Shirley MacLaineの "<B>OUT ON A LIMB</B>" を読んでいます。<BR>
I thought of many moments in my life when I knew something was going to happen, and it did. When I knew someone was in trouble, and they were. When I knew someone was trying to reach me, and they did. I had often had such flashes about people I knew well. I would, for example, know that a close friend had just checked into the International Hotel in Seoul, Korea. I would call on a lark and he'd be there; wondering himself how I knew he was there. Those flashes happened to me often. And if common or <B>garden stories</B> are to be believed, these were experiences many, many people had had, and almost all had heard about.<BR>
"<B>garden stories</B>" の "<B>garden</B>" の意味は、その前に "common or" とあるので、 "common" と同じ意味であることが分かりますが、辞書で確認します。<BR>
"<B>garden</B>" で辞書を引いてもこの意味の説明は見当たりませんでしたが、"<B>common or garden</B>" あるいは "<B>garden variety</B>" と言う慣用句が辞書に載っています。<BR>
・Oxford English Dictionary: British informal Of the usual or ordinary type: a yak is your basic <B>common or garden</B> cow, only bigger, hairier, and wilder<BR>
・Cambridge English Dictionary: very common or ordinary: It's a <B>common or garden</B> washing machine, but it works perfectly well.<BR>
・Wiktionary: (UK) ordinary, standard. It's just a <B>common-or-garden</B> fridge but it works fine.<BR>
余談になりますが、昨日休日で家にいると警視庁の特命捜査の刑事が二人訪ねて来ました。平成１９年１月１１日に車の中で死体が隣の町で発見された事件の捜査で話を聴きたいとの事。<BR>
ハー？ それで何で今頃私の所にと不思議に思いましたが、被害者は前日に私が住んでいるマンションに隣接している大手スーパーの駐車場に車を留めていたことと、被害者の後を付けていたかも知れないという人物の防犯カメラに写っている人物達に見覚えのある者がいないか等々の内容の話でした。その事件の事をニュースで聞いた覚えもないし、８年も前のことは何も覚えている様なことはなく、見せてもらった写真も４ｘ５ｃｍ程の大きさでピントが会ってないものが多く、ただ一人だけ、３０年程昔の私の若い頃に似ていなくもないと言う写真がありました。
<BR>ＤＮＡ鑑定の為と言うことで、口腔内細胞の採取に協力してくれとのことで、喜んで協力しました。お蔭で中々経験できることでは無いことを経験しました。このマンションの全家庭を回っているとの事で、今日は不在だった家内と、今は住んでいませんが、当時は同居していた子供達にも順番に訪ねるとの事で、本当にご苦労様な話です。<BR>
刑事が帰った後に調べるとその年の１月８日から１７日は、私は海外旅行で日本には居ませんでした。アリバイ成立です。<BR>
5/26/2015に "out on a limb" を取り上げたら、ブログの読者から同名のタイトルの書があることを教えてもらったので読むことにしました。
私は映画には疎いので知りませんでしたが、著者はアカデミー主演女優賞をもらったこともあるShirley MacLaineで現在は81才。 "OUT ON A LIMB" は著者が４９才の時、１９８３年に発行されています。
最初に取り上げる表現は "live-wired" で次の様に使われています。
I loved to sit behind the wheel in a California car, mosey along the wide open highways, and think. I loved to think in California. New York was so live-wired there was time only to ace on instinct and for survival, which I found creative and exciting, but in California I could reflect.
以前 "wired/hardwired"(12/20/2010) を取り上げましたが、 "live-wired" の意味は何でしょうか？
・Oxford English Dictionary: An energetic and unpredictable person: Thomas was a real live wire, always on the go and cared about everybody, especially his brothers
・The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary: A highly alert or energetic person. For example, Sally's a real live wire; she brightens up any gathering. This metaphoric term transfers a wire carrying electric current to a lively individual.
なるほど、普通は人に対して使うのですね。辞書では名詞の "live wire" の項しかありませんが、形容詞だと "live-wired" になります。
I was showing off my drawing skills to my four-year-old one day. I would sketch different things and then ask him to recognise them. My boy was doing really well until I drew an angry face and he shouted, "It's Mummy!" My wife was not amused.
（リーダーズダイジェストより）
タイトルの "SPITTING IMAGE" （spit imageとも言う）は以前（4/27/2012">）に取り上げた「瓜二つ」と「唾をかける」の洒落になっていますね。
Raymond ChandlerのFinger Manからの抜粋です。
She wore a high-cut black evening gown. She had fine white shoulders, was something less than beautiful and more than pretty. She was leaning on the edge of the table, in front of the wheel. Her long eyelashes were twitching. There was a big pile of money and chips in front of her.
以前(2010/10/11)乾杯の意味がある "down the hatch" を取り上げましたが、Reader's Digest 5月号の記事にタイトルが“Batten Down the Hatches”となっていて、インタネットを使う上で個人情報の流出を防ぐ方法の内容が書かれていました。
I started looking into other privacy-friendly technologies. One is the Tor browser, which obscures your IP (Internet protocol) address.
…
Or there’s duckduckgo.com, an alternative to Google’s search engine that doesn’t track where you’ve been.
タイトルの "Batten Down the Hatches" は乾杯とは全く無関係ですね。辞書を引きます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Prepare for a difficulty or crisis.: If you do it anyway, batten down the hatches and prepare for retaliation.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to prepare for a difficult situation: When you're coming down with flu all you can do is batten down the hatches and wait for it to pass.
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: Fig. to prepare for difficult times. (From a nautical expression meaning, literally, to seal the hatches against the arrival of a storm. The word order is fixed.) Here comes that contentious Mrs. Jones. Batten down the hatches! Batten down the hatches, Congress is in session again.
