Tom One or Tom Two?

Reader's Digest 6月号の記事 'LIFE in the United State' から引用します。
Although I'd been dating a woman for several months, I guess I din't know her as well as I thought. One day I called, and her ten-year-old son answered.
"Hi," I said. "It's Tom. Can I speak with your mam?"
He responded, "Are you Tom One or Tom Two?"

make money off

The Japan Times July 4, 2019のオピニオンコラムに 'Japan is cool but has no clue about selling itself' と題された記事がありました。サブタイトルは　'The country is still struggling to make money off of its worldwide cultural cachet' と書かれており、この "make money off" が金儲けを意味していることは分かりますが、"off" は離れる意味で使われることが多いので、"make money off" だとお金が離れて行く様な気もします。"off" の項を辞書で見ると次の説明がありました。

・Macmillan Dictionary: spoken used for saying which person or thing something is taken from: Let’s see if we can get some money off my Dad.; I got your phone number off the members’ list.
・Collins Dictionary:

・[spoken] If you get something off someone, you obtain it from them.: I don't really get a lot of information, and if I do I get it off Mark.; I can't find the boys' shampoo. I can't think where I put it when I took it off them.
・[Informal] from: I bought it off a friend
Oxfordが提供している 'LEXICO' というサイトに "off of" について次の説明が載っていました。
Usage: Off of is often used in place of the preposition off in contexts such as she picked it up off of the floor (compared with she picked it up off the floor). Although off of is recorded from the 16th century (it was used by Shakespeare) and is logically parallel to the standard out of, it is regarded as incorrect in standard modern English
"out of" と同じと思えば "off/off of" が from として使われても違和感はありません。

funk

前回と同様にReader's Digest 5月号の記事 'MY COMA MIRACLE' からの引用です。
"Am I ever going to walk normally again?" I asked.
"We don't know, but we're going to work on it," the therapist said.
They were so damn honest.
What pulled me our of any funk was remembering a speech I'd heard by Nobel Prize laureate Jody Williams. In it, she said, "Emotion without action is irrelevant."
"funky jazz" は聞いたことがありますが、"funk" の意味は何でしょう？

・Oxford English Dictionary:

British informal A state of great fear or panic.: Are you in a blue funk about running out of things to say?:
North American informal A state of depression.: I sat absorbed in my own blue funk.

・Collins Dictionary: If someone is in a funk, they are frightened, especially because they are in a situation they cannot control.: He was in a blue funk! Worse than me!

・Cambridge English Dictionary: the state of being unhappy and without hope: The team’s been in a funk, losing three of the last four games.
辞書の例にもある様に "blue funk" として使われることも多いようです。

flatline

Reader's Digest 5月号の記事 'MY COMA MIRACLE' からの引用です。
The ride to the hospital took about 20 minutes. The double doors of the ambulance opened to the sunlight, and from there it was straight to the emergency room, where for the next eight hours, I kept dying. I would flatline, someone would do CPR, and they'd pull me back from the abyss.
"flatline" の意味を調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: (of a person) die: In the late 1970's in a Perth hospital I collapsed into a coma and then flatlined.
ORIGIN: with reference to the continuous straight line displayed on a heart monitor, indicating death
・Collins Dictionary: to die or be so near death that the display of one's vital signs on medical monitoring equipment shows a flat line rather than peaks and troughs
語源を知ると直ぐに覚えられる単語ですね。

Messy Runs in the Family

Reader's Digest 5月号の特集記事 'Your Mom Said What?' からもう一つの "mamapropisms" を紹介します。
Sometimes my mother would surprise us by visiting our house on Sundays after Mass. I was a busy mom with my own business and six children still at home. Housework was not at the top of my to-do list. One Sunday, my adult son, Dan, was also visiting. When Mom remarked that she hadn't yet seen his apartment, he told her to let him know when she would like to see it so he could clean.
"I'd be embarrassed to have you just drop by," Dan said. "It can be a real mess."
"Worse than this?" she blurted.

