英国脱欧是如何影响英语的？

How Brexit changed 

the English language

Earlier in March, the British poet Brian Bilston published a new piece on Twitter. Entitled Meaningful Vote, it ends with the lines “How foolish, it seems/How senseless, absurd/To redefine a nation/In pursuit of a word”. ‘Brexit’ has quickly shot into everyday use – as inevitable in British conversations as ‘sorry’ or commentary on the weather.

三月早些时候，英国诗人Brian Bilston在推特上发表了一篇新诗，题为“意义重大的投票”，并以诗句结尾“这看来是多么愚蠢/多么无知和荒谬/以对一个词的追求/重新定义一个国家“。“Brexit”一词已经迅速进入人们的日常生活，就像跟说”对不起“和关于天气的评论在英国的对话中无法避免一样。

For those who aren’t yet Brexhausted, there are some interesting parallels between ‘Brexit’ (the word) and Brexit (the political phenomenon).

对于那些还没有脱欧感到精疲力竭的人，这边是一些“脱欧”（词语）与脱欧（政治现象）之间的趣味比较。

It might seem a long time ago now, but Brexit was preceded by Grexit. A pair of Citigroup economists first used the term ‘Grexit’ in February 2012, to refer to the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone.

这事儿现在看来可能已经有些久远了，但其实Grexit 一词早在 Brexit 以前就有了。花旗集团的一对经济学家最早在2012年二月使用了“Grexit“一词，表示希腊（Greece）可能退出（exit）欧元区。

Three months later, Peter Wilding coined ‘Brexit’, describing it as ‘another sad word’, in a think-tank article.

三个月后，Peter Wilding合成了“Brexit”一词。他在一篇智库文章中将其称作 “又一个伤感的词”。

Peter Wilding, who coined ‘Brexit’, is a solicitor, worked on EU policy and media for the Conservative Party under David Cameron.

“Brexit”词语合成者Peter Wilding，是卡梅隆麾下一名的掮客，工作于欧盟保守党政策与媒体部。

The guy’s a Remainer who thinks that the catchiness of ‘Brexit’ helped the Leave campaign, and thus now regrets creating the word. This may be the original Bregret.

According to Peter Wilding, the word could become “an epitaph for a nation’s decline and possible fall.”

此人是留欧派，他认为“Brexit”走红反倒帮脱欧派推波助澜，因而现在很后悔造出了这个词。这可能就是Bregret最初的来源。据Peter Wilding所说，该词语可能会成为“国家衰落与崩塌的墓志铭”。

An additional irony is that ‘Brexit’ has become a rallying cry for those who want a more distant relationship with Europe, when the word ‘exit’ is a borrowing from Latin. “Because of the word itself, we have been painted into a corner,” argues Cardiff University linguist Lise Fontaine. “By accepting this term, by repeating it, by making it so frequent that it comes out automatically, we have closed down alternative perspectives and ideas about ending the UK’s membership with the European Union.”

另一桩讽刺的事是，“Brexit”已然成为深化脱欧分子的战斗口号，而“exit”却是源自拉丁语（起源于欧洲）的舶来词。“因为这个单词，我们已经被逼到了角落”卡迪夫大学的语言学家Lise Fontaine说，“接受了这个单词，重复使用它直到这个词主动出现在大众视野，我们已经摒弃了其他关于结束英国是欧盟成员国的想法。”

Ⅰ. Brexit beat Bremain up.

‘Bremain’ doesn’t suggest any risk or threat, so is a less compelling word

“Bremain”不含任何风险或威胁，因此吸引力较弱。

And though ‘Bremain’ is the converse of ‘Brexit’, Fontaine explains that “their individual grammar is quite different”. For one thing, it’s not as flexible: “You can’t talk about ‘the Remain’. It doesn’t have a noun counterpart.” And it’s less compelling as a word because, according to Fontaine, “There’s nothing exciting. There’s no risk, there’s no threat. It’s not newsworthy.”

虽然“Bremain”留欧对应“Brexit”而存在，但Fontaine解释道，“他们各自的语法仍不尽相同”。一方面，“Bremain”词性较为固定：“你不能说'这次留下’。它缺少一个对应的名词。”据Fountain所说，这个词缺少吸引力还因为，“它不刺激，没有危险，没有威胁，欠缺新闻价值。”

II. Brexit beat Brixit up.

In June 2012, The Economist published an article with the headline ‘A Brixit looms’ – but the word lost out to Brexit in common usage

2012年6月，经济学人发布了一篇名为“Brixit隐现”的文章——但后来该词在日常使用中输给了Brexit。

Fontaine’s research into the semantics of ‘Brexit’ shows that after a brief flirtation with the ‘Brixit’ spelling, ‘Brexit’ became standard. But in the early days ‘Brexit’ was marked with quotation marks, boldface, definitions, and terms like ‘so-called’—showing that even with a standardised spelling, the term’s usage hadn’t become fully normalised.

