• adj. 可怕的；以死亡为主题的；令人毛骨悚然的（等于macaber）

来自古法语danse Macabre,即dance of Death,词源不详。可能来自对拉丁语Chorea Machabaeorum的意译，即Maccabees Chorea.其中Maccabees为犹太教世袭祭司家庭，在公元前2世纪至1世纪时为抵抗希腊和叙利亚联军的入侵，家庭成员大量战死。后世根据这一历史改编成戏剧展现了这段悲惨的故事。引申词义可怕的，恐怖的。参照百度百科马加比家族。

macabre

macabre: [15] Macabre is now used generally for ‘ghastly’, but that is a late 19th-century development. It originated in the very specific phrase dance macabre, which denoted a dance in which a figure representing death enticed people to dance with him until they dropped down dead. This was borrowed from French danse macabre, which was probably an alteration of an earlier danse Macabé. This in turn was a translation of medieval Latin chorea Machabaeorum ‘dance of the Maccabees’, which is thought originally to have referred to a stylized representation of the slaughter of the Maccabees (a Jewish dynasty of biblical times) in a medieval miracle play.

macabre (adj.)

early 15c., originally in reference to a kind of morality show or allegorical representation of death and his victims, from Old French (danse) Macabré "(dance) of Death" (1376), of uncertain origin, probably a translation of Medieval Latin (Chorea) Machab?orum, literally "dance of the Maccabees" (leaders of the Jewish revolt against Syro-Hellenes; see Maccabees). The association with the dance of death seems to be from vivid descriptions of the martyrdom of the Maccabees in the Apocryphal books. The abstracted sense of "gruesome" is first attested 1842 in French, 1889 in English.

The typical form which the allegory takes is that of a series of pictures, sculptured or painted, in which Death appears, either as a dancing skeleton or as a shrunken corpse wrapped in grave-clothes to persons representing every age and condition of life, and leads them all in a dance to the grave. ["Encyclopaedia Britannica," 11th ed., 1911]

1. He takes a macabre interest in graveyards.

他那么留意墓地,令人毛骨悚然.

来自《简明英汉词典》

2. Mr Dahl was well-known for his macabre adult stories called "Tales of the Unexpected".

达尔先生以成人恐怖小说集《意料之外的故事》闻名于世。

来自柯林斯例句

3. Log on to the Hammer Web ring, with 12 more sites devoted to macabre movies.

登录哈默网络联盟，就会找到另外12个专门播放恐怖电影的网站。

来自柯林斯例句

4. Police have made a macabre discovery.

警方有一个令人毛骨悚然的发现。

来自辞典例句

5. In such a macabre climax of degradation II Duce and Fascism passed into history.

意大利领袖和法西斯主义就是落得这样悲惨的可耻的下场而成为历史陈迹的.

来自互联网