To us it seems so natural to put up an umbrella to keep the water off when it rains. But actually the umbrella was not invented as protection against rain. Its first use was as a shade against the sun.
Nobody knows who first invented it, but the umbrella was used in very ancient times. Probably the first to use it were the Chinese, way back in the eleventh century B.C.
We know that the umbrella was used in ancient Egypt and Babylon as a sunshade. And there was a strange thing connected with its use: it became a symbol of honor and authority. In the Far East in ancient times, the umbrella was allowed to be used only by royalty or by those in high office.
In Europe, the Greeks were the first to use the umbrella as a sunshade. And the umbrella was in common use in ancient Greece. But it is believed that the first persons in Europe to use the umbrella as protection against the rain were the ancient Romans.
During the Middle Ages, the use of the umbrella practically disappeared. Then it appeared again in Italy in the late sixteenth century. And again it was considered a symbol of power and authority. By 1680, The umbrella appeared in France, and later on in England.
By the eighteenth century, the umbrella was used against rain throughout most of Europe. Umbrellas have not changed much in style. during all this time, though they have become much lighter in weight. It wasn't until the twentieth century that women's umbrellas began to be made, in a whole variety of colors.
The first use of umbrella was as ______.
A.protection against rain
B.a shade against the sun
C.a symbol of power
D.a symbol of honor
时间:2023-01-21 00:42:47
-
It seems()to change the timetable so often.
A . unlogical
B . imlogical
C . inlogical
D . illogical
-
The dolphin may be()but it seems to want to communicate.
A . comb
B . dumb
C . numerous
D . overcome
-
It seems to me that I have met the new English teacher
-
When I try to understand ____ that prevents so many Americans from being as one might expect, it seems to me that there are two causes.
-
It is not thing you seem to imagine.
-
23 . The car is running ______ . It seems to be flying .
-
It is impossible to ( ) the idea that seems too stupid.
-
26._________in the doorway,the house appeared to be much smaller than it had seemed to us as children many years a90.A.When we stood B.Being standing C.Standing D.Stood
-
It happens to all of us sometimes, doesn’t it? You have a deadline to meet,but instead of doing your work, you check Facebook or do some on line shopping.This is called procrastination, and it affects everyone.So how can you stop procrastinating?
We often procrastinate because a task seems too big, or impossible to achieve.Try breaking down the task into smaller pieces.For example, instead of thinking,“I need to finish this essay by 10 p.m.tonight ” tell yourself,“I’ m going to make a short outline, fill that in, and then look for quotes.”
Another important factor is your environment, isn’t it? If there are too many distractions in your work space, you may be tempted to procrastinate more.Are there any things in your work space (for example, a TV) that could be causing you to lose focus?
Making a timeline with goals and deadlines is a great way to stop yourself from procrastinating.
However, it is important to make your deadlines realistic so that you can be sure you’ll stick to them.
Some people like to wait for the perfect time to start a task, while the perfect time is often now.Try something called the Two-Minute Rule to help you get started.This idea comes from David Allen’ s best-selling book, Getting Things Done.It states that.if something takes less than two minutes, such as washing your dishes after a meal, then you should do it now.
1.Procrastination means().
A.putting your work off till later
B.doing your work quickly
C.doing your work carefully
D.doing your work well
2.Sometimes we procrastinate because a task seems too().
A.easy
B.small
C.fun
D.big
3.Having a TV in your work space is an example of an environmental().
A.distraction
B.reaction
C.attration
D.concentration
4.Setting realistic is a() good way to stop procrastinating.
A.environments
B.deadlines
C.focus
D.places
5.The Two-Minute Rule states that if something takes no more than two minutes, you should().
A.put it aside
B.do it later
C.do it now
D.wait for a moment
-
The role chnge from husbnd to fther,lthough difficult, doesn’t seem so grets _____ from wifeThe role chnge from husbnd to fther,lthough difficult, doesn’t seem so grets _____\ from wife to mother.one B.tht C.it D.those
A.one
B.that
C.it
D.those
-
Nowadays it seems () to find a cheap apartment in this area.
