可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】加入社群,查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ 1)Mortgagea.Sounds really scary as it means ‘death pledge’. b.Actually means the pledge would be considered ‘dead’ when repaid.c.The idea of a mortgage dates back to the 1100s but it was only 20th Century that they became really popular.Hi, everyone. And welcome to our new segment 【It Means What?】Yeah!!!You don't have to do this every time. No, I enjoy it. 欢迎大家回到我们的新板块【词源考古研究所】, hi, 安澜. Hi, Lulu, hi everyone. So in this segment, we are bringing you interesting origin stories of some of the most common words and phrases in English. So today's word, I'm gonna give you a little bit of a clue. Okay, what do you think is one of the scariest things that most people have in their lives?I don’t know, illnesses?Even scarier than that in some cases. What do you think that we spend most of our money on?So you're talking about money. I know what you're talking about, so you're talking about mortgage. Mortgage很多时候被翻译成房贷, 但它其实是抵押贷款的意思, 对吧?就是有个抵押物, it’s... we translated into house loan in Chinese mostly because that's... for most people mortgage is about house, most people don't have other things. The question is why don't we call it a housing loan in English? And the reason is and it sounds rather scary, it actually comes from French and Latin. It means “death pledge”. Death pledge, pledge is like a promise. Yeah.所以有点死亡抵押的意思. It does sound scary. It does sound a little bit like someone's gonna kill you, but it's not actually it means pledge would be considered dead once the loan has been repaid. So basically, once you pay off your loan, then no longer exists, is dead. Exactly. It's technically dead. Actually, I've seen another version of the etymology. 我看到这个词源的另外一个解释, it's also death pledge, but they're saying it's more like the collateral that you put down like in case you're dead, so you borrowed money, right? Then you have to put your house or some of the things as collateral. 就是要把你房产或者地作为抵押物, because if you die, then how can they collect the money back?That's also one other explanation of death pledge. Yeah. And there are lots of different explanations and that's one of the interesting things about etymology, is the fact that no one is hundred percent sure. 对, 词源学是一个非常有意思的事情, you can always go back and further back. And then there are different variations.