Artist's Rendition

Reader's Digest Nov., 2015に出ていた気に入った記事です。
I assigned my third grade class the task of drawing one of Christopher Columbus's three ships. I had no sooner sat down when a boy came up with his paper, which had a lone dot in the middle.
"What's that?" I asked.
He replied, "That's Coumbus, way out to sea."
明日の午前中は私にとって今シーズン最後のラン(10km浦安)を走ります。そして午後はコンサートに行くので明日のブログは休みます。

burdock

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordonも終わりに近づきました。山中をさまよっていたTrishaはやっと人里に近づいて来たようでしたが、何と大きな熊に遭遇してしまいました。
Grown men would have turned and run from the Ursus americanus which lumbered out of last screen of bushes--it was a fully grown North American black bear, perhaps four hundred pounds...
There were leaves and burdocks caught in its shiny fur, and held in one hand--yes, it had a hand, the clawed rudiment of one, at least-was a branch from which most of the bark had been stripped.
"burdock" は日本特有の植物として通訳ガイドの受験勉強で覚えましたが、戦時中に英国人捕虜の食事にゴボウを使ったところ、日本人は捕虜に雑草を食べさせるなどの、国際法に違反する捕虜虐待をしているとされた逸話を聞いたこともあるので、英米人には馴染みのない野菜なので、米国の子供向の話に出てくるなどとは思いもよりませんでした。英米人はゴボウを食べないけれども名称を知っている人はいる様です。
・Collins Dictionary: a coarse weedy Eurasian plant of the genus Arctium, having large heart-shaped leaves, tiny purple flowers surrounded by hooked bristles, and burlike fruits: family Asteraceae: He gathered a handful of burdock leaves and a bundle of deadfall branches, shaving some of the latter into paper-thin kindling.
・Random House Unabridged Dictionary: a composite plant of the genus Arctium, esp. A. lappa, a coarse, broad-leaved weed bearing prickly heads of burs that stick to the clothing.
・Vocabulary.com: any of several erect biennial herbs of temperate Eurasia having stout taproots and producing burs
辞書の説明にも出てくる "bur" は以前（12/25/2010）"chestnut burr" で取り上げた言葉ですね。

homeopathic

酒飲みは二日酔いでも迎え酒とか言ってまたお酒を飲みますが、英語ではそのお酒を "hair off the dog / hair of the dog" と言うことを　4/8/2009 に採り上げ、この「毒をもって毒を制する治療法」は "homeopathic remedy / homeopathy" と呼ばれていることを8/26/2009 に書きましたが、その "homeopathic" が次の様にThe Girl Who Loved Tom Gordonに出て来ました。
But Tom didn't answer. Tom couldn't answer. Tom was probably at Fenway Park by now, joking around with his fellow teammates and putting on his bright white home uniform. The Tom Gorden walking through the bog with her--this endless bog--was just a little homeopathic cure for loneliness.
英米人はこんな言葉も子供の頃から知っているとは驚きです。

shmoad

何日も山道をさまよっていたTrishaですが、ようやく牧場の跡を見つけました。
I'm on road, at least, she reminded herself. I'm on a road. But now, with the light of another day slipping out of the sky, not even that seemed to help. Road, shmoad, she thought.
この "shmoad" は辞書には出ていない単語ですが、"road" を意味していることは直ぐに分かります。頭に "shm" あるいは "schm" が付く単語として以前（10/1/2011）"schmooze"（この単語は辞書にある）を取り上げていますが、接頭辞"shm" / "schm" の説明を辞書で見ます。
・Dictionary.com: prefix (used to form jocular, usually derisive reduplications): our rich aunt in her fancy-schmancy clothes.
・Wikipedia: Shm-reduplication is a form of reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable (the base) is repeated with the copy (the reduplicant) beginning with shm- (sometimes schm-). The construction is generally used to indicate irony, derision, skepticism, or disinterest with respect to comments about the discussed object...
・Urban Dictionary: Dismissive prefix added to the second iteration of the noun being dismissed. A pseudo-Yiddish-ization.: "Rights, schmights"
・Wiktionary: Used to form a reduplicated rhyming compound of any word in order to express disparagement, dismissal or derision

earbud

録画して置いたラグビーの選手権決勝戦を昨日やっと見る時間がありました。ラグビーの場合やはり社会人が圧倒的に強いですね。最後の最後であわや１点差で逆転かといったトップリーグの決勝戦の方が見応えがありましたね。
さて、The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordonから今日取り上げるのも初めて見る単語でしたが、意味は文脈から直ぐに分かりました。
Trisha straighened the cord, slipped the earbuds into place, and settled her finger on the power button. She had forgotten the stings, the insect bites, the cuts and scrapes. She closed her swollen, heavy eyelids, making a little dark.
"Please, God," she said into it, "don't let my Walkman be broken." Then she pushed the power button.
辞書によると "earbud" は米語で、日本語にもなっている "earphone" は主に英国で使われている様です。

hot and close

夏とは言えニューイングランドの山中で９歳の少女が何日も野宿するなど、話の設定が信じられませんが、とにかく苦難が続いています。
That night was hot and close, the humid edge of New England's short but sometimes fierce summer.
さて、この "close" はどんな天候でしょうか？　前後に "hot" と "humid" とあるので "sultry" を連想しますが、どうでしょう？　辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Uncomfortably humid or airless: a close, hazy day: it was very close in the dressing room
・Oxford English Dictionary: used to describe weather or air conditions in which it is difficult to breathe and it is uncomfortably warm: Can I open the window? It's very close in here.
・Macmillan Dictionary: warm and uncomfortable because there does not seem to be enough fresh air
"sultry" の "hot and humid" に対し、"airless" あるいは空気がよどんで新鮮ではない感じを強調している様です。