threat: [OE] Threat originally meant ‘trouble, oppression’; ‘expression of an intention to do harm’ is a secondary sense, which arose out of the notion of ‘putting pressure’ on someone. It came from a prehistoric base *thraut-, *threut-, *thrut-, which probably went back to Indo- European *trud- ‘push, press’ (source also of Latin trūdere ‘thrust’, from which English gets abstruse, intrude, etc, and probably also of English thrust). => abstruse, intrude
threat (n.)
Old English þreat "crowd, troop," also "oppression, coercion, menace," related to þreotan "to trouble, weary," from Proto-Germanic *thrautam (cognates: Dutch verdrieten, German verdrießen "to vex"), from PIE *treud- "to push, press squeeze" (cognates: Latin trudere "to press, thrust," Old Church Slavonic trudu "oppression," Middle Irish trott "quarrel, conflict," Middle Welsh cythrud "torture, torment, afflict"). Sense of "conditional declaration of hostile intention" was in Old English.
实用例句
1. In an embarrassing climb-down, the Home Secretary lifted the deportation threat.
内务大臣尴尬地作出让步，解除了将其驱逐出境的威胁。
来自柯林斯例句
2. I think your concern is misplaced. Ackroyd is no threat to anyone.
我认为你多虑了，阿克罗伊德不会对任何人构成威胁。
来自柯林斯例句
3. A third of Africa is under threat of desertification.
非洲有三分之一的土地面临荒漠化的威胁。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The threat of inflation is already evident in bond prices.
通货膨胀的危险在证券价格上已经表现得很明显。
来自柯林斯例句
5. Rebel sources have so far reacted cautiously to the threat.
