teetotal

ASJ 4月の例会はアイルランド大使館邸で開かれ、講師は Prof. David Burleigh、演題は "James Cousins, an Irish Poet in Japan" でした。次ぎの文はその講義録からの抜粋です。
Prof. Burleigh said he proposed to trace the outline of the poet's remarkable life, with special emphasis on the year he spent in Japan. James Henry Cousins was born in Belfast in 1873, the eldest of four boys in a teetotal Methodist family, who could not afford to give him an education beyond the age of twelve and a half, though he later made up of this by self-education.
"teetotal" は知らない単語です。Methodistを形容しているので、「敬虔な」か何かかなと思いながら辞書を見ます。
・Vocabulary.com: practicing complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages: “I happen to be teetotal”
・Etymology Online: "pledged to total abstinence from intoxicating drink," 1834, possibly formed from total with a reduplication of the initial T- for emphasis (T-totally "totally," though not in an abstinence sense, is recorded in Kentucky dialect from 1832 and is possibly older in Irish-English). The use in temperance jargon was first noted September 1833 in a speech advocating total abstinence (from beer as well as wine and liquor) by Richard "Dicky" Turner, a working-man from Preston, England. Also said to have been introduced in 1827 in a New York temperance society which recorded a T after the signature of those who had pledged total abstinence, but contemporary evidence for this is wanting, and Webster (1847) calls teetotaler "a cant word formed in England."
語源はT-totallyと書かれていますが、お茶ばかり飲んでお酒は一切飲まないと覚えましょう。もちろん私はどちらも飲みます。
六月のASJ例会は発会１４０周年を記念してディナーパーティで、発祥地の横浜で開かれ、スピーカーはドナルド・キーンさんだそうです。ディナーが先だとレクチャーの間にコックリしそうだ。恐らく、ディナーはレクチャーの後でしょう。メンバーはゲストを3人まで連れてきても良いとの事なので盛大な会になりそうです。

True Happiness

日本の蒸し暑い夏にネクタイをして会社に行くのは馬鹿な慣習だと思っていましたが、クールビズとかでノーネクタイがやっと少しずつ普及しつつあるようです。3年前から勤めている今の会社は以前勤めていた普通の日本の会社とは社風が色々な面で異なっています。その一つがネクタイをしなくて良いことです。特殊な電子機器を輸入販売している会社ですが、社長も社員も誰もネクタイをしません。また月に一二度ですが、ランチ時にビールを飲む事があります。昼食後は皆でNHK TVの連続ドラマを見るのも変わっていると思います。私は昼食休みと通勤電車に乗っている30分間が英語の本を読む唯一の時間です。
How may a man measure his own happiness? He must first go to his cupboard and take out all his neckties. Then he must lay them out on the ground, end to end. Then he must measure the length of this line of neckties, and that measurement, that distance, is exactly the same as his distance from true happiness.
Michael Leunig, poet and artist
(from Reader's Digest April 2012)

stultify

熱力学の入門書FOUR LAWS by Peter Atkinsを読んでいます。Conversion of Energyの章に覚えたい単語が出て来ました。
Heat is the transfer of energy by virtue of a temperature difference. Heat is the name of a process, not the name of an entity.
Everyday discourse would be stultified if we were to insist on the precise use of the word heat, for it is enormously convenient to speak of heat flowing from here to there, and to speak of heating an object.
普段使う "heat" も学問では厳密な意味でのみ使用するのですね。　今日取り上げる単語は "stultify" です。
・Collins English Dictionary: 1.to make useless, futile, or ineffectual, esp by routine 2.to cause to appear absurd or inconsistent: One vital difference was enough to stultify the administration of the Irish Poor Law.
Vocabulary.comに丁寧な説明があるので引用します。
When something stultifies you, it drains you of your energy, enthusiasm, or pleasure. A well-acted Shakespeare play can be a thrill. A poorly-acted one can stultify like nothing else.
The verb stultify is sometimes used in place of "bore" or "exhaust," but only if something is so boring or exhausting that it makes you feel as though you might just die. It's a very negative word. If you're in a relationship that's stultifying, you should find a way out. Relationships should make you feel more alive, not less. Constant construction noise can have a stultifying effect, leaving a person almost unable to function.

sinewy

Breakfast at Tiffany'sを読み終え、今度は又ノンフィクションを読むことにしました。
FOUR LAWS by Peter Atkinsは熱力学の法則についての本です。序文に早速覚えたい単語がありました。
I hesitated to include the word 'thermodynamics' in the title of this little introduction to this boundlessly important and fascinating aspect of nature, hoping that you would read at least this far, for the word does not suggest a light read. And, indeed, I cannot pretend that it will be a light read. When in due course, however, you emerge from the other end of this slim volume, with your brain more sinewy and exercised.
"sinewy" は発音もチェックする必要がある単語です。
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: full of sinews: as a: tough, stringy (sinewy meat) b: strong (sinewy arms): The lion has a sinewy body.
そうか、"sinew" が元の言葉ですか。それなら発音も分かります。
いつも複数の辞書を見ることにしているので今日ももう一つ辞書を見ます。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: with strong muscles and little fat: The fighter had a strong, sinewy body.

