;鲜明的;乱砍的v.挥砍( slash的现在分词 );鞭打;割破;削减 | |
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86 indignity | |
n.侮辱,伤害尊严,轻蔑 | |
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87 odds | |
n.让步,机率,可能性,比率;胜败优劣之别 | |
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88 blot | |
vt.弄脏(用吸墨纸)吸干;n.污点,污渍 | |
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89 insignificance | |
n.不重要;无价值;无意义 | |
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90 inscribed | |
v.写,刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 );内接 | |
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91 maiden | |
n.少女,处女;adj.未婚的,纯洁的,无经验的 | |
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92 bustle | |
v.喧扰地忙乱,匆忙,奔忙;n.忙碌;喧闹 | |
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93 divers | |
adj.不同的;种种的 | |
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94 antipathy | |
n.憎恶;反感,引起反感的人或事物 | |
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95 formerly | |
adv.从前,以前 | |
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96 embittered | |
v.使怨恨,激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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97 obsolete | |
adj.已废弃的,过时的 | |
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98 seaport | |
n.海港,港口,港市 | |
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99 brewery | |
n.啤酒厂 | |
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