sat・ireの英語

語源

From Middle French satire, from Old French, from Latin satira, from earlier satura, from lanx satura (“full dish”), from feminine of satur. Altered in Latin by influence of Ancient Greek σάτυρος (sáturos, “satyr”), on the mistaken notion that the form is related to the Greek σατυρικὸν δράμα (saturikòn dráma, “satyr drama”).

発音

• (General American) IPA: /ˈsætaɪɹ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈsætaɪə/
• ハイフネーション: sat‧ire
• 韻: -aɪə(ɹ)

名詞

satire (countable and uncountable, plural satires)

1. (uncountable) A literary device of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change or highlighting a shortcoming in the work of another. Imitation, humor, irony, and exaggeration are often used to aid this.
   • 2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Ch.9, at p.148:

     Satire deflates and debases. It is an art which topples greatness, undermines pretension and punishes pride by revealing the low in the pretendedly high, the filth in the pure, the folly in reason. This belittling trick deploys telescopic lenses which picture the human as lesser and lower, or as a machine or beast, driven by depraved desires. Satire reduces what purports to be subtly superior to a repertoire of stigmatizing symbols and cardboard cut-outs, turning character into caricature, signalled by exaggerated physiognomical distortions - the huge nose, gaping mouth and bloated belly, or comparable animalistic traits. In this humbling of the complex into the simplistic, satire finally reduces the mind, soul or spirit to that flesh which always bespeaks inferiority on the Chain of Being.

2. (countable) A satirical work.

   a stinging satire of American politics.

3. (uncountable, dated) Severity of remark.
   • 1898, George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra:

     CAESAR. No, by the gods! would that it had been! Vengeance at least is human. No, I say: those severed right hands, and the brave Vercingetorix basely strangled in a vault beneath the Capitol, were (with shuddering satire) a wise severity, a necessary protection to the commonwealth, a duty of statesmanship—follies and fictions ten times bloodier than honest vengeance!

使用する際の注意点

Often confused with parody, which does not necessarily have an element of social change.

派生語

Further reading

• “satire”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “satire”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

アナグラム

• striae, striæ, terais, terasi