英美文化基础教程名词解释

1.the Highlanders龙
(1)They are the Scots who live in the mountainous regions of the Highlands in Northern Scotland.
(2)They are a proud,independent and hardy people who maintain their strong cultural identity.
(3)They mainly live by farming sheep in mountain areas or fishing on the coasts and islands.
2.the British Isles李
(1)The British Isles lie northwest of Europe in the Atlantic Ocean.
(2)They consist of two large islands-Britain and Irelandand several small islands.
3.the Norman Conquest（William the Conqueror）李
(1)In AD 1066,William of Normandy landed his army in England.
(2)He defeated the Saxon king Harold and the English soldiers,and became the king of England the same year.
(3)French was made the official language and the feudal system was firmly established in England.
4.the Magna Carta
(1)The Magna Carta(or Great Charter)was a document signed in 1215 by King John under compulsion by the powerful barons.
(2)The purpose of the Charter was to make King John to recognize the rights of the barons.
(3)The Magna Carta is now in the British Museum,London.
5.the Victorian age
(1)It refers to the monarch of Britain under the great Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901,the longest reign in British history.
(2)The Victorian age was an age of national development and national optimism.
(3)The Victorians were very religious and conservative in family life.
(4)It was also,in its later stages,an age of imperialism.
6.Modern English
(1)Modern English is the English language since 1476.
(2)With the introduction of the printing press in 1476,spelling and written forms of the English language began to become standardized.
(3)The changes from Middle English to Modern English involve mainly pronunciation,vocabulary and spelling.
7.Standard English龙
(1)The form of English as written and spoken by educated speakers of the language.
(2)The style of speech of BBC announcers is usually recognized as Standard English.
(3)Standard English is also the most appropriate variety of English for a foreigner learning English to copy.
mon Law
(1)It is one of the main components of the British Constitution.
(2)It refers to the Bills which have been passed by courts.
9.the Bill of Rights in1689
(1)It was the Bill passed by the Parliament in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution.
(2)It laid down a number of things that future monarchs could not do.
(3)It marked a sharp decline in powers of the Monarch.
(4)It marked the beginning of the British Constitutional Monarchy
10.Mercantilism
(1)It was an economic theory practised by British government in eighteenth
(2)It held that the acquisition of gold and silver,in payment for goods exported,increased the wealth of a nation.
(3)Only by an excess of exports over imports could a country grow wealthy and self-sufficient.
(4)Britain sold its surplus products abroad for gold and silver through extensive trade.
11.the Protestant Reformation
(1)A religious movement started in 1517,when the German monk Martin Luther posted for debate a series of theses that challenged Roman Catholic teaching.
(2)Many Protestant sects broke away from the central organization of Roman Catholic Church.
(3)Most of the Protestants stressed the Bible as the source and the norm of their teaching instead of the Pope as a source of authority.
12.New England
(1)New England refers to the north-eastern six states:
Maine,New Hampshire,Vermont,Connecticut,Massachusetts and Rhode Island,an area running from the Canadian shore to New York.
(2)This area resembles old England in many ways.
(3)Some of the earliest settlement in American history was in this area
(4)In general,this part of the country is small-scale,long-established and urban.
13.Washington,D.C
The capital of the United States, on the Potomac between Maryland and Virginia: coextensive with the District of Columbia. The U.S. Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any U.S. state.
14.The declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire.
15.Separation of powers
Influenced by Montesquieu’s theory of division of powers,the US Constitution ruled that political structures should share out political power between legislative,executive and judicial authorities,and that these authorities should exercise checks against each other.
16 the ”lost generation”
(1)It was a term first given by the writer-critic Gertrude Stein
(2)the ”lost generation” refer to young people lost and embittered in a world that had been shaken to its foundations by World War I.
(3)Representative writers of this group were F.Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.。