每日英语单词背记（每日单词maternity）

maternity /məˈtɜːnəti/

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外刊例句

Few stories are as prominent in the study of infectious diseases as that of Mary Mallon, a cook to wealthy families, and also to a maternity hospital, in New York in the early 1900s. As she went from one employer to another, typhoid fever, then deadly in one case in ten, followed in her wake. Public-health officials eventually joined the dots and identified her as a carrier of Salmonella typhi, the bacterium that causes the disease. What was striking about Typhoid Mary, as the newspapers nicknamed her, was that she herself was healthy—proof that people could harbour and transmit S. typhi without showing symptoms of the illness it causes.

在传染病研究领域，玛丽•马伦的故事十分引人注目。20世纪初，她在纽约是一名富裕家庭的厨师，同时也是一家妇产医院的厨师。当她从一个雇主跳槽到另一个雇主时，伤寒症也紧随其后，十个病人中就有一个是致命的。公共卫生官员最终确认她是伤寒沙门氏菌的携带者，这正是引起该病的细菌。伤寒玛丽（报纸给她起的绰号）的惊人之处在于，她本人是健康的。这证明了人可以在无任何症状的情况下携带和传播伤寒杆菌。

——《经济学人》

基本释义

Maternity is used to describe things relating to the help and medical care given to a woman when she is pregnant and when she gives birth.

adj. 产科的；产妇的

追根溯源

单词maternity里的词根mater来源于拉丁语māter，表示“母亲”，所以，在英语里包含matri/matr/mater单词，多与此相关：

matron n. 主妇；保姆

matrix n. 母体；子宫；矩阵

maternal adj. 母亲的；母性的

matriarch n. 女家长

影视例句

在美剧《生活大爆炸》中，Bernadette的产假快结束了，内心却有点小纠结，在和Stuart的对话中，就用到了今天的单词：

Stuart: What you working on?

Bernadette: Trying to catch up on office e-mails before I go back.

Stuart: Oh, that's right, maternity leave's almost over. Ah, you excited?

Bernadette: Yeah, I mean, I'll miss Halley, but it'll be nice to get out of the house, be intellectually stimulated. Go out to lunch instead of, you know, be lunch.

-你在忙什么？

-在回去上班前，看看办公室的电邮往来记录。

-对哦，你的产假快休完了。要上班了你兴奋吗？

-当然，我是说我肯定会想哈雷。但这样也挺好，可以走出家门，活动活动脑子，出去吃午餐，而不是当别人的午餐。