なるほど、納得ですが、今度は何故 "down the hatch" が乾杯の意味なのか気になり調べます。
・The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary: Drink up, as in “Down the hatch,”said Bill, as they raised their glasses. This phrase, often used as a toast, employs hatch in the sense of “a trap door found on ships. ” [; c. 1930 ]
・wiseGEEK: In days when ships were a more popular method of transport for people and freight, this phrase literally referred to the part of the ship where cargo was stored for the voyage. It is likely that this caused people to think of eating and drinking since the ship was figuratively eating the cargo. Sailors were also known to drink and give rowdy toasts, so it's likely that "down the hatch" originated in that setting.
これも納得です。
猫が主人公のＴＶ番組やらニュースを最近よくみかけます。それだけ世の中には猫好きが多いということでしょう。私は子供の頃に飼っていたカナリヤ、文鳥、ジュウシマツなどの小鳥を次々と猫にやられた記憶が残っているので猫は好きになれませんが。The Japan Times Online June 8にも猫の記事がありました。
Number one: a tabby named Tournesol
Tournesol is a young, gorgeous tabby that wants to schmooze his way into your world.
...
He will purr, knead and give first-rate head bumps to get his point across. He wants to be best of pals. He wants to be by your side, no matter how you like it.
...
Tokyo ARK is an NPO founded by Briton Elizabeth Oliver. It is dedicated to rescuing and rehoming abandoned animals.
"tabby" は猫の種類の様ですが、どんな猫でしょう。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A cat whose fur is mottled or streaked with dark stripes.
・Vocabulary.com: A tabby is a house cat with stripes on its fur, often in browns and grays. There are different breeds of tabby cats. Occasionally one will dangle off a branch under a caption that says, “Hang in there.”
Tabby can refer to domesticated cats, but it's also an adjective describing the stripy pattern itself. Tabby cats, with their swirling tabby patches, might also have a marking in the shape of an M on their foreheads. Maine coon cats are one example of a tabby breed. In the 1600's, tabby was a kind of striped silk fabric, and the word comes from the Arabic 'Attabiy, a Baghdad neighborhood where the cloth was traditionally
縞模様あるいは斑模様の飼い猫ならなんでも "tabby" と呼べるようです。
Q: Released in 1995, what is the title of the first-ever completely computer-generated feature-length film?
映画はほとんど見ないので質問の答えは全く見当がつきませんが、私の関心は "feature-length" の表現です。映画の長さについての形容でしょうが、どの程度の映画なのでしょうか？
・Oxford English Dictionary: Of the length of a typical feature film or program: a feature-length documentary: Then there is a feature-length documentary on Garland called Judy Garland: By Myself.
・Dictionary.com: long enough to be made a feature; of full length: a feature-length story; a feature-length film.
これだと "feature film" も確認した方が良さそうです。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A full-length film intended as the main item in a movie theater program.: The film took nearly five years to move from the first pages of a script to a full-length feature film.
これなら辞書よりも百科事典の方が詳しいはずと、Wikipediaを見ます。
・Wikipedia: A feature film is a film (also called a movie or motion picture) with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole film to fill a program. The notion of how long this should be has varied according to time and place. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Film Institute, and British Film Institute, a feature film runs for 40 minutes or longer, while the Screen Actors Guild states that it is 80 minutes or longer.
Reader's Digest 5月号にHAPPINESSと題された記事があり、その副題が "Is It All It’s Cracked Up to Be?" となっているのですが、その意味がよく分かりません。
辞書を見ると "cracked up to be" と言う慣用句があることが分かりました。
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: cracked up to be something and cracked up to be; cracked up as something: alleged or understood to be something. She was cracked up to be a pretty good player. She was cracked up as a pretty good golfer. (Used with the negative.) He is not the problem solving CEO that he was cracked up to be.
・Wiktionary: all it's cracked up to be (usually negative, typically related to a negative modifier): (idiomatic) As good as claims or reputation would suggest.: This expensive software is not all it's cracked up to be. It still has a lot of problems.
・The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms: cracked up to be. Reputed to be. This expression is always used in a negative way, as in I don't think this book is all it's cracked up to be. It relies on the now obsolete use of to crack up to mean "to praise extravagantly." It appeared in The Kentuckian: "He is not the thing he is cracked up for" (May 28, 1829). [Early 1800s]
語源についてはThe Word Detectiveにさらに詳しい説明がありましたが、全文は長いので最後の個所だけを以下に抜粋します。
Related to these "speaking" senses of "to crack" was, beginning in the 19th century, the form "to crack up," meaning "to praise," as one might "crack up," or promote, a friend's business. Today this form is only heard in the negative passive form "not what (or "all") it's cracked up to be," meaning "not as good as reputed or advertised."
それでHAPPINESSの記事の内容は？ 簡単には説明できないのですが、記事中次の二つの文から想像して下さい。
・Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study.
・It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
Reader's Digest 5月号の記事 How to Defuse Angerからの抜粋です。
CHANGE THE TEMPO
When you feel yourself getting riled, turn to your favourite music and tune out the aggro.
この "aggro" は知らない単語なので辞書を引きます。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: trouble or difficulty: Why are you being so uncooperative? I don't need this aggro.
・Vocabulary.com: (informal British usage) aggravation or aggression: I skipped it because it was too much aggro.
Origin: 1960s: abbreviation of aggravation, or of aggression.
語源の "aggravation" or "aggression" を連想できれば覚えられますね。
A real answer from an exam paper:
Q: Where was the American Declaration of Independence signed?
A: At the bottom.
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