in cold blood

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。パート4，The Imcidentから引用します。

"There's more," said Nobuyuki. "The police are planning to use these new dart guns they've just brought on line." The new information was more than Haruko's brain could take in. "The cops must have realized they couldn't shoot him in cold blood on live TV, so they came up with an alternative that lets them 'shoot' him--with an asterisk. He shows up and at the least sign of suspicious behavior they bring him down with a tranquilizer dart and hog-tie him.

"in cold blood" これは直訳すると冷血にとなりますが辞書での説明を見ます。

・Collins Dictionary: If something violent and cruel is done in cold blood, it is done deliberately and in an unemotional way.: The crime had been committed in cold blood.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: If someone kills in cold blood, they kill in a way that seems especially cruel because it seems to show no emotion.: killed in cold blood
・Wiktionary: In a ruthless and unfeeling manner, particularly as applied to first-degree murder committed without provocation and with malice aforethought.: It was not a suicide! He was murdered in cold blood.

戦争で敵を殺すのも冷血かなと思いましたが、戦場の兵士は必ずしも冷血ではないでしょう。冷血なのは戦場に兵士を送り出した戦場にいない人たちですね。これは間違いない。

tattletale

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。パート4，The Imcidentから引用します。

On days off, I make deliveries for especially for good customers on my own, charge them a lower rate, and everyone makes out--except the company, The guy on the phone said they knew all about it, and they would tell the company if i didn't cooperate. Feels like a fucking grade school tattletale, except they'll get me fired right when my daughter's starting all those expensive girlie lessons.

"telltale" と似ていますが "tattletale" の意味を辞書で確認します。

・Oxford English Dictionary: a child who tells an adult what another child has done wrong
・Collins Dictionary: a talebearer or informer, esp. among children
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a person, especially a child, who secretly tells someone in authority, especially a teacher, that someone else has done something bad, often in order to cause trouble: She has good manners, yet tends to be a bit of a tattletale at times.
・Vocabulary.com: A tattletale is a person who tries to get someone in trouble by revealing secret information about them. Your tattletale brother will probably tell your parents that you were actually at the movies, not the library.
The word tattletale is mostly used in the U.S. (in Britain it's more common to use telltale). It comes from the verb tattle, "report someone's wrongdoing." In the 16th century, you'd have called a tattletale a pickthank. These days, you can also use words like snitch or whistle-blower.

"tattletale" は普通は子供について使うのですね。

phalanx

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。前回引用した個所の直後の文から引用します。

He was prepared for a phalanx of policemen silhouetted in the door, but it was just Iwasaki who jumped in with him. The worried look on his face made it clear that something had happened.

"phalanx" はエジプトのPharaohを連想させるような古い言葉の様な気がしますが、辞書で意味を調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: a group of people or things standing very close together; The protesters ran into a solid phalanx of riot police.
・Collins Dictionary: A phalanx is a group of soldiers or police who are standing or marching close together ready to fight.: the police formed a phalanx to protect the embassy
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a large group of people standing very close to each other, usually for the purposes of defence or attack: Bodyguards formed a solid phalanx around the singer so that photographers couldn't get close.
・Vocabulary.com: A phalanx is a tightly knit group of people or things, like an army troop or a bunch of fans of the same band.
Phalanx refers to any tightly formed group of soldiers or officers, and historically defines a body of Macedonian infantry whose shields overlapped. From that sense, it came to mean any close-knit group. Another definition of phalanx — any bone in a finger or toe — also came out of the military sense: these bones work together closely, just like a military phalanx. The plural for these bones is phalanges, while the plural for the other senses is phalanxes.
ギリシャ時代からの単語ですね。

stomach lurched

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。パート4，The Imcidentから引用します。

But maybe this stop meant no more than the earlier ones. Maybe Iwasaki would appear any second now and apologize for the delay. Maybe he had one package he absolutely had to deliver. The door rattled again and then flew open. Aoyagi's stomach lurched.
Light poured in from outside, and he strained to keep his eyes from squinting shut.

