握手是在相见、告别、恭贺或致谢时相互表示情谊、致意的一种礼节(ritual)。既然是礼节那肯定有历史、有渊源，可最初的用意是什么呢？历史发展到今天，对于握手这种礼仪是摒还是留却众说纷纭。本文标题GRIP使用甚妙：grip有“紧握；握住”之意，可是lose its grip便是“失去控制”，也就是说这种传统的好坏随着社会的发展也不好言说了！

　　By most accounts, handshakes started as a way to show that neither person was holding a weapon. Desmond Morris, the anthropologist(人类学家), calls the handshake a “tie-sign” because of the bond it creates. Through the centuries, the growing use of the handshake reflected greater equality among individuals, and it was used to seal agreements. The handshake became a friendly greeting, a sign of respect, a bet that new faces would be remembered.

　　Handshakes can be bad for your health. The Massachusetts Medical Society recently started an advertising campaign(运动) that encourages people to wash their hands more often, pointing out in one radio spot that “any friendly handshake can carry many illnesses”.

　　Robert E. Swindle, a retired business professor in Peoria, Arizona, wants to abolish handshaking altogether. After all, now that most people don't carry concealed weapons in their hands, the ritual has lost its usefulness, he said.

　　But if Mr. Swindle got his way, something would clearly be lost in society. Allen Konopacki, who runs a sales training company in Chicago called the Incomm Center, tried an experiment last year to better understand the handshake effect. “A handshake,” Mr. Konopacki said, “creates a higher level of trust, a degree of intimacy, within a matter of seconds.”

　　Some sociologists say the apparent(显然的) drop in the traditional value of a handshake reflects a general decline of loyalty in American society to institutions like marriage and between employers and their workers.

　　But Alan Wolfe, a sociologist at Boston University，disagreed. He said that while the handshake has been devalued by those in the media spotlight(群众注意的中心), the gesture carries just as much weight as it always has among most people because so many face-to-face encounters have been replaced by phones, faxes, and E-mail. “The handshake is really reserved for special moments,” he said.

　　And you never know when such moments might arise. In January, a small group of men were moved to shake the hands of staff members in a bank in central Italy. It was, after all, a special time for everyone involved. The men were about to leave, having just finished robbing the bank.

　　Read this article. Find the underlined words that match these definitions.

　　1. strong connection bond

　　2. hidden ________________

　　3. made something less important ______________________________

　　4. eliminate ________________

　　5. a feeling of closeness ________________

　　6. finalize ________________

　　Key: 2.concealed 3.devalued 4.abolish 5.intimacy 6.seal

　　(文/本报资料； 英语辅导报高一版 04~05学年度第22期；版权归英语辅导报社所有，独家网络合作伙伴新浪教育，未经许可，不得以任何形式进行转载。)