英语国家概况(上)术语terms.doc

31. Nuclear family In the USA, a family is usually made up of a father, a mother and two children.Immigrant 2. An immigrant is a person who enters into a country of which one is not a native, in order to live in it permanently.3. Emigrant An emigrant is a person who leaves ones own country and settles in another.4. Urban hermit “Urban hermits” refer to those ladies in urban cities of the United States of American who wander in the cities during day time, often with a bag, but at night they hide themselves sleep in corners in the street or in the subways.5. Ulsterman : refers to a person from Northern Ireland. Ireland was annexed by England in 1461. From Jacobean times Ireland became a centre of English settlement, and later Scottish settlement. It was divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in 1921. Northern Ireland comprises six counties in which there has been civil unrest for many years.6. the United Kingdom : refers to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.7. Sovereign state : The UK is one sovereign state. It is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In each of the four lands the differences are obvious such as clothing and culture etc.8. A welfare state : The UK is a welfare state which was established after the Labor Party came to power in 1945. There are three main areas of welfare provision: health, housing and social security.9. Public School is a private secondary school in the UK, a wholly or partly boarding school, which is administered by a governing body and financed by the pupils fees and income from endowments.10. Middle School is a term often used in China, but it is misleading in for sense that for Americans middle school refers to the age range from ten to thirteen. 11. Prep school is a private school in the educational system of Britain, It is the shortened term of preparatory school for entrance to a public school at the age of thirteen 12. Rugby School is a famous public school in the UK, which is a private school at the secondary education level.13. Oxford University is world famous and is the oldest university in the UK, being established in 1167. University College was founded in 1249. It is in Oxford, England, and exercises the tutorial system and the lecture system in the management of the university.14. Harvard University which is the oldest university in the USA is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1636 after its first benefactor John Harvard and is made up of Harvard College for men graduate schools and research institutes. Radcliffe is the associated womens college.15. Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, which was named after Elihu Yale, an early patron and was chartered in 1701. It consists of Yale College for men, three other undergraduate schools for men and women, and eight graduate schools for men and women.16. Cambridge University which was established in 1284, is the second oldest university in the UK and is very famous around the world- It has 32 colleges. Each college is self-governing, but has a senate which regulates the universitys administrative affairs.17. The Associated Press was established in 1848 by six New York newspapers and is one of the largest news agencies of the USA and has offices all over the world. It is a nonprofit organization financed by subscriptions from member newspapers, periodicals and broadcasting stations. 18. The United Press International was founded through the mergence of the United Press and the International News Agency and is the second largest in the USA, having its general agency in New York. It provides news and messages to news institutions in the world in forty-eight languages.19. Readers Digest is a famous monthly journal in the USA and the most widely read journal in the world, which was first published in 1922 as a digest of condensed articles of topic interest and entertainment value taken from other periodicals. It began publishing condensed versions of current books in 7934. Later, Wallace began to develop articles for Readers Digest by commissioning them first and then offering the completed articles to other publications. By the late 20th century Reader s Digest had thirty-nine editions worldwide in fifteen languages, with a circulation of twenty-eight million.20. The Times which was established in 1785，is the oldest and most well-known daily newspaper in the UK. Its thickness is well-known for the news and other columns. It has a glorious history in the reporting of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, the exposure of the horrors of the Crimean War, which demonstrates the value of journalistic objectivity and the need to criticize the government. 21. The BBC was founded in 1922 and received its charter in 1927 as an independent public corporation. It has a board of governors who are appointed by the government and the minister of Posts and Telecommunications, which is ultimately responsible to Parliament but which enjoys a considerable degree of independence in practice. Until 1955, the BBC was the sole broadcasting corporation in Britain. 22. National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is also called National Broadcasting Networks, and is one of the three major radio and television networks in the USA. The system was established in 1925; its stock was owned by Radio Corporation of America, Westinghouse and General Electric. By the 1980s, the NBC television network consisted of five NBC-owned stations plus some twenty-one affiliated stations; the NBC radio network included eight NBC-owned stations and about three hundred affiliated stations. 