rub off on

May 5のThe Japan Times Onlineに "English fluency and alligator pits" と題された記事があり、英語の流暢さと "alligator pits" にどんな関係があるのだろうと気になり記事を読みました。
記事は日本の大学で英語を教えていたというAMY CHAVEZさんで、英語を学んだ学生がこんな苦情を吐いていると書いています。
You promised me a bright future if I learned English! You said learning English would help my employability and that I'd gain an international perspective! You and your haughty institution lured me to your school with glossy brochures showing Japanese students sharing conversations with beautiful blue-eyed foreigners, suggesting that their beauty and worldliness would rub off on me, or that at least I'd get a date with one of them.
そして、記事の中に "alligator" が使われている文が次ぎの様に三箇所ありました。
*The fact that they are bilingual, and learned both languages as native languages, allows them to sail across the cultural alligator pit.
*They understand that the cultural is just as important as the language when it comes to jumping over alligator pits.
*Going a step further, we should also be grooming students in English ethics, economics, immigration, and of course, alligator wrestling.
どうも "alligator pits/wrestling" は現実の世界を比喩的に表しているようです。
この記事で覚えたいと思った表現は最初に引用した文中の "rub off on" です。　辞書で意味を確認します。
・Wiktionary: (idiomatic) To adapt to a way of behaving after constant exposure to it: The hippie way of life seems to have rubbed off on him, as he's a flower power aficionado
・Dictionary.com: to become transferred or communicated to by example or association: Some of his good luck must have rubbed off on me.
・American Heritage Dictionary: Become transferred to another, influence through close contact, as in We hoped some of their good manners would rub off on our children . This idiom alludes to transferring something like paint to another substance by rubbing against it.
こすって塗り付けるイメージを思い浮かべればこのイデオムは覚えられそうです。　
この記事を読みたい方は次ぎの場所にあります。　
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120505cz.html
では、
See you later, alligator.

the mean reds

Breakfast at Tiffany'sを読み終えたのですが、辞書で調べても意味がピンとこない表現があり困っています。
それは "the mean reds" で少なくとも次ぎの三箇所で使われていました。
＊I'm still stealing turkey eggs and running through a brier patch. Only now I call it having the mean reds.
＊I hadn't seen Holly, not really, since our drunken Sunday at Joe Bell's bar. The intervening weeks had given me my own case of the mean reds First off, I'd been fired from my job: deservedly, and for an amusing misdemeanour too complicated to recount here.
＊He's friendly, he can laugh me out of the mean reds, only I don't have them much any more, except sometimes, ...
Breakfast at Tiffany'sの翻訳本があるのに気がつき、図書館で村上春樹訳を借りて調べて見ると、上の "the mean reds" はそれぞれ次ぎの様に翻訳されていました。
＊今ではそれを『嫌ったらしいアカ』って呼んでいるだけ
＊それから今までの数週間は、ホリー流に言えば「いやったらしいアカ」続きだった
＊私が例のアカに取りつかれていても
これでは日本語にはなっていても意味はやはりさっぱり分かりません。 Hollyの口癖的な表現で、また当時は結構使われていた表現なのかなと思いGoogleで色々調べて見ました。
最初に見つけたのは次ぎのBreakfast at Tiffany'sの台詞です。
Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul Varjak: Sure.
Holly Golightly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away.
あれ？　小説にはこんな場面はなかったし、Paul Varjakもいなかったはず。よく調べると、上の台詞は映画のBreakfast at Tiffany'sの台本の様で、するとPaulは小説の語り手で、彼もHollyの言う "the mean reds" の解釈に確信がなかった様子です。　上の場面で小説を映画にした人は "the mean reds" を上の様に解釈した事が分かりました。この場面があれば映画を見ている人は "the mean reds" の意味が分かります。　少なくとも村上春樹訳ではこの解釈には至りません。 しかも "the mean reds" の気分になった時はタクシーに乗ってティファニーに行くとあり、"the mean reds" はBreakfast at Tiffany's（少なくとも映画の）でキーとなる表現の一つだった様です。
In reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, I felt the mean reds whenever I encountered the expression, "the mean reds."
But finally I found in Breakfast at Tiffany's that Holly uses the phrase "the mean reds" to describe her generalised anxiety.
いやー、すっきりした。

