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The scandal-naming suffix -gate is the most well-known contribution of Richard Nixon’s presidency to the vocabulary of English, but a glance through the US political Twittersphere in recent days makes it clear that it is not the only one. The unexpected firing of FBI Director James Comey was instantly dubbed 「the Tuesday Night Massacre」, in allusion to the 「Saturday Night Massacre」, the name given to Nixon’s dismissal in 1973 of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, which led to the resignations of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General. This is the second time the term has been repurposed so far during the Trump presidency: the firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates on 30 January was referred to as the「Monday Night Massacre」. A more mundane word related to the 37th president has also been surging in use (and lookups in our dictionary) since the Comey firing—the adjective Nixonian.
表示醜聞的「門」之詞綴是理察·尼克森總統對英語世界的詞彙貢獻之一，但是最近美國政治的推特圈告訴我們這「門」不是他唯一的貢獻。FBI局長James Comey的突然革職被稱為周二夜大屠殺。這個描述源自於1973年尼克森炒掉了調查水門事件的特別檢察官Archibald Cox，引發司法部長和副部長的辭職，那一夜被稱為周六夜大屠殺。這是川普上任以來「大屠殺」表述的第二次使用：1月30日川普解僱代理司法部長Sally Yates的事件被稱為周一夜大屠殺。除此之外，用於描述FBI局長解僱事件的詞彙則是Nixonian。
Pundits have reached for the word Nixonian to describe Trump before, but in the wake of the Comey firing it became ubiquitous overnight. In Brigham Young University’s News on the Web corpus, the word Nixonian appears more times in the first 10 days of May (39) than in the entire first four months of 2017(35); in relative terms, as shown by the graph, the spike in usage is even starker.
專家們曾經使用過Nixonian來形容川普，但FBI局長Comey的解僱事件使這個詞彙的使用一夜之間各處可見。楊百翰大學網上新聞語料庫觀測，「Nixonian」在新聞中的使用於17年5月的前10天（39次）比17年前四個月加起來（35次）都多。正如圖中所示，數量的增加十分驚人。
The Oxford English Dictionary defines Nixonian blandly as 『of, relating to, or characteristic of Richard Nixon or his policies』; what precisely a person means when they call something Nixonian depends on the context. The earliest recorded use of the word Nixonian in the OED is from 1952, 16 years before Nixon was elected president, when he was a California senator and Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate on the Republican ticket. Nixon was under fire for alleged financial improprieties, and a journalist traveling on Eisenhower’s campaign train reported that the other members of the press corps were composing 「Nixonian witticisms」:
《牛津英語辭典》（The Oxford English Dictionary, OED）將Nixonian定義為「與理察·尼克森或他的政策相關的」。而Nixonian形容一件事具體是什麼含義要通過上下文來理解。OED中對於Nixonian一詞最早的記載出現在尼克森當上總統的16年前，即1952年，當時他是加州的參議院，也是艾森豪的競選夥伴。尼克森曾被指控在財政上有違法行為，一位乘坐艾森豪競選列車的記者聲稱其它媒體團的成員正在撰寫「尼克森式妙語」。以下是來自1952年9月25日《安德森先驅報》第四版報導：
That usage simply means 「witticisms relating to Nixon」, but since Nixon’s presidency Nixonian has been colored by more specific and often pejorative connotations, alluding to the Watergate scandal which led to his resignation and his enduring negative image in the popular imagination. One way to approach the question of connotation is to examine the nouns Nixonian tends to modify. To spread the net wide, I looked at four different corpora (the Oxford New Monitor Corpus, Oxford English Corpus, BYUNOW corpus, and Google Ngram viewer).
尼克森式妙語的字面含義就是有關尼克森的妙語，但在尼克森擔任總統期間，Nixonia（尼克森式的）就染上了特定的貶義色彩，尤其是因為導致他辭職並沾染負面形象的水門事件。其中一個探究Nixonian一詞含義色彩的方式就是查看這個詞的修飾對象。為了多了解廣撒網，我們查看了不同語料庫中的記錄，包括the Oxford New Monitor Corpus，Oxford English Corpus，BYU NOW corpus以及Google Ngram viewer等4個語料庫。
Some of the words associated with Nixonian are neutral in tone, such as policies and diplomacy, but the most consistent noun modified by Nixonian across all four corpora is the word paranoia. Along with the terms obsession and secrecy, this suggests an embattled, cornered Nixon lashing out against his perceived enemies. Espionage, cover-up and abuses also evoke the Watergate scandal, which is such a strong part of posterity’s image of the 37th president that it overshadows other aspects of his career (the rare positive resonance of the Nixon-goes-to-China metaphor is the exception that proves the rule).
有些與Nixonian相關的詞彙是中性的，例如「政策」「外交」，但paranoia（偏執狂）一詞在四個語料庫都出現了。這個詞與obsession（痴迷）和secrecy（秘密）一起，顯示了尼克森對其可見的敵人不安煩躁的猛烈打擊行為。這些負面信息掩蓋了他作為第37任總統的一些正面形象，例如Nixon-goes-to-China（尼克森訪問中國）的比喻。作為一個政治比喻，「Nixon-goes-to-China」, 「Only Nixon could go to China" 或是 "It took Nixon to go to China"指的是涉及政治變革的大事件需要一位有能力、聲望的人才能做到。
When Trump’s critics declared 「this is Nixonian」 after Tuesday’s events, the scandal-ridden Nixon desperately clinging to power was the Nixon they had in mind; it serves as the ultimate condemnation of a sitting president. There may also be an element of wishful thinking in these accusations of Nixonianism—after all, Nixon was eventually forced to resign. In any case, Trump himself has not taken great pains to distance himself from the 37th president—the day after firing Comey he was photographed in the Oval Office with Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
當川普的批評者批評周二的時間為「this is Nixonian」，尼克森在人們心目中的形象是急迫希望抓住權利的，這是對在職總統的有力譴責。也許這種譴責還帶有另外一種期望的元素——畢竟尼克森最後還是被迫辭職了。從各種方面說，川普並沒有很努力把自己與尼克森撇清關聯，解僱Comey的第二天，川普就在橢圓辦公室與尼克森的國務卿亨利基辛格拍了合影。
本文內容編譯自牛津辭典博客（blog.oxforddictionaries.com），牛津大學出版社擁有中英文兩版版權。如需轉載，請標明出處。