茄子名字起源
What strange connotations the eggplant has inspired! A Lebanese eggplant recipe is called baba ganousb, which means spoiled old daddy. Eggplant is also one of the ingredients in a Turkish recipe called imam bayaldi. Translated, this means the priest has fainted.
茄子这个词会令大家产生多么奇怪的联想！黎巴嫩有一道用茄子做的菜名叫baba ganousb，意思是变质的父亲。土耳其也有一道用茄子做的菜名叫 imam bayaldi，意思是晕倒的牧师。
Eggplants originated in India and were introduced to Spain in the twelfth century by the Arabs. Before the fifteenth century, the vegetable was used only for decoration, as people believed it was poisonous. In Italy, where eggplant was suspected of causing insanity1, it was called mala insana, mad apple. Later, when people had begun eating the vegetable, Europeans called it the apple of love, for it was believed to arouse passion.
茄子原产于印度，十二世纪由阿拉伯人引入西班牙。15世纪之前，因为大家觉得茄子有毒，所以它们仅仅被用来作装装饰品。在乎大利，大家曾怀疑茄子会叫人精神错乱，于是把它叫做mala insana，也就是疯狂的苹果。之后，大家开始食用茄子的时候，欧洲人就把它们称作苹果之爱，由于大家感觉茄子可以引发激情。
From apples we move to eggs. Why do we now call this large purple vegetable an eggplant?
茄子的称呼由苹果到鸡蛋，为什么大家目前称这种大个的紫色蔬菜为eggplant呢？
As with most vegetables, there are different types of eggplant. The edible2 part of one variety is small and white. It was named eggplant since it looked as if it were growing eggs. once the name was established in the middle 1700s, it was also applied3 to the purple vatiety.
和大部分蔬菜一样，茄子也分不一样的类型。其中有种可食用的品种就长得小菜鸟白的。由于看着仿佛成长的鸡蛋，所以就被叫做eggplant了。茄子的名字一旦在18世纪中叶确定，那样紫色的品种也就同样叫做eggplant了。
扭纹面包名字起源
Wouldn't you think that history would have recorded the name of the person who came up with something as terrific as the pretzel? But that's not what happened. All we know is that in 610 A.D. a monk4 in northern Italy first twisted the pretzel into its unusual shape. When children learned their prayers, he rewarded them with the bread shaped to represent the folded arms of children in prayer.
难道你不觉得历史应该记录下创造这么棒的扭纹面包的人的名字吗？然而历史没如此的记载。大家所知的只不过在公元610年，意大利北部有个修道士首次把一种面包扭曲成这种独一无二的形状。当孩子们学完祈祷文，修道士就奖励给他们这种仿佛祷告中交叠的双臂形状的面包。
The word pretzel comes either from the Latin pretiole, which means little gift, or from the Italian bracciatelli, which means small arms.
Pretzel这个词来源于于拉丁语pretiloe，意思是小礼品，或者来源于于意大利语bracciatelli，意思是小胳膊。
