每日一词学英语(50): pundit

Barely a day goes by now without some pundit or another speculating that the housing market has bottomed out. (Timesonline, June 15, 2009: e-Poll: Will house prices be higher in a year's time?)

其实看到上面这句话时“bottom out”也让我心动了一下，原因有两点：“触底”的另一种说法；“out”的用法。不过还是选了pundit，Wiktionary上的解释是：A professed expert in a particular field, as called upon to provide comment or opinion in the media。和expert的区别是，碰到什么事，这些专家都爱跑出来发表一通看法，见诸媒体。中文媒体上常有专家针对食品、房价等品评一番，译成英文注意不一定是“expert”。当然，pundit的内涵比expert要大，有时带贬义，Wikipedia上有更详细的解释。