簡単そうに見える単語でも意味が分からないのが英語です。おそらくこんな状態は一生続きそうです。今日採り上げる単語もRing by Koji Suzukiの小説からです。
Every publisher in the country had been deluged with accounts and photographs of supernatural experiences, every one of them a hoax. Oguri had wondered what the world was coming to. He had figured that he had a pretty good handle on the way the world worked, but he just couldn't think of a convincing explanation for that kind of thing. It was utterly preposterous, the number of "contributors" that had crawled out of the woodwork.
"woodwork" は木工製品の意味があると思えますが、ここではそれでは通じません。"woodwork" を辞書で見てもそのような意味しか見あたりませんでしたが、"come/crawl out of the woodwork" の項で次ぎの説明がありました。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to appear after having been hidden or not active for a long time: After you've been in a relationship for a while all sorts of little secrets start to come out of the woodwork.
・Wiktionary:(idiomatic) to appear or emerge as though out of nowhere, frequently in large numbers or quantity: He won the lottery last year and he has had old "friends" and distant relatives coming out of the woodwork ever since.
・Macmillan Dictionary: to suddenly appear after a long time, especially for unpleasant reasons: After he had won the lottery, several old friends came crawling out of the woodwork.
なるほど、白蟻が木材からぞろぞろ出てくる感じでしょうか。
Every publisher in the country had been deluged with accounts and photographs of supernatural experiences, every one of them a hoax. Oguri had wondered what the world was coming to. He had figured that he had a pretty good handle on the way the world worked, but he just couldn't think of a convincing explanation for that kind of thing. It was utterly preposterous, the number of "contributors" that had crawled out of the woodwork.
"woodwork" は木工製品の意味があると思えますが、ここではそれでは通じません。"woodwork" を辞書で見てもそのような意味しか見あたりませんでしたが、"come/crawl out of the woodwork" の項で次ぎの説明がありました。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to appear after having been hidden or not active for a long time: After you've been in a relationship for a while all sorts of little secrets start to come out of the woodwork.
・Wiktionary:(idiomatic) to appear or emerge as though out of nowhere, frequently in large numbers or quantity: He won the lottery last year and he has had old "friends" and distant relatives coming out of the woodwork ever since.
・Macmillan Dictionary: to suddenly appear after a long time, especially for unpleasant reasons: After he had won the lottery, several old friends came crawling out of the woodwork.
なるほど、白蟻が木材からぞろぞろ出てくる感じでしょうか。
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