考过四六级的你懂吗?老外都会用错的10个英文词

　　4、Panacea

　　第四位：Panacea

　　“Panacea” means a cure all; it comes from the same Greek root as “panorama”. It shouldn’t be used to imply a cure for a single thing, and yet here is a newspaper saying: “SOUTH AFRICA: Welfare payments – a panacea for poverty?”

　　“panacea”意指包治百病的灵药，它与希腊语“panorama全景”含有同一词根。它不能用来形容对单一事物的治疗，而有家报纸上却说“南非：社会福利——穷人的 “a panacea”一种灵丹？”

　　3、Disinterested

　　第三位：Disinterested

　　Does “disinterested” mean the same as “uninterested”? No. Here’s an example of misuse: “TomTom Disinterested in Windows Phone 7 Too?”. “Disinterested” means that a party is independent; so a dispute might be settled by a disinterested party. “Uninterested” means the party has no interest. “I asked John if he wanted to go to the cricket, but he was completely uninterested.”

　　“disinterested”和“uninterested”意思相同吗？不是。这里有一个误用的例子，“汤姆对微软视窗系统“disinterested不公正”吗？” “Disinterested”意指公正；所以纷争可以通过公正的人来解决。而 “uninterested”是指没有兴趣。如，“我问约翰是否想去打板球，但他一点儿也’uninterested不感兴趣’。”

　　2、Decimate

　　第二位：Decimate

　　Decimation was a Roman punishment where one in ten men was killed. So when something is decimated, it implies that ten percent of it is destroyed. “Devastate” is almost certainly a better word for most usages and yet: “New York City budget will decimate libraries”.

　　“Decimation”曾用来形容古罗马的一项刑罚：十个人中死一个。所以当 “decimate”用于形容一件事情时，它意味着毁灭了十分之一的程度。“纽约市的预算将会毁掉图书馆”中的“decimate毁掉”一词用“Devastate”更合适。所以相对来说，“Devastate”更常用。

　　1、 Ultimate

　　1、 第一位：Ultimate

　　From the Latin, this means the last in a list of items. But it’s so widely used to indicate the best; a google search for “ultimate phone” gives 307 million hits. I’d argue that the last phone has yet to be made. This is probably the most misused word on the Internet; type “ultimate” into google and thousands of hits come up, pretty much all of them using it as “the best”. However, for a change, this is the ultimate entry in this list.

　　在拉丁语中，它用于表示列表中的最后一项，但却经常被用来形容“最好的”。在谷歌引擎上搜索“ultimate phone最好的电话”的次数高达30700万。对此我坚持认为是“最后一通电话”。该词可能是网上误用最多的单词了。在谷歌中输入“ultimate”，会出现上千个搜索结果，但大多数都把它用作“最好的”。不过，换个话题说，这的确是本文最后一个词目了。