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The shrew – an unpleasant, ill-tempered woman characterised by scolding, nagging, and aggression〔 – is a comedic, stock character in literature and folklore, both Western and Eastern.〔 The best-known work with this theme is probably Shakespeare's play ''The Taming of the Shrew''. The figure represents "insubordinate female behavior" in a marital system of polarised gender roles, that is supposedly male-dominated in a moral hierarchy.〔 In 30 cultural groups in the middle 20th century, folklorist Jan Harold Brunvald collected over 400 literary and oral version of shrew stories, in Europe alone.〔 This stereotype or cliché was common in early to mid-20th century films, and retains some present-day currency,〔 often shifted somewhat toward the virtues of the stock female character of the heroic virago. ==Usage and and etymology== As a reference to actual women, rather than the stock character, ''shrew'' is considered old-fashioned,〔〔 and the synonym ''scold'' (as a noun) is archaic.〔 More modern, figurative labels include ''battle-axe'' and ''dragon lady'';〔 more literary alternatives (all deriving from mythological names) are ''termagant'', ''harpy'', and ''fury''.〔〔 The term ''shrew'' is still used to describe the stock character in fiction and folk storytelling.〔 None of these terms are usually applied to males in Modern English.〔 ''Shrew'' derives from Middle English ' for 'evil or scolding person', used since at least the 11th century,〔 in turn from Old English ' or ', 'shrew' (animal);〔〔 cognates in other Germanic languages have divergent meanings, including 'fox', 'dwarf', 'old man', and 'devil'.〔 The modern spelling dates to the 14th century.〔 Historically, the animals called shrews were superstitiously feared, falsely believed to have a venomous bite and to behave aggressively and with cruelty,〔 leading to the now-obsolete word ''beshrew'', 'to curse or invoke evil upon'.〔 Beginning in the mid-13th century, following on the belief that the animals could exert a wicked influence on humans exposed to them, the term was applied metaphorically to a person of either sex thought to have a similar disposition, but by the 14th century, it was applied to women alone.〔〔 This also led to a now obsolete verb usage, ''to shrew'' meaning 'to scold'.〔 By the middle 16th century, the opposing extremes of wifely personality traits were contrasted as "shrew" vs. "sheep".〔〔 The earliest known formal definition of ''shrew'' as applied to people is Samuel Johnson's, in the 1755 ''A Dictionary of the English Language'': "peevish, malignant, clamorous, spiteful, vexatious, turbulent woman". He described the use of the word in reference to males as "ancient",〔 but also quoted Shakespeare using it to satirise a man by likening him to the shrewish woman central to his play: "By this reckoning he is more shrew than she."〔 (''Cf.'' modern use toward men of other female-targeted slurs like ''bitch''.) As a synonym for the shrew in literature and theatre, the word ''termagant'' derives from the name Termagant, an invented, mock-Muslim, male deity used in mediaeval mystery plays, characterised as violent and overbearing.〔〔 Termagant features in many period works of the 11th through 15th centuries, from ''The Song of Roland'' to Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales'' (in "The Tale of Sir Thopas").〔 The name was genericised into a term referring to male characters with ranting, bullying personalities. In the 16th century, Shakespeare used the word in this generic, masculine sense in ''Hentry V'', Part I (as an adjective), and in its original proper name sense in ''Hamlet''. Such characters usually wore long gowns that gave them a feminine appearance in an era when female characters were played by men or boys, and were dressed similarly. This lead the gradual shift in meaning,〔 to refer exclusively to an overbearing, turbulent, quarrelsome, even brawling woman,〔 which was a well established usage by the late 17th century. Female characters actually named Termagant appear in works including Thomas Shadwell's play ''The Squire of Alsatia'' (1688),〔 and Arthur Murphy's play ''The Upholsterer'' (1758),〔 while Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) uses the word generically, to refer to the main character's wife. The similar term ''harridan'', widely also considered a synonym of ''shrew'',〔 originated as a late 17th-century slang term for 'aging prostitute' (probably from 16th-century French ''フランス語:haridelle'', 'old horse', in metaphor a 'gaunt, ill-favoured woman').〔〔 It has taken on the meaning of scolding, nagging, bossy, belligerent woman, especially an older one, and is not tied to literary context.〔 Another word with essentially the same meaning, and applying only to women since around 1300, is the noun ''scold'' (later replaced with ''scolder'', as ''scold'' became a verb toward the late 14th century). It dates more gender-neutrally to Middle English, ca. 1150–1200, as ' or ' (unrelated to the 'burn' sense, from Old French), and probably derives from Old Norse ', 'a skald', i.e. poet.〔〔 The skalds, like the bards, were feared for their panegyric satire, and this may explain the connection to verbal abusiveness.〔 Johnson's 18th century definition was: "A clamourous, rude, mean, low, foul-mouthed woman", suggesting a level of vulgarity and a class distinction from the more generalised ''shrew'', but this nuance has been lost.〔 In Johnson's time, the word formed part of a legal term, ''common scold'' which referred to rude and brawling women .〔 To the extent the noun form retains any currency, some dictionaries observe that it can (unusually) be applied to males,〔 a recent re-development. ''Scold'', in its heyday, was not particularly limited to literary or theatrical contexts. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shrew (stock character)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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