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But if so, he has walked into one of lexicography's biggest booby traps: the belief that the obvious is easy to define.
如果真是这样，那他就步入了词典编纂学的一个最大的陷阱，即认为显而易见的事物容易下定义。
Whereas the opposite is true. Anyone can give a fair description of the strange, the new, or the unique.
实际情况却恰恰相反，对于那些新奇或独特的事物，倒是人人都能给以恰当的描述，
It's the commonplace, the habitual, that challenges definition, for its very commonness compels us to define it in uncommon terms.
而真正难于下定义的倒是那些普通而常见的事物，正因其普通才迫使我们不得不用不普通的词语去给它们下定义。
Dr. Johnson was ridiculed on just this score when his dictionary appeared in 1755.
约翰逊博士在他的词典于1755年问世时，也正是由于这一原因才受到人们嘲笑的。
For two hundred years his definition of a network as "any thing reticulated or decussated,at equal distances, with interstices between the inter sections” has been good for a laugh.
两百年来，他给network(网络)一词下的定义"任何以同等距离呈网状或交叉成X状，并在交叉线之间留有空隙的物体"一直是人们的笑料。
But in the merriment one thing is always overlooked: no one has yet come up with a better definition!
但在笑声中，有一件事却总是被忽略了：至今也没有任何人提出比这更好的定义来!
Subsequent dictionaries defined it as a mesh and then defined a mesh as a network. That's simple, all right.
后来的词典把network(网络)解释为mesh(网状结构)，然后又把mesh解释为network。这种处理方法倒的确是够简单的!
Anyone who attempts sincerely to state what the were door means in the United States of America today can't take refuge in a log cabin.
在今日的美利坚合众国，任何真诚地想要说明"门''这个词的含义的人都不可能躲避到小木屋里去。
There has been an enormous proliferation of closing and demarking devices and structure in the past twenty years,
近二十年来，用于关闭和打开的装置和结构花样百出，种类剧增。
and anyone who tries to thread his way through the many meanings now included under door may have to sacrifice brevity to accuracy and even have to employ words that a limited vocabulary may find obscure.
因此，任何人若是想弄清"门"这一词现在所包含的许多种意义，那他就可能不得不牺牲简洁以求准确，甚至还可能不得不使用一些在词汇量有限的人看来可能是晦涩难懂的词语。
Is the entrance to a tent a door, for instance? And What of the thing that seals the exit of an air plane?
举例来说，帐篷的入口算不算是门?还有那把飞机的出人口封闭起来的东西叫什么?那
Is this a door? Or what of those sheets and jets of air that are now being used, in place of old-fashioned oak and hinges, to screen entrances and exists? Are they doors?
算不算是门?还有那些现在已经开始用来代替老式的橡木折叶门遮蔽出入口的布帘或喷气帘呢?它们算是门吗?
And what of that accordion-like things that set off various sections of many modern apartments?
还有许多现代化公寓里用来将屋子的各个部分隔开的那种像手风琴似的东西又是什么?
The fine print in the lease takes it for granted that they are doors and that spaces demarked by them are rooms-and the rent is computed on the number of rooms.
租房契约书上的条款不容分说地把它们算作是门，由它们隔成的空间便是房间--房租便是按房间数来计算的。
