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The origins of 13 everyday sayings non-English speakers don't understand
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BONUS: If it's "raining cats and dogs," it's raining very hard outside. No one is sure where this phrase comes from.
額外福利:如果外面在“下貓和狗”(raining cats and dogs),說明雨下得很大。沒有人確切知道這句習(xí)語的來源。
The researchers for the study said this phrase is "an instance of rhyming slang after frogs were whipped into the air during a storm and came back down again with the rain (as testified to in historical accounts)."
研究者稱,據(jù)歷史記載,此短語是個押韻俗語,來形容“青蛙在起風(fēng)暴時被卷到天上,下雨時又隨雨水摔到地面”。
Another possible origin comes from a 1592 sentence (documented by the Oxford English Dictionary) that reads: "Instead of thunderboltes shooteth nothing but dogboltes or catboltes."
另外一個出處可能是最早出現(xiàn)于1592年的一句話(收錄在《牛津英語詞典》中):“這下的哪里是雷雨,分明是在下鐵釘。”。
The "dog bolts" were iron bolts to secure a door or a gate, while "cat bolts" were used to fasten together pieces of wood. In other words, they likened a heavy rainstorm to heavy metal bolts falling out of the sky. At some point, "bolt" was dropped either as a joke or to make it easier to say, causing the phrase to make no sense today.
Dog bolts是鐵螺釘,通常用來固定房門或院門,而cat bolts則通常被用來將幾塊木頭固定在一起。換句話說,這兩個詞將暴風(fēng)雨比作從天上掉下來的重重的金屬釘。在某些情況下,省略bolt也許是因為玩笑,也許是因為說起來順口,所以這個習(xí)語的本意在今天并說不通。
英文來源:businessinsider
譯者:實習(xí)生孫美真
審校&編輯:丹妮
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