• adj. 可怕的；以死亡為主題的；令人毛骨悚然的（等于macaber）

來自古法語danse Macabre,即dance of Death,詞源不詳。可能來自對拉丁語Chorea Machabaeorum的意譯，即Maccabees Chorea.其中Maccabees為猶太教世襲祭司家庭，在公元前2世紀至1世紀時為抵抗希臘和敘利亞聯軍的入侵，家庭成員大量戰死。后世根據這一歷史改編成戲劇展現了這段悲慘的故事。引申詞義可怕的，恐怖的。參照百度百科馬加比家族。

macabre

macabre: [15] Macabre is now used generally for ‘ghastly’, but that is a late 19th-century development. It originated in the very specific phrase dance macabre, which denoted a dance in which a figure representing death enticed people to dance with him until they dropped down dead. This was borrowed from French danse macabre, which was probably an alteration of an earlier danse Macabé. This in turn was a translation of medieval Latin chorea Machabaeorum ‘dance of the Maccabees’, which is thought originally to have referred to a stylized representation of the slaughter of the Maccabees (a Jewish dynasty of biblical times) in a medieval miracle play.

macabre (adj.)

early 15c., originally in reference to a kind of morality show or allegorical representation of death and his victims, from Old French (danse) Macabré "(dance) of Death" (1376), of uncertain origin, probably a translation of Medieval Latin (Chorea) Machab?orum, literally "dance of the Maccabees" (leaders of the Jewish revolt against Syro-Hellenes; see Maccabees). The association with the dance of death seems to be from vivid descriptions of the martyrdom of the Maccabees in the Apocryphal books. The abstracted sense of "gruesome" is first attested 1842 in French, 1889 in English.

The typical form which the allegory takes is that of a series of pictures, sculptured or painted, in which Death appears, either as a dancing skeleton or as a shrunken corpse wrapped in grave-clothes to persons representing every age and condition of life, and leads them all in a dance to the grave. ["Encyclopaedia Britannica," 11th ed., 1911]

1. He takes a macabre interest in graveyards.

他那么留意墓地,令人毛骨悚然.

來自《簡明英漢詞典》

2. Mr Dahl was well-known for his macabre adult stories called "Tales of the Unexpected".

達爾先生以成人恐怖小說集《意料之外的故事》聞名于世。

來自柯林斯例句

3. Log on to the Hammer Web ring, with 12 more sites devoted to macabre movies.

登錄哈默網絡聯盟，就會找到另外12個專門播放恐怖電影的網站。

來自柯林斯例句

4. Police have made a macabre discovery.

警方有一個令人毛骨悚然的發現。

來自辭典例句

5. In such a macabre climax of degradation II Duce and Fascism passed into history.

意大利領袖和法西斯主義就是落得這樣悲慘的可恥的下場而成為歷史陳跡的.

來自互聯網