A.cold
B.possible
C.long
D.impossible
-
The author's tone in talking about fire ants in the US seems to be
A.critical.
B.indifferent.
C.fearful.
D.objective.
-
It would seem to be a general truth______nothing is as straightforward as it at first seems.
A.that
B.when
C.because
D.if
-
听力原文:We’ll all see them on TV commercials with that special gait looking out at us,from the covers of glossy magazines or showing off the latest creations by tailors from Paris and it must have seemed to us that they have lives which are all glamorous.
(16)
-
Our urge to classify different life forms and give us names seems to be as old as the human race.
此题为多项选择题。
-
I teach economics at UCLA. Last Monday in class, I【36】asked my students how their weekend had been. One young man said that it had not been so good. Then he proceeded to ask me why I always seemed to be so cheerful. His question【37】me of something I'd read somewhere before: "Every morning when you get up, you have a【38】about how you want to approach life that day," I said. "I choose to be cheerful." Then I told them a story.
One day I was【39】to the college I taught in at Henderson, 17 miles away from where I lived. When a quarter mile was left down the road to the college, my car died. I tried to start it again, but the engine wouldn't【40】So I walked to the college. My secretary asked me what had happened. "This is my lucky day," I replied, smiling. "Your car breaks down and today is your lucky day?" She was【41】. "What do you mean?" "I live 17 miles from here." I replied. "My car could have broken down anywhere along the freeway. It didn't.【42】it broke down in the perfect place: off the freeway,within walking distance of the college. I'm still able to teach my class and get help from the tow truck. If my car was meant to break down today, it couldn't have been in a more convenient way." The secretary's eyes opened【43】and then she smiled.
I scanned the sixty faces before me.【44】it was a big crowd, no one made any noise. Somehow, my story had【45】them. In fact, it had all started with a student's observation that I was cheerful.
(36)
A.nervously
B.carefully
C.cheerfully
D.eagerly
-
Since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them; and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen; even as every pain is also an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided. Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form. our judgement on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions we treat as bad, and conversely the bad as good.
We must consider that of desires some are natural, others vain, and of the natural some are necessary and others merely natural; and of the necessary some are necessary for happiness, others for the repose of the body, and others for very life.
Unhappiness comes either through fear or through vain and unbridled desire; but if a man curbs these, he can win for himself' the blessedness of understanding. Of desires, all that do not lead to a sense of pain, if they are not satisfied, are not necessary, but involve a craving which is easily dispelled, when the object is hard to procure or they seem likely to produce harm. Wherever in the case of desires which are natural, but do not lead to a sense of pain, if they are not fulfilled, the effort is intense, such pleasures are due to idle imagination, and it is not owing to their own nature that they fail to be dispelled, but owing to the empty imaginings of the man.
The disturbance of the soul cannot be ended nor true joy created either by the possession of the greatest wealth or by honour and respect in the eyes of the mob or by anything else that is associated with causes of unlimited desires. We must not violate nature, but obey her; and we shah obey her if we fulfil the necessary desires and also the natural, if they bring no harm to us, but sternly reject the harmful. The man who follows nature and not vain opinions is independent in all things. For in reference to unlimited desires even the greatest wealth is not riches but poverty.
Insofar as you are in difficulties, it is because you forget nature; for you create for yourself unlimited fears and desires. It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.
What does "greater discomfort accrues to us" in Paragraph 1 mean here?
A.We get greater discomfort over a period of time.
B.We are tortured by greater discomfort.
C.Greater discomfort exists in our body.
D.Greater discomfort makes us miserable.
-
Culture is the sum total of all the traditions, customs, beliefs, and ways of life of a given group of human beings. In this (1)_____, every group has a culture, however un-developed or uncivilized it may seem to us.
To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture (2)_____ another, just as to the professional linguist there is no intrinsic (3)_____ among the different languages.
People once (4)_____ the languages of backward groups as savage, undeveloped (5)_____ of speech, consisting largely of grunts and groans. (6)_____ it is possible that language (7)_____ began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages (8)_____ no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of (9)_____ groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely (10)_____, delicate, and ingenious pieces of machinery for the transfer of ideas. They (11)_____ behind our Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, (12)_____ only in their vocabularies, which reflect their speakers' social (13)_____.
