The Most Complicated Word in English is Only Three Letters Long, three little letters, 645 meanings.
英语中最复杂的单词只有三个字母，3个字母，645个含义
Imagine you’re a dictionary editor. For eight hours a day, five days a week, every week until the heat death of the universe or the day human beings stop speaking English (whichever comes first), it’s your job to ensure that your trusted reference book keeps pace with the relentlessly evolving definitions of our ceaselessly expanding English language.
想象你自己是一个字典编辑员。一天八小时，一周工作五天，每周都这样，直到宇宙消灭或人类停止说英语（看哪件事先发生）的那天。你的工作就是确保你所信赖的工具书能与不断进化的词义和我们永不停止扩大的英语词库保持同步。
“No sweat,” you think, picking up two boxes of citations for words beginning with the letter R. “Where do I start?”
“小意思，”你这么想着，拿起两箱字母R开头的单词的引证（用语境解释词的含义）。“天啊我该从哪开始？”
That’s when you realize these boxes of citations, hundreds of scraps of paper showing each word in every possible context, are all for a single word. A three-letter word—the most complicated, multifaceted word in the English language.
你意识到这一坨的词意引用，即列出了在每个可能的语境中的每个词的意思的这些成百上千张纸片，都是为了一个词服务的——英语中最复杂、最多义的一个词，只有三个字母。
You might think it’s absurd (and maybe it is), but Oxford English Dictionaryeditors recently revealed that “run” has indeed become the single word with the most potential meanings in all of English, boasting no fewer than 645 different usage cases for the verb form alone.
你觉得这太荒谬了（也许确实是），但牛津英语词典编辑最近透露，“Run”确实成为了最有潜力的单词，仅仅是动词形式就拥有至少645种不同的用例。
The copious definitions of “run” featured in the OED’s upcoming third edition begin with the obvious, “to go with quick steps on alternate feet,”.
Run一词的丰富含义在牛津词典即将推出的第三版修订本中呈现出来，列表打头的词义是最显而易见的那个“以双脚快速交换的动作行动”。
This entry, in all its girth, took one professional lexicographer nine months of research to complete. How could three little letters be responsible for so much meaning?
这个条目让一位专业词典撰写员用了9个月的研究时间才差不多列完。为什么这个三个字母的小词会有这么多意思啊？
Context is everything.
语境代表着一切。
Think about it: When you run a fever, for example, those three letters have a very different meaning than when you run a bath to treat it, or when your bathwater subsequently runs over and drenches your cotton bath runner, forcing you to run out to the store and buy a new one.
想想看这一句话：你得了感冒于是去洗个热水澡治治病，随后你的洗澡水溢了出来，浸湿了你的棉脚垫，你不得不冲出家门买一条新的回来。这里面每一个run的意思都不同。
（来看看看下边这段）
There, you run up a bill of $85 because besides a rug and some cold medicine, you also need some thread to fix the run in your stockings and some tissue for your runny nose and a carton of milk because you’ve run through your supply at home,and all this makes dread run through your soul because your value-club membership runs out at the end of the month and you’ve already run over your budget on last week’s grocery run when you ran over a nail in the parking lot and now your car won’t even run properly because whatever idiot runs that Walmart apparently lets his custodial staff run amok and you know you’re letting your inner monologue run on and on but, God—you’d do things differently if you ran the world.
在店里，你付了一份85美元的账单因为你不仅买了一条小地毯和一些感冒药，你还得买一些针线来修补你脱了线的袜子，再买点纸巾擦不停流鼻涕的鼻子，还要买一箱牛奶因为你家里的吃的已经吃光了，这一切让你感到一股恐惧穿过心灵，你的打折俱乐部会员这个月就要过期了，但你已经超出预算了。上周你在超市停车场轧到了一颗钉子，还参与了杂货抢购，然而现在你的车甚至已经开不了了因为不知道哪个白痴开的那家沃尔玛，他显然没看管好他的仓储保管人员，让他们肆意妄为了（所以才有钉子），你反复念叨着内心独白（世界如此美妙我却如此暴躁这样不好不好），但老天啊，这要是我在掌控这个世界那一切就不会变成这样了！
Maybe you should run for office. It bears mentioning that “run” didn’t always have the run of the dictionary. When the OED’s first edition came out in 1928 (after 70 years of editorial research), the longest entry belonged to another three-letter juggernaut: “set.”
也许你应该参加竞选。值得一提“run”在字典中词意丰富方面并不总是领跑。1928年第一版牛津词典（经过70年的调查研究）中，词意最长的名号属于另一个三个字母的大魔王：“set”。
Even today, the print edition of the OEDcontains some 200 meanings, beginning with “put, lay, or stand (something) in a specified place or position,” and continuing on for about 32 pages.
即使在今天，该版本的词典也包含set的大约200个释义，从“把（什么东西）放、躺、站在指定的地点或位置，”开始，往后约32页都是set的释义。
So what happened? Why is “run” suddenly the Swiss Army Knife of verbs? British author Simon Winchester fancies it “a feature of our more energetic and frantic times,” making words like “set” seem almost stodgy and passive by comparison.
所以这期间是发生什么了？为什么“run”突然变成了动词中的瑞士军刀（多面手）？英国作家Simon Winchester是这么想的：Run是更有活力和更疯狂的时代的特征，而像“set”相比起来就更沉闷和被动。
‘Run’ appears to have earned some major lift during the boom of the Industrial Revolution, when all manner of mechanized innovation adopted it as their verb of choice. “Machines run, clocks run, computers run—there are all of those [meanings] which began in the middle of the 19th century,” Winchester says.
“run”似乎在工业革命的繁荣中词义猛增，当时所有的机械化革新都选它作为动词。“机器运行，时钟运行，计算机运行有所有这些[含义] 都从第十九世纪中叶开始了，”Winchester说
So, ready to run through the whole list of definitions? Alas, to read all 645 meanings you’ll have to wait for the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The print run is expected in 2037.
那么准备好浏览一遍整个run的词义表吗？哎呀，想看到全部645个含义你得等下一版的牛津英语词典啦。恩是的，预计2037出版哦。
http://www.rd.com/culture/most-complicated-word-in-english/
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