Trump 今天有个讲话,里边用了一个词, surety,
"Look at the way I've been treated lately," he continued. "Especially by the media. No politician in history—and I say this with great
surety—has been treated worse, or more unfairly. You can't let them get you down. You can't let the critics and the naysayers get in the way of your dreams."
我听了觉得有点奇怪, 后来也听到别人讽刺挖苦这个词的用法, 我就去查了一下, 下边是newsweek的说法,
In case you were wondering, "surety"
is a word, just not the one Trump was looking for. Oxford defines a "surety" as "a person who takes responsibility for another's performance of an undertaking, for example their appearing in court or the payment of a debt."
There is also what Oxford calls the word's archaic definition—"for certain"—which is a little bit closer to what Trump was going for. For some reason, though, we doubt the president's usage was culled from his deep well of knowledge of archaic word definitions.
Merriam-Webster's Twitter account, which has been calling Trump out for months, has yet to weigh in on the issue.