Even in this department, (14)_____, two things are to be noted: 1) All languages seem to (15)_____ the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence (16)_____ by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. 2) The objects and activities requiring names and (17)_____ in "backward" languages, while different from ours, are often (18)_____ numerous and complicated. A Western languages distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"); some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker or to the person (19)_____ and what is removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future.
This study of language, in turn, (20)_____ a new light upon the claim of the anthropologists that all cultures are to be viewed independently, and without ideas of rank.
A.perspective
B.sense
C.dimension
D.manner
-
Pepys and his wife Jane had asked some friends to dinner on Sunday, September 2nd, 1666.They were up very late on the Saturday evening, getting everything ready for the next day, and while they were busy they saw the glow(微弱的光) of a fire start in the sky. By 3 o'clock on the Sunday morning, its glow had become so bright that Jane woke her husband to watch it. Pepys slipped on his dressing-gown and went to the window to watch it. It seemed fairly far away, and after a time he went back to bed. When he got up in the morning, it looked, though the fire was dying down, as though he could still see some flames. So he set to work to tidy his room and put his things back where he wanted them.
While he was doing this, Jane came in to say that she had heard the fire was a bad one; hundreds of houses had been burned down in the night and the fire was still burning. Pepys went out to see for himself. He went to the Tower of London and climbed upon a high part of the building so that he could see what was happening. From there, Pepys could see that it was, indeed, a bad fire and that even the houses on London Bridge were burning. The man of the Tower told him that the fire had started in a baker's.shop in Pudding Lane(小巷) ; the baker's house had caught fire from the over-heated oven(烤箱) and then the flames had quickly spread to the other houses in the narrow lane. So the Great Fire of London, a fire that lasted nearly five days, destroyed most of the old city and ended, as it is said, at Pie Comer.
What is the passage about?
A.The Great Fire of London.
B.Who was the first to discover the fire.
C.What Pepys was doing during the fire.
D.The losses caused by the fire.
-
听力原文: Mny of us believe tht person’s mind becomes lessctives he grows older. B听力原文: Mny of us believe tht person’s mind becomes lessctives he grows older. But this is not true,ccording to Dr. Jrvik, professor of psychitryt the University of Cliforni. She hs studied the mentl functioning ofging persons for severl yers. ()In the cses where the older person’s mind relly seems to decy, it is not necessrily sign of decy due to oldge. Often it is simply sign of depressed emotionl stte. How mny pirs of twins did Dr. Jrvik’s studies involved 136. B.60. C.70. D.80.
A.136.
B.60.
C.70.
D.80.
-
So fast _______ that it is difficult for us to imagine its speed()
A.light travels
B.travels light
C.does light travel
D.travels light
-
完型填空It seems quite clearly unjust to pay two p...
完型填空It seems quite clearly unjust to pay two people different amounts of money for doing the same work. But it is not as easy as it appeals at first __1__ to introduce equal pay for equal work. Two people may be working side by side in a factory and doing the same work, but one may be doing it twice as fast as the __2__; or one may be making no mistakes, while the other is making a lot. In some kinds of work, one can solve the problem of speed if one pays by the amount of work to be done and not by the hour: work paid for in this __3__ is called piece-work. But it is not always possible to do this, so it is sometimes useful to pay workers at different rates, which take differences in skill into __4__. This usually means that the younger and therefore less experienced worker gets less than the __5__ and more experienced one, which seems reasonable enough.
1.A:other B:sight C:older D:way E:account
2.A:other B:sight C:older D:way E:account
3.A:other B:sight C:older D:way E:account
4.A:other B:sight C:older D:way E:account
5.A:other B:sight C:older D:way E:account
-
It seemed it was going to rain, but it has ______ fine.
A. turned down
B. turned out
C. turned up
D. turned over
-
The text was too difficult for us, so our teacher tried to explain it sentence_____ sentence()
A.in
B.through
C.by
D.with