"stomach lurched" の意味を調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: if your heart or stomach lurches, you have a sudden feeling of fear or excitement
・Vocabulary.com: To lurch is to suddenly move — usually forward. If you are on a ship that lurches a lot during a storm, you may find your body lurching in one direction and your stomach going in the opposite one.
The verb lurch can refer to any abrupt movement, but it often has the sense of a sharp turn up, down, or sideways. If you invest in the stock market, you have to be prepared for sudden losses and gains as the stock market can lurch up or down on a whim. The verb also means to make sudden jerking movements when walking, as if you cannot control your movements.

ちなみに、"lurch" を含んだ慣用句 "leave someone in the lurch" を小説 "Convenience Store Woman"(1/9/2024) からとKazuo Ishiguroの短編 "MALVERN HILLS" (3/5/2012)から取り上げました。

mind-boggling

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。パート4，The Imcidentから引用します。

He had never been to the model shop. Koume Inohara had bought the helicopter and even put it together for him, so the scene on the tape had never happened. Still, there he was-in a still extracted from the footage now filling the screen--or someone who looked exactly like him. It was mind-boggling.

"mind-boggling" の意味を調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: very difficult to imagine or to understand; extremely surprising: a problem of mind-boggling complexity
・Collins Dictionary: If you say that something is mind-boggling, you mean that it is so large, complicated, or extreme that it is very hard to imagine.: The amount of paperwork involved is mind-boggling.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: extremely surprising and difficult to understand or imagine: She was paid the mind-boggling sum of ten million dollars for that film.
・Vocabulary.com: intellectually or emotionally overwhelming: “a mind-boggling display”

正月の初セリのマグロの価格は私にとって "mind-boggling" です。

brought her up short

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。パート4，The Incidentから引用します。

They reached the end of the hall and stopped in front of a room. "Ono" was written on a card on the door." They didn't let me in until just a little while ago," Ami said, opening the door.
Kazu lay on his back, eyes closed. Haruko felt a rush of nostalgia at the sight of him, but the bandages brought her up short.

"brought her up short" の意味を調べます。慣用句 "bring one up short" として次の説明がありました。

・Wiktionary: (figurative) To startle or interrupt (someone), causing them to stop or reevaluate what they are doing.: I suppose things can go well for just so long before events bring you up short.
・Farlex Dictionary of Idioms: To cause one to abruptly stop doing something.: The sudden blaring of the alarm brought me up sharply on my way down the hall.
・Merriam-Webster: to cause (someone) to stop suddenly: I was wandering through the exhibit when I was brought up short by a striking photograph.

"bring one up sharply" も同じ意味ですね。

trumped-up

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。パート4，The Incidentから引用します。

He wasn't very good with a computer. In college, he had written papers on one and searched for cheap drinking spots, but after graduation he didn't have much need for it. Then, when he'd become a media darling for a brief period, the Internet had been flooded with anonymous and largely inaccurate information about him, and in the end he'd decided that the whole trumped-up thing was annoying and more than a little scary.

"trumped-up" 文脈からもスペルからも米国のトランプ氏を連想しますが、関係あるでしょうか？

・Oxford English Dictionary: falsely accusing them of doing something wrong: She was arrested on a trumped-up charge.
・Collins Dictionary: untrue, and made up in order to punish someone unfairly: He had been imprisoned on a trumped-up charge.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to give or use false information so that someone will be accused of doing something wrong and punished: The accusation, she said, was trumped up in order to get rid of her.
・Vocabulary.com: Something that's trumped-up is faked or fabricated to use as an excuse. You might be tempted to tell your parents a trumped-up story about a mean math teacher to explain a bad grade.
When you hear about someone being arrested on "trumped-up charges," that means that they've been falsely accused. There's a sense of exaggeration in this term, as well—if your excuse for being late is trumped-up, you're concocting extra details to make it sound more impressive. Trumped-up was first recorded in the early 18th century, and it comes from the idiomatic trump up, "devise deceitfully or dishonestly."