eclipse

The Japan Times July 2, 2019の気象に関する記事の抜粋です。
It said parts of Kyushu could receive 80 millimeters or more of rain per hour through Thursday, and the precipitation through Friday could eclipse that seen in western Japan last July, when floods and mudslides left more than 200 people dead.
名詞では日食・月食を意味する "eclipse" から欠ける・減るを連想したのですが、前年７月の降雨量を "eclipse" するという事は、上回るを連想した方が良いのですね。
辞書を見ます。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to become greater in amount or level than something else: Their stock is up 50% so far this year, as their profit growth is expected to eclipse that of larger companies.
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: surpass: her score eclipsed the old record
・Collins Dictionary: to overshadow or surpass in importance, power, etc

feel one's oats

AsimovのI, ROBOTを読んでいます。

Powell nodded abstractedly. "Cutie's down in the engine room. I'll flash the signal and he can take care of it. Look, Mike, what do you think of these figures?"
The other cocked an eye at them and whistled. "Boy, that's what I call gamma-ray intensity. Old Sol is feeling his oats, all right."
"feeling his oats" は明らかに慣用句ですね。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Feel lively and energetic.: she's in the pink and feeling her oats

・Wiktionary: To feel energetic or frisky; to behave in a vigorous or bold manner.: Etymology An allusion to the behavior of a horse that has been well fed on oats.

車の無い時代に生まれた表現ですね。

molasses-slow

AsimovのI, ROBOTを読んでいます。

"Hey," he shouted,"can you throw?"
"Master?"
"Never mind." Powell damned the robot's molasses-slow brain. He scrabbled up a jaggered brick-size rock. "Take this," he said, "and hit the patch of bluish crystals just across the crooked fissure. You see it?"
糖蜜は日本語では余り聞かない単語ですが、英語では "molasses" は結構出て来る単語なので知っています。しかし、"molasses-slow" とは何でしょう？ このままの形では辞書の項目にありませんでしたが、"slow as molasses"、"slow as molasses in January" という表現があることが分かりました。
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: very slow or slowly: I used to be a fast runner, but now I'm slow as molasses.
・Farlex Dictionary of Idioms: slow as molasses in January: Exceptionally slow or sluggish; not fast at all. (The addition of "January," which is among the coldest months in the Northern Hemisphere, serves to intensify the meaning, as molasses is especially viscous in the cold.): This old laptop my dad gave me takes forever booting up, and then it's as slow as molasses in January the whole time I use it!

最近のコンピュータやロボットの進歩はアシモフの想像を超える部分が多く、"robot's molasses-slow brain" は一寸あっていない気もしますが、最近のＰＣでも立ち上げには結構時間がかかるので、この表現もやはり適切なのかな。

tour de force

AsimovのI, ROBOTを読み始めました。

The Talking Robot was a tour de force, a thoroughly impractical device, possessing publicity value only. Once an hour, an escoreted group stood before it and asked questions of the robot engineer in charge in careful wispers. Those the engineer decided were suitable for the robot's circuits were transimitted to the Talking Robot.
"tour de force" は外来語ですね。英英辞典にも載っているはずです。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A performance or achievement that has been accomplished or managed with great skill.: his novel is a tour de force

・Collins Dictionary: If you call something such as a performance, speech, or production a tour de force, you are emphasizing that it is extremely good or extremely well done or made.: Stevenson's deeply felt performance is a tour-de-force.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: an achievement or performance that shows great skill and attracts admiration: a technical/musical/political tour de force

My, How You've Changed!

Reader's Digest 5月号の特集記事 'Your Mom Said What?' から"mamapropisms" の例を紹介します。
　　
One day, my mother ran into a woman who said they had gone to high school together. Mom insisted she didn't remember her. So the woman came to our house with her yearbook. She pointed out her photo and then my mother's.
"Well, of course I didn't recognize you!" Mom said. "You were pretty back then!"