23. The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is the third of the radio and television broadcasting networks in the USA, which was formed in 1943 when Edward J. Noble purchased the so-called Blue Network of six radio stations from NBC.24. Cable News Networks (CNN) is a subsidiary company of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., which is engaged in 24-hour live news broadcasts for which it gained worldwide attention in 1991 for its report of the Gulf War. CNN was founded in June 1980 by Ted Turner who established news bureaus in major American cities and other cities in the world.25. Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the USA from 1861 to 1865. He tried, in the American Civil War, to preserve the Union from which the Confederate slave states had seceded on his election. In 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves. He was re-elected in 1864 with the victory for the North, but he was assassinated by John Wilkins Booth at the end of the war.26. The Spanish War is the first imperialist war in history which took place and ended in 1898. It was the war between the USA and Spain to end the rule of Spain in Cuba and the chance for the USA to obtain new territories in Asia and Latin America. At the end of the war the Treaty of Paris was signed in which Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico were ceded to the USA.27. Uncle Sam is a nickname and popular symbol of the United States of America, which denotes a tall cartoon figure with whiter hair and chin whiskers, wearing a tall hat, a swallow-tailed coat with stars, a vest and striped trousers.28. Thanksgiving is the most typital and true national holiday of all the holiday observed in the United States of America. On October 3rd, 1863, Lincoln issued the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation. Since then it has been the custom for the President of the United States of America to proclaim annually the fourth Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day.29. John Bull denoted generally Britain or any Englishman in the seventeenth century. In talking about John Bull, an image immediately appears in our mind. He is short and fat, with a tall hat on his head and pair of boots on his feet. It is nickname for Britain.30. Three “Donts” The British people have the queue habit. If somebody jumps the queue, the British people look down upon him or her. And in the UK, you should never ask a woman her age. Dont try bargain in the UK when you do the shopping.31. Charles I was the king of England and Ireland from 1625, the son of James I of England (James VI of Scotland). He accepted the Petition of Right in1628, but dissolved Parliament and ruled without one from 1629 to 1640. During his reign, the Short Parliament refused funds and the Long Parliament rebelled, therefore he declared war on Parliament in 1642. But he surrendered in 1646 and was beheaded in 1649.32. Halloween is a favorite holiday, a night-time festival for children who play the important part while their parents support them. On the evening of October 31st children in the UK and the USA were masks and costumes of different kinds, usually frightening ones, going from house to house.33. NBA is a national professional basketball league in the USA which was formed in 1949 by the merger of two rival organizations. The NBA membership is divided into two conferences, each with two divisions. The top-off teams at the end of each season engage in a play-off to determen the NBA champion, which claims the title of the champion.34. Olympic Games are international sporting contests which take place every four years in whatever country the International Olympic Committee decides, The name is derived from the national athletic festival held at Olympia. Originally women were forbidden to be present and the male contestants were naked. The modern games are opened with a spectacular ceremony, in which the Olympic flame is lit by a torch carried from Athens by relays of runners.35. Cricket is an outdoor team game which is played between two teams of eleven players on a prepared turf field having a central pitch twenty meters long, with wickets (three stumps with transverse bails) in the ground at either end. The object of the game is to score more runs than the opponents. A run is normally scored by the batsman after striking the ball and exchanging ends with his partner, or by hitting the ball to the boundary line for an automatic four or six runs.36. Golf is probably the most attractive of British sports. Many men of all ages are passionately fond of it. Golf is played over an area of countryside in which there are eighteen small holes. The winner is the one who completes the course with the smallest number of strokes.37. The Star-Spangled Banner is a patriotic song written by Francis Scott Key on September 14, 1814, and officially adopted on march 3, 1931, as the national anthem of the United States of America.38. God Save the Queen is the national anthem of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It has been used in many other countries.39. The Stars and Stripes is also called Old Glory, or Star-Spangled Banner, which is the national flag of the United States of America. The