sabotage

• vt. 妨害；对…采取破坏行动
• vi. 从事破坏活动
• n. 破坏；破坏活动；怠工

来自法语 sabotage,捣乱，破坏，来自 sabot,木鞋，来自中古法语 savate,旧鞋子，词源同 sabaton, 护脚甲，savate,法国腿踢，ciabatta,拖鞋面包。现词义据说是来自 18，19 世纪机器工业刚兴 起时，手工业者担心机器会抢走他们的饭碗，愤而把木鞋扔进机器里面破坏机器运转。

sabotage

sabotage: [20] The etymological idea underlying sabotage is of ‘clattering along in noisy shoes’. For its ultimate ancestor is French sabot, a word of unknown origin which means ‘clog’. From it was derived saboter ‘walk along noisily in clogs’, hence (via the notion of ‘clumsiness’) ‘do work badly’, and finally ‘destroy tools, machines, etc deliberately’. This in turn formed the basis of the noun sabotage, which originally denoted the ‘destruction of machinery, etc by factory workers’, but gradually broadened out to include any deliberate disruptive destruction. English acquired it around 1910.

sabotage (n.)

1907 (from 1903 as a French word in English), from French sabotage, from saboter "to sabotage, bungle," literally "walk noisily," from sabot "wooden shoe" (13c.), altered (by association with Old French bot "boot") from Middle French savate "old shoe," from an unidentified source that also produced similar words in Old Provençal, Portuguese, Spanish (zapata), Italian (ciabatta), Arabic (sabbat), and Basque (zapata).

In French, and at first in English, the sense of "deliberately and maliciously destroying property" originally was in reference to labor disputes, but the oft-repeated story (as old as the record of the word in English) that the modern meaning derives from strikers' supposed tactic of throwing shoes into machinery is not supported by the etymology. Likely it was not meant as a literal image; the word was used in French in a variety of "bungling" senses, such as "to play a piece of music badly." This, too, was the explanation given in some early usages.

SABOTAGE [chapter heading] The title we have prefixed seems to mean "scamping work." It is a device which, we are told, has been adopted by certain French workpeople as a substitute for striking. The workman, in other words, purposes to remain on and to do his work badly, so as to annoy his employer's customers and cause loss to his employer. ["The Liberty Review," January 1907]

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You may believe that sabotage is murder, and so forth, but it is not so at all. Sabotage means giving back to the bosses what they give to us. Sabotage consists in going slow with the process of production when the bosses go slow with the same process in regard to wages. [Arturo M. Giovannitti, quoted in report of the Sagamore Sociological Conference, June 1907]

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In English, "malicious mischief" would appear to be the nearest explicit definition of "sabotage," which is so much more expressive as to be likely of adoption into all languages spoken by nations suffering from this new force in industry and morals. Sabotage has a flavor which is unmistakable even to persons knowing little slang and no French .... ["Century Magazine," November 1910]

sabotage (v.)

1912, from sabotage (n). Related: Sabotaged; sabotaging.

1. One of the journalists queried whether sabotage could have been involved.

其中一位新闻记者询问是否有人为破坏的可能性。

来自柯林斯例句

2. He accused the opposition of trying to sabotage the election.

他谴责反对派企图阻挠选举的进行。

来自柯林斯例句

3. The bombing was a spectacular act of sabotage.

这场轰炸是一次大规模的蓄意破坏行为。

来自柯林斯例句

4. The fire at the factory was caused by sabotage.

那家工厂的火灾是有人蓄意破坏引起的.

来自《简明英汉词典》

5. They tried to sabotage my birthday party.

他们企图破坏我的生日晚会.

来自《简明英汉词典》