What did one magnet say to the other?
"I find you very attractive."
The Pursuit of Happynessの主人公の母は、恐らくDVを振舞う夫を殺そうとした罪で、刑務所に入っている様ですが、主人公が大好きだった叔父の葬式に母は参列することを許され、久し振りに母の顔を見かけます。
Every time I looked over at her, hoping for some sign that she had seen me, all I saw was the pain of losing her baby brother and not being able to talk to her children. She kept her gaze down at the earth where they put Uncle Henry's casket.
When it hit me that the woman standing next to my mother was a female prison guard--the only white person at the funeral, dressed in a navy-colored uniform--it came down like a thunderbolt where she had gone.
"it hit me" は会話のテキストに出てきそうな表現です。この手の表現を辞書で調べるのは結構苦労します。案の定 "it hit me" での検索でヒットしたのは次の辞書だけでした。
・Urban Dictionary: At that moment, I finally understood.: After my fish died, it hit me: I had taken his ever-presence for granted.
しかし、たいていの辞書にもこの意味は "hit" の説明にありました。
・Macmillan Dictionary: if an idea or the truth hits you, you suddenly realize it: It suddenly hit her that she would never see him again.
・Collins Dictionary: to become suddenly apparent to (a person) ⇒ the reason for his behaviour hit me and made the whole episode clear
Every time I looked over at her, hoping for some sign that she had seen me, all I saw was the pain of losing her baby brother and not being able to talk to her children. She kept her gaze down at the earth where they put Uncle Henry's casket.
When it hit me that the woman standing next to my mother was a female prison guard--the only white person at the funeral, dressed in a navy-colored uniform--it came down like a thunderbolt where she had gone.
"it hit me" は会話のテキストに出てきそうな表現です。この手の表現を辞書で調べるのは結構苦労します。案の定 "it hit me" での検索でヒットしたのは次の辞書だけでした。
・Urban Dictionary: At that moment, I finally understood.: After my fish died, it hit me: I had taken his ever-presence for granted.
しかし、たいていの辞書にもこの意味は "hit" の説明にありました。
・Macmillan Dictionary: if an idea or the truth hits you, you suddenly realize it: It suddenly hit her that she would never see him again.
・Collins Dictionary: to become suddenly apparent to (a person) ⇒ the reason for his behaviour hit me and made the whole episode clear
The Pursuit of Happynessを読み始めましたが、著者（ゴーストライターを使っているので主人公と言う方が適切か）は、貧乏なだけではなく、実の父親を知らず、継父は酒乱で、DVで警察沙汰は日常茶飯事という、想像しがたい程ひどい環境で育っていきます。それでも母親が大好きな主人公は色々な思い出を持っています。
Sy made and sold an array of incredible-tasting food, including the best sausage I ever ate in my life, and also offered an eclectic selection of home and personal items. Whenever Momma called for "Chrissy Paul..." it was her vocal signal that she was going to ask me to run an errand for her to pick something up at Sy's, anything from a can of Sweet Garrett, the snuff she loved to dip, or Day's Work, a popular brand of chewing tobacco, to some obsecure personal item that I'd never heard of before.
"eclectic selection" の "eclectic" は何度か見た事のある単語ですが、意味が思い浮かびません。仕方がないので辞書を引きます。
・Macmillan Dictionary: an eclectic group of people, things, or ideas is interesting or unusual because it consists of many different types: an eclectic mix/collection/variety: The song displays an eclectic mix of influences.
・Collins Dictionary: 1,(in art, philosophy, etc) selecting what seems best from various styles, doctrines, ideas, methods, etc 2.composed of elements drawn from a variety of sources, styles, etc: But it's really an eclectic collection of mini-games with a clear Japanese flavour.
・Vocabulary.com: She listens to hip-hop, Gregorian chant, and folk music from the '60s. He's been seen wearing a handmade tuxedo jacket over a thrift-store flannel shirt. They both have eclectic tastes.
The English word eclectic first appeared in the seventeenth century to describe philosophers who did not belong to a particular school of thought, but instead assembled their doctrines by picking and choosing from a variety of philosophical systems. Today, the word can refer to any assemblage of varied parts. You can have an eclectic group of friends (friends from diverse groups), eclectic taste in furniture (a mixture of 18th-century French chairs, Andy Warhol paintings, and Persian rugs), or enjoy eclectic cuisine (fusion cooking that uses ingredients from different national cuisines).
