conundrum: [16] Conundrum originally appeared in all manner of weird and wonderful guises – conimbrum, conuncrum, quonundrum, connunder, etc – before settling down to conundrum in the late 18th century. It bears all the marks of one of the rather heavy-handed quasi-Latin joke words beloved of scholars in the 16th and 17th centuries, and a mid-17thcentury commentator attributed it to Oxford university. At first it meant ‘whim’ and then ‘pun’; the current sense ‘puzzling problem’ did not develop until the end of the 18th century.
conundrum (n.)
1590s, Oxford University slang for "pedant," also "whim," etc., later (1790) "riddle, puzzle." Also spelled quonundrum. The sort of ponderous pseudo-Latin word that was once the height of humor in learned circles.
雙語例句
1. Scientists had focused on two explanations to solve this conundrum.
科學(xué)家已鎖定兩種解釋來解開這個難題。
來自辭典例句
2. Interaction designers often face the conundrum of whether to make their products user - customizable.