Indeed, George Washington wrote in his diary in 1785, some kind of fly, or bug, had begun to eat the leaves before I left home. But the father of America was not the father of bug. When Washington wrote that, Englishmen hade been referring to insects as bugs for more than a century, and Americans had already created lightning-bug(萤火虫). But the English were soon to stop using the bugs in their language, leaving it to the Americans to call a bug a bug in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The American bug could also be a person, referring to someone who was crazy about a particular activity. Although fan became the usual term, sports fans used to be called racing bugs, baseball bugs, and the like.
Or the bug could be a small machine or object, for example, a bug-shaped car. The bug could also be a burglar alarm, from which es the expression to bug, that is, to install (安装) an alarm. Now it means a small piece of equipment that people use for listening secretly to others' conversation. Since the 1840s, to bug has long meant to cheat, and since the 1940s it has been annoying.
We also know the bug as a flaw in a puter program or other design. That meaning dates back to the time of Thomas Edison. In 1878 he explained bugs as little problems and difficulties that required months of study and labor to overe in developing a successful product. In 1889 it was recorded that Edison had been up the two previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his invented record player.
【小题1】We learn from Paragraph 1 that .A．Americans had difficulty in learning to use the word bugB．George Washington was the first person to call an insect a bugC．the word bug was still popularly used in English in the nineteenth centuryD．both Englishman and Americans used the word bug in the eighteenth century【小题2】What does the word flaw in the last paragraph probably mean?A．Fault.B．Finding.C．Origin.D．Explanation.【小题3】The passage is mainly concerned with .A．the misunderstanding of the word bugB．the development of the word bugC．the public views of the word bugD．the special characteristics of the word bugD
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(答案→)D
解析：
试题分析 本文是说明方，介绍的是bug 一词的演变过程。
【小题1】D细节题。第一段第一句话中提到乔治华盛顿在1785年用到这个词汇，而第一段最后一句话，说，英国很快就不用这个词，美国却在19和20世纪继续使用。推断出18世纪英国还在用，故选 D 项是正确的。
【小题2】A 细节题。最后一段In 1878 he explained bugs as little problems and difficulties故这个单词用来说明电脑出现故障，故选 A项。
【小题3】B 主旨大意。本文主要是讲bug 一词的演变过程，故选 B项。
考查 文化类阅读。