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现在我们用的一些流行的词汇已经被曲解，要想真正理解他们，你需要理解这些词语诞生时的初衷。
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
etymology[ˌetɪˈmɒlədʒi] n.词源
appease[əˈpi:z] vt.安抚
阅读马上开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用的时间，对照下方的参考值就可以评估出您的英文阅读水平。
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If you think of the word “data”, what image springs to mind? Most of us would probably say computers, numbers or spreadsheets. In some senses, that is entirely correct: today’s digital economy is so dependent on computer-gathered data that consultants often say that data is the new oil. But what is rarely discussed is the source of the word, which has nothing to do with numbers, let alone computers. Instead, the two syllables come from the Latin verb “to give”, presented in the neuter past participle, which could be translated as “that which is given”— or even “a gift”.
Is this just a quaint curiosity? Not right now. For while the definition of data has evolved beyond all recognition, the original meaning reveals a bigger truth. What drives our modern cyber economy is not just bytes and numbers but, as I have written before, a massive system of exchanges. Silicon Valley is partly based on oft-ignored barter trades of personal information for services between internet users and tech companies.
Right now, it is particularly important to think about that original meaning of data, since many people are starting to feel that the terms of this exchange (or barter trade) are unfair to consumers, in that internet users do not properly understand the consequences of those information “gifts”. Or as Kadija Ferryman, a researcher at New York’s Data & Society research institute, observed in a speech last year on the tangled nature of these exchanges: “When we think about data this way, as a gift, we can understand the social dynamics at play in today’s data collection projects.”
Executives in Silicon Valley would do well to consider this point, and so should the rest of us — in a much wider sense. For etymology can give a startling new perspective on many of the phrases we toss around in business and markets. The history of language can often illuminate the cultural context behind practices we take for granted.
Take the word “technology”, or tech, as in Big Tech. Like data, this is usually associated with computing and the digital economy but the word actually originates from the Greek techne, which translates as skill, art or craft (such as weaving), combined with logos, which means word. This might seem surprising, given that computers are often associated with complex algorithms and number crunching. Or maybe not. This week, the American Anthropological Association has been holding its annual convention in San Jose, and tech companies have been using the event to recruit an unprecedented number of cultural anthropologists, having belatedly realised that computing is not just about maths but human interactions too. Even programmers, who use their skills to create computing languages, operate in a social context.
Now consider the words “company” and “corporation”. The root of the latter comes from the Latin corpus (body), while the former comes from the Latin companio ([people] breaking bread together). That does not obviously chime with how we tend to talk about companies today, namely in terms of balance sheets and bureaucracies. But, once again, the root of these words highlights an important point: a business enterprise is a social structure, as much as a profit machine — and CEOs ignore this human, tribal aspect at their peril. That applies even to “bankers”. This word originates from the old Italian word banco, meaning table or bench, and refers to the fact that financiers once huddled in courtyards to conduct transactions with each other on those tables, in a tangible — relationship-based — manner.
The word “finance” is also revealing — particularly given that bankers have aroused political controversy and strong emotion among non-bankers during the past decade. It comes from French finir, meaning “to end”. This might seem odd, given the propensity of money to whizz around the world in chains of complex, never-ending payments. But, as it happens, the word “payment” has a similarly counter-intuitive origin: it comes from the old French word paier which used to mean appease.
Those two roots reveal something thought-provoking: when money first cropped up, it was seen as a means to an end — namely, a one-off transaction designed to conclude a deal (say, to get an asset) or to create restitution for a wrong. Only over the past few centuries has the money business turned into an end in itself, ie, a never-ending cycle of flows. I suspect that one reason many non-financiers tend to distrust the financial sphere is that we often assume that this original sense of finance is more morally worthy — ie, we still think money should be a means to an end, not a self-reinforcing cycle.
My favourite example of etymology concerns the word “credit”. A decade ago, when financiers referred to credit, they were inevitably talking about loan and bond markets, along with algorithms and financial engineering. But, as I have noted before, the Latin root is credere, meaning to believe or to trust. Before the 2008 financial crisis, this root was widely ignored, since it only seemed a quaint historical curiosity. But since then financiers have discovered that finance without faith does not work.
Sometimes the history of our words is irrelevant but often it is not. So the next time you hear a consultant talk about Big Data, ask how the conversation might sound if they said Big Gifts instead.
请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：
A. To compute
B. To calculate
C. To give
D. To love
答案 (1)
A. computing
B. digits
C. numbers
D. skill, art or craft
答案 (2)
A. body
B. mind
C. collection
D. power
答案 (3)
A. to start
B. to end
C. to pay
D. to lend
答案 (4)
A. to trust
B. load
C. bond
D. points
答案 (5)
(1) 答案：C解释：Instead, the two syllables come from the Latin verb “to give”, presented in the neuter past participle, which could be translated as “that which is given”— or even “a gift”.
(2) 答案：D解释：Take the word “technology”, or tech, as in Big Tech. Like data, this is usually associated with computing and the digital economy but the word actually originates from the Greek techne, which translates as skill, art or craft (such as weaving), combined with logos, which means word.
(3) 答案：A解释：Now consider the words “company” and “corporation”. The root of the latter comes from the Latin corpus (body), while the former comes from the Latin companio ([people] breaking bread together).
(4) 答案：B解释：The word “finance” is also revealing — particularly given that bankers have aroused political controversy and strong emotion among non-bankers during the past decade. It comes from French finir, meaning "to end".
(5) 答案：A解释：But, as I have noted before, the Latin root is credere, meaning to believe or to trust.