【韦小绿笔记12】FIN

Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder 词根笔记（12）FIN

获取更多内容，关注微信公众号"Progressing"。

学习指南：

1.每篇文章介绍一个词根及四个含有词根的单词

2.单词的详细内容包括音标、定义、例句及解释

---

FIN comes from the Latin word for “end” or “boundary.” Final describes last things, and a finale or a finish is an ending. (And at the end of a French film, you may just see the word “Fin.”)

FIN来自拉丁语，代表“end 结束”或“boundary 边界”。Final 描述最后的事情，Finale 或finish表示结束。 （在法国电影的末尾，你可能会看到“Fin”这个词。）

1.confine/kənˈfaɪn/

(1) To keep (someone or something) within limits. (2) To hold (someone) in a location.限制，限定

• He had heard the bad news from the CEO, but when he spoke to his employees he confined his remarks to a few hints that sales had slipped. 他从CEO那里听到了坏消息，但在他和员工谈话时，他只把（对坏消息的）评论限定在暗示销量下滑。

Confine means basically to keep someone or something within borders. Someone confined to a bedroom or a wheelchair is too ill or disabled to be anywhere else. A person under “house arrest（软禁于家中）” is confined to his or her house by the government. At a business meeting, the discussion may be confined to a single topic. A town may keep industrial development confined to one area by means of zoning（分区）. And someone confined to the state prison for 20 years has probably committed quite a serious crime.

2.definitive/dɪˈfɪnətɪv, dɪˈfɪnɪtɪv/

(1) Authoritative and final. (2) Specifying perfectly or precisely.明确的;最终的;不可更改的;决定性的；（书籍或表演）最佳的，最具权威的

• The team's brilliant research provided a definitive description of the virus and its strange mutation patterns. 该团队的精彩研究为病毒及其奇怪的突变模式提供了明确的描述。

Something definitive is complete and final. A definitive example is the perfect example.A definitive answer is usually a strong yes or no.A definitive biography contains everything we'll ever need to know about someone. Ella Fitzgerald's famous 1950s recordings of American songs have even been called definitive—but no one ever wanted them to be the last.

3.finite/ˈfaɪnaɪt/

Having definite limits.有限的;有尽的

• Her ambitions were infinite, but her wealth was finite. 她的野心是无限的，但她的财富是有限的。

It has come as a shock to many of us to realize that resources such as oil—and the atmosphere's ability to absorb greenhouse gases—are finite rather than unlimited. The debate continues as to whether the universe is finite or infinite and, if it's finite, how to think about what lies beyond it. Religion has always concerned itself with the question of the finite (that is, human life on earth) versus the infinite (God, eternity, and infinity). But finite is mostly used in scientific writing, often with the meaning “definitely measurable.”

4.infinitesimal/ˌɪnfɪnəˈtesəməl◂, ˌɪnfɪnɪˈtesəməl◂/

Extremely or immeasurably small.极微小的;微不足道的

• Looking more closely at the research data, he now saw an odd pattern of changes so infinitesimal that they hadn't been noticed before. 仔细研究这些研究数据，他现在看到了一种奇怪的变化模式，这种变化非常微小，以至于他们以前没有注意到。

Just as infinite describes something immeasurable (“without limit”), infinitesimal describes something endlessly small. When Antonie van Leeuwenhoek（安东·列文虎克） invented the microscope（显微镜） in the 17th century, he was able to see organisms that had been thought too infinitesimally small to exist. But today's electron microscope allows us to see infinitesimal aspects of matter that even Leeuwenhoek could not have imagined.