gooseberry: [16] Probably, when all is said and done, gooseberry is simply a compound of goose and berry. But no one has ever been able to explain satisfactorily why the gooseberry should have been named after the goose, and there has been no lack of alternative etymological suggestions for the word – notably that goose is an alteration of an old dialect word for the ‘gooseberry’, such as groser or gozell, borrowed ultimately from French groseille ‘gooseberry’.
The quaint alteration goosegog dates from at least the early 19th century. Play gooseberry ‘be an uncomfortably superfluous third person with two lovers’ also goes back to the early 19th century, and may have originated in the notion of a chaperone (ostensibly) occupying herself with picking gooseberries while the couple being chaperoned did what they were doing (gooseberry-picker was an early 19th-century term for a ‘chaperone’).
gooseberry (n.)
type of thorny shrub with hairy fruit, cultivated in northern Europe, 1530s, with berry, but the first part is of uncertain origin; no part of the plant seems to suggest a goose. Watkins points to Old French grosele "gooseberry," which is from Germanic. Or perhaps from German Krausebeere or Kräuselbeere, related to Middle Dutch croesel "gooseberry," and to German kraus "crispy, curly" [Klein, etc.]. By either path it could be related to the Germanic group of words in kr-/cr- and meaning "to bend, curl; bent, crooked; rounded mass." Under this theory, gooseberry would be folk etymology. But OED editors find no reason to prefer this to a literal reading, because "the grounds on which plants and fruits have received names associating them with animals are so commonly inexplicable, that the want of appropriateness in the meaning affords no sufficient ground for assuming that the word is an etymological corruption."
As slang for a fool, 1719, perhaps an extended form of goose (n.) in this sense, or a play on gooseberry fool in the cookery sense. Gooseberry also meant "a chaperon" (1837) and "a marvelous tale." Old Gooseberry for "the Devil" is recorded from 1796. In euphemistic explanations of reproduction to children, babies sometimes were said to be found under a gooseberry bush.
实用例句
1. Dave and Michelle invited me to go out with them but I don't want to play gooseberry all evening.
戴夫和米歇尔邀请我跟他们一起出去,不过我可不想整个晚上都当电灯泡.
来自《简明英汉词典》
2. Right and left of the path were first a bed of gooseberry - bushes.
在小径的两旁,首先是栽着鹅莓丛的花坛.
来自辞典例句
3. I didn't wish to play gooseberry, ie be the unwanted person.
我可不想当不识趣的人.
来自辞典例句
4. Don't rely on Smith, he's as green as a gooseberry.
不能依靠史密斯, 他少不更事.
来自互联网
5. You both going there is ok, I do not wanna play gooseberry.