Fontaine关于“Brexit”语义学方面的研究表明，大家与“Brixit”短暂的风流韵事过后,“Brexit”便成了正统。但早期‘Brexit’还是被打上引号，加粗，带着定义，还有诸如“所谓的”等词修饰——这表明虽然定下了标准的拼写方式，这个词还没有完全做到被通俗化地使用。

“Its being a blend (a portmanteau), in itself a playful formation, almost invited people to toy with it and produce words such as ‘bregret’, ‘regrexit’, ‘Brexitesque’ or ‘Brexitannia’,” says Lalić-Krstin. “These words are compact yet very expressive.”

”作为一个混合物(混合词),其本身的生成过程就十分有趣,几乎所有人都跃跃欲试想使用,于是便产生了“bregret（英国反悔）”,‘regrexit（反悔脱欧）’,‘Brexitesque（脱欧派）’或‘Brexitannia（脱欧纪年）’ 等词,”Lalić-Krstin说。“这些词简洁却富有表现力。”

Turning ‘Brexit’ into art

Artist Simon Roberts has created a Brexit lexicon, collecting nearly 5,000 expressions from social media and the news.

艺术家西蒙·罗伯茨从社交媒体和新闻中收集了近5000个词汇中创造了一个英国脱欧词汇集，

The Brexit Lexicon is a video installation by artist Simon Roberts. This artwork contains two parts: an 80-minute video of a newsreader reciting an alphabetised list of words and phrases related to Brexit; and a projection of the teleprompter he’s reading. The effect is overwhelming.

“英国脱欧词汇”是艺术家西蒙·罗伯茨创造的一个的室内装修艺术视频。该艺术作品包括两部分:一部分是一段80分钟的视频，视频中，一名新闻播报员背诵了一串按字母顺序排列的与英国退欧有关的单词和短语;另一部分是他正在读的提词器的投影。其效果是令人震撼的。

Roberts has been collecting these terms since the day after the referendum, whose result shocked him into wanting to make artwork about Brexit. It was a laborious process to collect this lexicon. For two years Roberts scoured social media and news media to make note of nearly 5,000 new expressions describing some aspect of Brexit. Early on he noticed an infusion of technical terms, and then a flowering of political soundbites.

自全民公投后的第一天，罗伯茨就一直在收集这些词汇，公投结果令他震惊，并令他产生了想创作有关英国退欧的艺术品的念头。收集制作这本词典是一个艰苦的过程。两年来，Roberts搜索了社交媒体和新闻媒体，记录了近5000个描述英国退欧某些方面的新词汇。早些时候，他注意到首先是技术术语的大量流入，然后才是政治言论的遍地开花。

Commercial use

It’s clear from The Brexit Lexicon that ‘Brexit’ has spilled outside the political realm. Since the referendum there have been dozens of new company registrations with ‘Brexit’ in their names, as well as applications for trademarks for items like Brexit biscuits and Brexit energy drinks.

从“英国脱欧词汇”中，可以明显看出“Brexit”这个词，已经超出了政治领域。自公投以来，已有数十家新公司注册了名称中带有“Brexit”的商标，以及为“Brexit”饼干和“Brexit”能量饮料等产品申请商标。

It may seem that Brexit has captured the world’s imagination like no other single political coinage. But a precursor is the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. Watergate has continued to influence neologisms decades later, such as ‘Monicagate’ (for the affair between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton) and ‘Piggate’ (for an unsavoury allegation involving David Cameron and an Oxford dining club).

似乎从来没有哪个政治撰词能像“Brexit”一样捕获了世界人民的想象力。不过1970年代的水门事件（the Watergate scandal）可谓先驱。 水门事件在几十年以后还是持续影响着新生词语，比如“莫妮卡门（Monicagate）”（莫妮卡·莱温斯基与比尔·克林顿之间的风流韵事）还有“猪门（Piggate）”事件（有关大卫·卡梅隆和牛津餐饮俱乐部之间令人恶心的指控）

As for the future of ‘Brexit’, regardless of what happens on 29 March? “What should happen with a word that’s this common and this frequent is that it should soon have a metaphoric use,” says Fontaine. It remains to be seen whether ‘pull a Brexit’ will refer in the future to dividing a country down the middle, or to ushering in a new period of prosperity and sovereignty.

不管3月29日会发生什么，它对“Brexit”一词的未来将有如何影响。像一个如此常见，使用如此频繁的词语会发什么？它应该马上会有比喻义。”Fontaine说道。至于“施一招Brexit” 在将来是会用来指将一个国家一分为二，还是指开启“繁荣与主权至尚”的新时代,结果仍有待观望。