produce

Breakfast at Tiffany's は読み終わりました。良く分からない表現が一つ残っているのですが、それについてはもう少し調べてからとりあげます。Breakfast at Tiffany'sは中編小説でしたが、同じ本にその他に短編が三点ありましたがその中のHOUSE OF FLOWERSとA DIAMOND GUITARに出てきた基本単語 " produce " を取り上げます。
HOUSE OF FLOWERS:
Rolling her eyes, Baby produced a fan and jerked it in front of her face.
A DIAMOND GUITAR:
He produced a comb and pulled it sulkily through his hair.
"produce" には生産すると言う意味があるのは誰でも知っていますが、上の引用文で扇子や櫛が作られたのではないのは明らかです。文脈からしてどちらも「取り出した」と言う様な意味だと思いますが念のために辞書で確認します。
・American Heritage Dictionary: To bring forth; exhibit: reached into a pocket and produced a packet of matches
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to bring something out from somewhere and show it: He produced a letter from his desk which he asked me to read.; One of the men suddenly produced a knife from his pocket.
名詞の"produce" に "fruit, vegetables, and other things that farmers grow" の意味がある事を知ったのはブログを始める前、つまり5年以上前ですが、その時にも意外に感じたのですが、今回の用法も意外です。 もっとも意味は全て共通点があるので一度知れば覚えるのも難しくありません。

planning a powder/take a powder

Breakfast at Tiffany'sのHollyは服役中の年老いたギャングの幹部に毎週面会に行っていましたが、その事がそのギャングの組織への指令を伝える役割を果たしていたとして警察に捕まっています。FredはHollyの住んでいた部屋に行くとそこには別の男がいました。
He had a pretty face, lacquered hair, he resembled Jose; moreover, the suit cace he'd been packing contained the wardrobe Jose kept at Holly's the shoes and suits she fussed over, was always carting to menders and cleaners. And I said, certain it was so: 'Did Mr. Ybarra-Jaegar send you?'
'I am the cousin,' he said with a wary grin and just penetable accent.
'Where is Jose?'
He repeated the question, as though translating it into another language. 'Ah, where she is! She is waiting ,' he said and, seeming to dismiss me, resumed his valet activities.
So: the diplomat was planning a powder.
JoseはHollyと結婚する事になっていた外交官です。 "planning a powder" とは何でしょう。 慣用句かそれとも "powder" に私の知らない意味があるのでしょう。
"plan a powder" と言う慣用句は見あたりませんでした。　そこで "powder" を辞書で良く見ると "take a powder" と言う慣用句があり、上記引用文での状況にあてはまります。 "take a powder" の意味は辞書に次ぎの説明があります。
・Wiktionary: (idiomatic, US, colloquial) To leave in a hurry; run away; scram; depart without taking leave or notifying anyone, often with a connotation of avoiding something unpleasant or shirking responsibility.: "Mr. Tilton said you told him you would take a powder." "Take a powder?" said Henry. "I once heard a man from Nevada tell me he would take a powder, meaning he was leaving town."
・American Heritage Dictionary: To make a quick departure: “When he saw the police coming, the thief decided to take a powder.”
この "take a powder" の意味を知っていれば "plan a powder" はその変形だと気が付きますね。

Beware of dog

私の住んでいるマンションでは犬を飼うことは禁止されていますが、それにも関わらず犬を飼っている人は結構います。なるべく目立たないようにと考えてでしょうか、猫の様に小さい犬を飼っている人が多い様です。　今週のジョークはそんな犬についてです。
Upon entering the little country store, the stranger noticed a sign saying "DANGER! BEWARE OF DOG!" posted on the glass door.
Inside he noticed a harmless old hound dog asleep on the floor besides the cash register.
He asked the store manager, "Is THAT the dog folks are supposed to beware of?"
"Yep, that's him," he replied.
The stranger couldn't help but be amused. "That certainly doesn't look like a dangerous dog to me. Why in the world would you post that sign?"
"Because," the owner replied, "before I posted that sign, people kept tripping over him."

shingle

"shingle" は以前（10/29/2010）取り上げた単語ですが、Breakfast at Tiffany'sにも次ぎの場面にも出て来ました。
I rang California again; the circuits were busy, stayed busy, and by the time O.J. Berman was on the line I'd emptied so many martinis he had to tell me why I was phoning him: 'About the kid, is it? I know already. I spoke already to Iggy Fitelstein. Iggy's the best shingle in New York.
ここの "shingle" はその時覚えた意味とは違います。状況から判断すると弁護士と推測はできますがどうでしょうか。
・American Heritage Dictionary: Informal A small signboard, as one indicating a professional office: After passing the bar exam, she hung out her shingle.
・Collins English Dictionary: US Canadian a small signboard or nameplate fixed outside the office of a doctor, lawyer, etc
"shingle" は医者や弁護士のオフィスの看板の意味があるのですね。看板なら前に覚えた "shingle" の意味と重なります。