Cabin fever is not really a disease. However, people can experience boredom and restlessness if they spend too much time inside their homes. This is especially true during the winter when it is too cold or snowy to do things outside. Often children get cabin fever if they cannot go outside to play. So do their parents. This happens when there is so much snow that schools and even offices and stores are closed.
Some people enjoy spending a lot of time in their homes to make them nice places to live. This is called nesting or cocooning. Birds build nests out of sticks to hold their eggs and baby birds. Some insects build cocoons around themselves for protection while they grow and change. Nests and cocoons provide security for wildlife. So people like the idea of nests and cocoons, too.
● nesting or cocooning(筑巢或作茧)这两个词本来都是形容动物修筑藏身、庇护之处所用的词。鸟类筑巢于枝头,为雏鸟提供一个遮风挡雨的成长地方;虫类作茧自保,让自己不致受到外来侵袭。在过去的二三十年间,这两个词也逐渐被用来形容人们建筑、装饰自己的家,把自己的家打造成儿女的避风港。也因此,儿女长大离家,就自然用leave the nest来形容了。
The terms cocooning and nesting became popular more than twenty years ago. They describe people buying their first homes and filling them with many things. These people then had children.
Now these children are grown and have left the nest. They are in college, or they are married and starting families of their own far away. Now these parents are living alone without children in their empty nest. They have become empty nesters.
● empty nest/empty nester(空巢/空巢者)这个外来词对于现代中国人来说一点儿不陌生。开放的社会环境、人才流动的规律和独生子女政策令现代的中国成了空巢现象的最佳范例。许多孩子离家读书、在外地工作结婚、落地生根,剩下父母在故乡相依为伴,这种现象相当普遍。没有了孩子的家庭成了空巢一个,而放飞了孩子的父母也自然而然地变成空巢者。