muscle：皮膚下的小老鼠
Bend your arm and tighten your biceps, then watch it move under your skin. Does it look a bit like a small animal running about? The ancient Romans thought so. That's why the English word "muscle" comes from the Latin word for "little mouse".
In Latin, mus meant "mouse", and musculus meant "little mouse". Roman writers noticed that when someone flexed their arm, the muscle seemed to scurry up and down beneath the skin, like a mouse under a blanket. So they started using musculus for muscles too.
The ancient Greeks had exactly the same idea. Their word mys could mean either "mouse" or "muscle". In several other languages, too, the words for "mouse" and "muscle" are related.
English borrowed "muscle" from French in the late 1300s, and the spelling kept the "sc" from the original Latin. That's why there's a silent "c" in "muscle" today – a little reminder of its Roman roots. The adjective "muscular" keeps the sound of the "c", which makes the connection easier to see.
So next time you're at the gym, you can tell your friends that you're not building muscles at all. You're just training your mice.
彎起手臂，繃緊你的二頭肌，再看看它在皮膚底下動來動去。它看起來像不像一隻小動物在跑來跑去？古羅馬人就是這麼覺得的。所以英文的「muscle」（肌肉），來自拉丁文裡的「小老鼠」。
在拉丁文裡，mus 的意思是「老鼠」，musculus 的意思是「小老鼠」。羅馬作家們發現，當一個人彎起手臂用力時，肌肉好像在皮膚底下竄上竄下，就像一隻老鼠在毯子底下亂跑。於是，他們開始把肌肉也叫做 musculus。
古希臘人的想法一模一樣。他們的單字 mys 可以指「老鼠」，也可以指「肌肉」。在其他好幾種語言裡，「老鼠」和「肌肉」這兩個字也是有關聯的。
英文在 14 世紀末從法文借來了「muscle」，拼法保留了原本拉丁文裡的「sc」。這就是為什麼今天「muscle」裡有一個不發音的「c」——它是這個字羅馬根源的小小紀念。形容詞「muscular」（肌肉發達的）裡的「c」還是要發音的，所以比較容易看出兩者的關聯。
所以，下次上健身房的時候，你可以告訴朋友們，你根本不是在練肌肉，你只是在訓練你的小老鼠。