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Word for the Wise April 06, 2007 Broadcast Topic: Quoit A question about the origin of the word quoit threw us for a loop. (来源:英语论坛 http://bbs.englishcn.com) That's not because we couldn't find the linguistic ancestor of quoit—or, as it's sometimes pronounced, /koit/. That 15th century coinage is believed to originate in the Middle English word coit and may well share a still older ancestor with quilt. (来源:英语聊天室 http://chat.EnglishCN.com) No, our loop-throwing comes from the actual meaning of quoit: quoit names "a flattened ring of iron or circle of rope used in a throwing game." The game of quoits resembles that of horseshoes: the quoits are thrown from a mark toward a pin in an attempt to ring the pin or come as near to it as possible. (来源:英语麦当劳-英语杂志 www.EnglishCN.com) In addition to its fun and games sense, quoit has another meaning more akin to that of quilt . . . "a very, very heavy quilt." Quoit can name the stone cover of a cromlech or cist, or sometimes, the cromlech or cist itself. This sort of cist is a "Neolithic grave lined with stone slabs;" a cromlech is a "circle of monoliths usually enclosing a mound or dolmen." And dolmen names a "prehistoric monument found throughout Britain and France that consists of two or more upright stones supporting a horizontal stone slab and believed to be a tomb." (来源:英语电影下载 http://bt.englishcn.com)
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