每日一词 124 moral

day 124 moral

基础篇： a practical lesson about what to do or how to behave, which you learn from a story or from something that happens to you

The moral/message/ lesson of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that children should not lie.

进阶篇：

moral 可以是形容词，也可以是名词。作名词时除了表示“道德” （一般用复数morals, public morals公德），还有一个好用、地道的意思，“寓意、教训”。当想表达“从某个故事、案例、经历中学到某某东西时”，可以用moral 替换 message/lesson.

这个词尤其适用写作中的举例论证，在描述完一个例子后，将例子和观点关联时就可以使用moral。

比如 深圳特区成功的例子说明了一个城市想要持续发展好必须要不断引入高素质人才。

The moral of Shenzhen's boom is that talent is essential for a city's continuous economic success.

William Zinsser 在 On Writing Well 中教年轻作家写作，他经常会先讲一个故事，然后再说明里面的道理。

比如： One moral of this story is that you should always collect more material than you will use.

需要掌握的句式：

The moral of this story/ case/ experience is that...

应用篇：

1）翻译：我们从这个Ted 演讲中可以学到的是，想要获得成功，得学会先帮助别人。

One moral of the Ted Talk is that to succeed we should learn to help others first. 

One moral of the Ted Talk is that to succeed we should learn to pay it forward. 

pay it forward:  to do something nice for someone because someone else did something nice for you

2) 造句

这个禅宗故事想告诉大家从每天的日常任务中也可以觉悟。

场景: One moral of the Zen story is that people are able to attain Buddhahood through daily tasks.