つい最近の大統領選挙のキャンペーンでトランプ氏はどこどこの移民は犬猫を殺しているなどと発言したとのニュースを思い出しました。この "trumped-up" の表現は18世紀から使われていると辞書にありましたが、現在のトランプ氏の活躍以降だとされてもおかしくありません。

road-hogging

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。パート4，The Incidentから引用します。

Everyone was talking about the Internet, but the Internet moved information, not real things. For that, you needed trucks and drivers. And if that was the case, shouldn't they be treated a little better? They certainly thought so themselves, it almost no one else did. Two years earlier, though, when the TV had been making such a fuss over his encounter with the burglar, some guy on one of the shows had reminded the viewers, who tended to see truck drivers as road-hogging bastards, that they were, in fact, the backbone of the country's commerce.

"road-hogging" を辞書で調べました。"road-hogging" では辞書には載っていませんでしたが、"road hog" で次のような説明がありました。

・Oxford English Dictionary: a person who drives in a dangerous way without thinking about the safety of other road users
・Collins Dictionary: If you describe someone as a road hog, you mean that they drive too fast or in a way which is dangerous to other people.; a driver who obstructs traffic by occupying parts of two lanes
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a driver who is dangerous because they do not think about other drivers: People who had been convicted of being road hogs or unsafe drivers should perhaps also display something on their car.

Collins Dictionaryの説明にある "occupying parts of two lanes" でこの表現の由来が分かりました。これまでに何度か取り上げた "hog" （10/9/2008、9/1/2010)の欲張りな意味を含んでいるのですね。

soldiered on

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。話の展開が遅く、現在と過去の話が度々変わるので分かり難い。今日もパート4，The Incidentからの引用です。

All sorts of people getting together outside on a warm evening and looking up at the sky. Everybody sighs and says how pretty they are, how exciting. And then they get up the next morning and go back to work, promising themselves they'll be sure to go again next year. That's what I love about this job." They stared wide-eyed at so much sentimental stuff. But he soldiered on. "And I'll tell you something else i like about it.

"soldier on" は "3/6/2018" に取り上げていますが、その時に引用しなかったVocabulary.comのsoldierの説明を紹介します。

In a war, soldiers are the people who do the fighting, on the ground, in planes, or from boats. Soldier is also a verb that means to serve in the military, or to continue on through difficult times.
What is an army without soldiers? It’s a bunch of guns on the ground. A soldier is the man or woman who fights for their government and carries the weapons, risking their life in the process. The word comes from the Latin solidus, which is the name of the gold coin used to pay soldiers who fought in the Roman army. To “soldier on” means to not give up even when life is tough, like soldiering on through difficult vocabulary.

pick up the slack

伊坂幸太郎氏の小説 "Remote Control" を読んでいます。パート4，The Incidentから引用します。

"Can't say I blame you," Aoyagi said. Kazu was as idealistic as he'd been back in school.
"So I quit. I wanted them to see how much they needed me, how hard it would be if I wasn't there to pick up the slack."
"And did they see the error or their ways?"

"pick up the slack" の意味を調べます。

・Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary: If someone or something takes up the slack or picks up the slack, they reduce the bad effect of something by providing something extra. With the export market in decline, it is hoped that the tourist trade will take up the slack. We have three members of staff absent and no one to pick up the slack.
・Farlex Dictionary of Idioms: To do an extra amount of work that someone else is unable or unwilling to do.: The fourth member of our team has been totally unreliable, so the rest of us have had to pick up the slack.
・Merriam-Webster: to provide or do something that is missing or not getting done: When he didn't get the pay raise he was expecting, he had to take another job to pick up the slack for more money.

代わりをするとか補うの意味ですね。たるみを直すことから来ている様です。
Vocabulary.comのslackの説明にこの "pick up the slack" が出てきます。
If you slow down at the end of a race, you slack off. When you use slack this way, it means to reduce your speed, to be sluggish, or to be negligent.
If something is loose, it's also said to be slack. A clothesline, for example, is slack if it is just hanging loosely between two trees. If you pull the clothesline tight, you reduce the slack. The root word of slack is the Old English word slæc, which means "loose or careless." When you scold your friend for being careless about his responsibilities, you can say, "Pick up the slack!"