scene

英文词源

scene

scene: [16] Greek skēné originally meant ‘tent’ (it was related to skiá ‘shadow’, a descendant of the same Indo-European base that produced English shimmer and shine, and so etymologically denoted ‘something that gives shade’). Such tents or booths were used for presenting plays, and eventually the word skēné came to denote the backdrop against which drama is performed.

It passed into English via Latin scaena. The Italian version of the word, scena (itself borrowed into English in the 19th century), has the derivative scenario, which has been acquired by English on two separate occasions: first as scenery [18] and later as scenario [19].
=> scenario, shimmer, shine

scene (n.)

1530s, "subdivision of an act of a play," also "stage-setting," from Middle French scène (14c.), from Latin scaena, scena "scene, stage of a theater," from Greek skene "wooden stage for actors," also "that which is represented on stage," originally "tent or booth," related to skia "shadow, shade," via notion of "something that gives shade," from PIE root *skai- "to shine, flicker, glimmer" (see shine (v.)).

Meaning "material apparatus of a theatrical stage" is from 1540s. Meaning "place in which the action of a literary work occurs" is attested from 1590s; general (non-literary) sense of "place where anything is done or takes place" is recorded from 1590s. Hence U.S. slang sense of "setting or milieu for a specific group or activity," attested from 1951 in Beat jargon. Meaning "stormy encounter between two or more persons" is attested from 1761. Behind the scenes "having knowledge of affairs not apparent to the public" (1660s) is an image from the theater, "amid actors and stage machinery" (out of sight of the audience). Scene of the crime (1923) first attested in Agatha Christie.