TPS News

Correct Best Answer: Replace “comity” with “tragedy.”

“In his epic play about two young lovers, Shakespeare alternates between comedy and tragedy to heighten dramatic tension.”

Comity is marked by friendliness and social harmony. To move from comedy to friendliness, as the errant sentence suggests, is not a stark enough change to create tension in an audience. But having characters move from comedy to tragedy does disrupt an audience’s emotional equilibrium, which is why Shakespeare penned it that way.
Comity有友善、社會和諧的意思。以原句喜劇(comedy)與友善(friendliness)的寫法，實無法產生足夠的閱讀張力以吸引讀者的目光。然而，當改為喜劇(comedy)與悲劇(tragedy)的寫法，則能引發讀者的對比情緒，這也是作者莎士比亞筆觸下的用意。

In the play in question, Shakespeare did not veer into “horror,” as one Fan suggested, though tragedies can be horrible. Other Fans got caught up in the similarity and alliteration of “comedy” and “comity” and simply substituted “c” words for comity, such as commodity and conformity. And one Fan changed two words in the sentence so that the phrase read: “…between comic and tragic…” Unfortunately, to successfully sub the adjectives (comic, tragic) for the nouns (comedy, tragedy) also requires that a writer add a third word, “scenes,” so that the sentence reads, “ …between comic and tragic scenes...”
粉絲的回答中，提出以"horror(可怕)"來替代用字，事實上，題目中莎士比亞並未提到這個面向；當然，tragedy(悲劇)的確極大可能是可怕的。相當多粉絲以意義相近的同義字及押頭韻"c"的"commodity(商品)"與"conformity(順從)"替代"comity"。粉絲中也有置換句中兩字詞性為形容詞"…between comic and tragic…"，然而，欲以形容詞(comic, tragic)表達出完整句意，作者必須再加上名詞“scenes” , 即該句應為"...between comic and tragic scenes"，才算完整。

The winner of this week's prize is Tina Hsu who is the first fan to submit the best correct answer.
在第一時間指出混淆字並且寫出最佳替代字的粉絲，經評估後，這次獲獎的粉絲是Tina Hsu。恭禧Tina!

Thanks for everyone's participation in this week's One Word Away From Confusion Contest. Congratulations to all who wrestled with the sentence and learned something about the value of individual words.
謝謝所有粉絲們參與本周的「你能找出混淆字嗎?」活動，恭禧所有參與這次競賽題目的粉絲們，對於字彙本身的意義與價值有了更深一層瞭解與體會。