gnarled

来自辅音丛gn, 节，块，疙瘩，词源同knot, knoll.

gnarled

gnarled: [17] Gnarled is essentially a 19thcentury word. It is recorded once before then, in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure 1603 (‘Thy sharp and sulphurous bolt splits the unwedgable and gnarled oak’), but its modern currency is due to its adoption by early 19th-century romantic writers. It is probably a variant of knurled [17], itself a derivative of knur or knor ‘rough misshapen lump, as on a tree trunk’ [14], which is related to German knorren ‘knot, gnarled branch or trunk’.
=> knurled

gnarled (adj.)

c. 1600, probably a variant of knurled, from Middle English knar "knob, knot in wood" (late 14c.), earlier "a crag, twisted rock" (early 13c.), from a general group of Germanic words that includes English knob, knock, knuckle, knoll, knurl. Gnarl (v.) "make knotty," gnarl (n.) "a knotty growth on wood," and gnarly (adj.) all seem to owe their existence in modern English to Shakespeare's use of gnarled in 1603:

Thy sharpe and sulpherous bolt Splits the vn-wedgable and gnarled Oke. ["Measure for Measure," II.ii.116]

"(Gnarled) occurs in one passage of Shakes. (for which the sole authority is the folio of 1623), whence it came into general use in the nineteenth century" [OED].

1. The tree has gnarled red branches and deep green leaves.

这棵树的树枝扭曲多瘤且呈红色，树叶则是深绿色。

2. a gnarled old oak tree

多节瘤的老橡树

3. The fingers were gnarled, lumpy, with long, curving nails suggestive of animal claws.

手指粗糙，关节突出，指甲又长又弯，让人想起动物的爪子。

4. His hands were gnarled with arthritis.

他的双手因患关节炎而扭曲变形。

5. Sailor as he was, it was easy enough for him to clamber up the gnarled trunk.

他虽说是个水手,攀上这扭曲的树干, 倒还容易.