black swan

短语

[鸟类]黑天鹅(Cygnus atratus,产于澳洲); 稀世之珍，稀有之物，珍品

发音

UK /blæk ˈswɒn/
US /blæk ˈswɑn/

词形变化

black swans 复数 black swans

释义与例句

n.
  1. 1.

    Cygnus atratus, a swan with black plumage and a red bill which is endemic to Australia.

    黑天鹅

  2. 2.

    Something believed impossible or not to exist, especially if an example is subsequently found; also, something extremely rare; a rara avis.

    黑天鹅

    比喻
  3. 3.

    A rare and hard-to-predict event with major consequences.

    黑天鹅

    定语 比喻

词汇关系

名词

上位词 1

swan

词源

From Middle English blak swan, calqued from a Latin quotation from Satire VI (written late 1st century – early 2nd century B.C.E.) of the Roman poet Juvenal: “Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno [a bird as rare upon the earth as a black swan]!”. Equivalent to black + swan. Sense 2.1 (“something believed impossible or not to exist”) is from the fact that all swans were thought to have white plumage until black swans were discovered in Australia in the 17th century by Dutch explorers. Sense 2.2 (“rare and hard-to-predict event”) was popularized by the Lebanese-American author Nassim Nicholas Taleb (born 1960) in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007): see the quotation.

来源：wiktionary