lair: [OE] Etymologically a lair is a place where you ‘lie’ down. For it comes ultimately from the same Germanic base, *leg-, as produced English lie. In Old English it had a range of meanings, from ‘bed’ to ‘grave’, which are now defunct, and the modern sense ‘place where an animal lives’ did not emerge until the 15th century. Related Germanic forms show different patterns of semantic development: Dutch leger, for instance, means ‘bed’ and ‘camp’ (it has given English beleaguer [16] and, via Afrikaans, laager [19]) and German lager (source of English lager) means ‘bed’, ‘camp’, and ‘storeroom’. Layer in the sense ‘stratum’ [17] (which to begin with was a culinary term) may have originated as a variant of lair. => beleaguer, laager, lager, lay, layer, lie
lair (n.)
Old English leger "bed, couch, grave; act or place of lying down," from Proto-Germanic *legraz (cognates: Old Norse legr "grave," also "nuptials" ("a lying down"); Old Frisian leger "situation," Old Saxon legar "bed," Middle Dutch legher "act or place of lying down," Dutch leger "bed, camp," Old High German legar "bed, a lying down," German Lager "bed, lair, camp, storehouse," Gothic ligrs "place of lying"), from PIE *legh- "to lie, lay" (see lie (v.2)). Meaning "animal's den" is from early 15c.
双语例句
1. Green recounts how he once went to see Bremner in his lair.
格林讲述他有一次去布雷姆纳隐居之处看他的经历。
来自柯林斯例句
2. How can you catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger's lair?
不入虎穴,焉得虎子?
来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
3. I retired to my lair, and wrote some letters.
我回到自己休息的地方, 写了几封信.
来自《简明英汉词典》
4. One morning when a vixen was taking her babies out of the lair, she saw a lioness and her cub.
