名詞 possum:

1. nocturnal arboreal marsupial having a naked prehensile tail found from southern North America to northern South America
   同義詞：opossum
2. small furry Australian arboreal marsupials having long usually prehensile tails
   同義詞：phalanger, opossum

1. The rabbit played possum under the bushes, hoping the hunter would not see him.
   兔子呆在灌木叢中一動也不動，希望獵人看不見它。
2. He began to suspect that his mother sometimes looked through his pockets while he was asleep, so for several nights he played possum when he heard her coming up the stairs and waited to see what would happen.
   他開始懷疑自己睡著時(shí)母親有時(shí)翻他的口袋，于是有好幾個(gè)晚上他一聽到母親上樓的腳步聲就假裝睡著了，等著瞧瞧會發(fā)生什么事。

pos.sum

n.Chiefly Southern U.S. （名詞）【多用于美國南部】
An opossum.
負(fù)子鼠，飛袋貂

來源：
Short for opossum
opossum的簡寫

<注釋>Since English is a language that stresses some syllables and not others, weakly stressed syllables,especially those preceding strong stresses, are dropped at times.This process, called aphesis when it occurs at the beginning of a word,is more common in regional American dialects than in the more conservative Standard English,which tends to retain in pronunciation anything reflected in spelling.Although many American dialects feature aphesis,it is most famous in the dialects of the South,where it yields pronunciationssuch ascount of for (on) account of, tater for potato, possum for opossum, and skeeter for mosquito.
由于英語是一種強(qiáng)調(diào)某些音節(jié)而不強(qiáng)調(diào)另一些音節(jié)的語言，所以弱音音節(jié)，特別是那些在重音音節(jié)之前的弱音音節(jié)就常常被省掉了。這個(gè)過程，如發(fā)生于一個(gè)字的開頭就叫做詞首非重讀短元音省略。這種現(xiàn)象在美國地方方言中比在更為保守的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)英語中要常見得多，因?yàn)闃?biāo)準(zhǔn)英語趨向于將拼寫中的每一個(gè)字母都在發(fā)音中加以保存。雖然許多美國方言具有詞首非重讀短元音省略的特征，但這一現(xiàn)象在南方的方言中最為顯著，并產(chǎn)生了許多新發(fā)音，如(on) account of 被讀成 count of，potato 被讀成 tater，opossum 被讀成 possum 以及 mosquito 則被讀成 skeeter