私が採り上げてブログに掲載している英単語も "eclectic selection of English expressions" と言えそうです。
今日からThe Pursuit of Happynessを読みます。Wikipediaによると映画にもなった実在のChris Gardnerの話で、事業に失敗し、一時は子連れのホームレスにもなった著者が再び事業に成功して企業のCEOになったメモワールです。この本、あるいは著者の良いところは、この本にはゴーストライターがいる事を明記し、紹介していることです。 ところで英語の科目が得意（だった）方は、題名のHappynessのスペルが間違っているのに気が付いたと思います。実際にこの小説の表紙は、この "y" の箇所の字体を他の字体とは変えてあり、スペルの苦手な米国人でも気が付く様に印刷されています。理由は息子が通っていたデイケア施設の外の壁に小説のタイトルとなったThe Pursuit of Happynessがこの誤ったスペルで書かれていたからだそうです。
Japan Times Online July 18にタイトルが "Responsibility for reactor restarts a hot potato" と書かれた記事がありました。タイトルに続くサブキャプションは： Regulators, politicians and bureaucrats bob and weave as the public asks one question: Who will take responsibility for the decision to authorize reactor restarts?
となっていました。タイトルで使われた表現 "hot potato" は手に取った茹でられたばかりのジャガイモが熱いので持っていられずに誰かに渡す状況が目に浮かびます。この推測で合っていると思いますが、一応辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A controversial issue or situation that is awkward or unpleasant to deal with: 'dog registration has become a political hot potato’
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: a controversial question or issue that involves unpleasant or dangerous consequences for anyone dealing with it: He tried to avoid taking a strong stand on political hot potatoes like abortion.
なんと言ってもVocabulary.comの説明が一番丁寧です。
A controversial subject that no one wants to talk about is one kind of hot potato. A hot potato is an issue that makes everyone feel uncomfortable.
The phrase hot potato comes up a lot in politics. For example, a reporter might explain that a candidate won't speak about a controversial topic because it's "a political hot potato," or an issue that people disagree strongly about. Hot potato comes from the idea of passing a literal hot baked potato from one person to another ? no one wants to be left holding it for very long, because it will burn their fingers.
Never trust a mathematician with a graph. They're plotting something.
グラフには説得力がありますからね。
Reader's Digestは宣伝の個所もだいたい読んでいます。次の宣伝記事は６月号からの引用です。
Lorna Whiston's REAL READING System(TM) encourages higher comprehension skills such as deduction, hypothesis and inference. This stands the students in good stead for their reading comprehension papers in school.
"stead" の単語は "in stead of" での用法しか知りませんが、上の "in good stead" はどんな意味になるのでしょうか？
辞書を見ると "stand someone in good stead" と言うイデオムがあることが分かりました。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Be advantageous or useful to someone over time or in the future: 'his early training stood him in good stead’
・Cambridge English Dictionary: If an experience stands a person in good stead, it is or will be of great use to them: Getting some work experience now will stand you in good stead (for) when you apply for a permanent job.
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: [for something] to be of great use and benefit to someone. I know that my large vocabulary will always stand me in good stead at college. Any experience you can get in dealing with the public will stand you in good stead no matter what line of work you go into.
Reader's Digestには動物の記事が必ずありますが、次の引用文は6月号の亀の話からです。
Our neighbour's tortoise, Harold, would constantly escape from their garden, often warranting a large search party to find him. My father, who was a scientific engineer, offered to build a tracking device.
"warrant" と言うと、「保証する」と「認可する」の意味しか覚えていないので、上記の文脈には合いません。別の意味もあるに違いありません。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Justify or necessitate (a certain course of action): ‘that offense is serious enough to warrant a court marshal’
・Macmillan Dictionary: to make an action seem reasonable or necessary: What he did was serious enough to warrant punishment.
・Vocabulary.com: It's a noun! It's a verb! It's a word that warrants our attention! As a noun, it's the piece of paper they show you through the keyhole during an investigation. It's also a reason for doing something, or a promise (think of the warranty on your new car, the promise that it'll work for a certain amount of time). As a verb, it means to make something seem reasonable or necessary, such when the ticking suitcase warrants bringing in the bomb squad, or when the teenager's sneaking in late again warrants a stricter curfew.
"warrant" のこの意味も覚える必要があるのは当然の事ですね。
前にもReader's DigestにAre you normal? or Nuts?の特集があった記憶がありますが、次の引用は6月号からのその一部です。
Why are you so scared? Because puppets are creepy. There's even a name for it: pupaphobia.
The problem with puppets - and dolls and ventriloquist dummies - is that they occupy what's called the uncanny valley - between alive and not alive.
特に人形嫌いではありませんが、生きている人間の様で、でも本物ではないと分かる人形、例えばマダムタッソーの蝋人形が気味の悪い感じがするのは分かる気がします。その感じを "uncanny valley" と言うのは興味があります。辞書に説明があるでしょうか？
・Oxford English Dictionary: Used in reference to the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it: ‘anyone attempting to build a believable human facsimile also has to beware of the uncanny valley’
何故 "uncanny valley" と言うのかも次の様に出ていました。
1970s: from a translation of Japanese Bukimi no Tani Gensho, coined by the roboticist Masahiro Moti, who created a graph that plotted the emotional response of a human being to a robot against the increase in the perceived realism of a robot; the graph showed a significant dip at the point where the robot's resemblance to a human is perceived to be almost exact.
何と日本人が研究した論文で使われた日本語から来ているとは知りませんでした。
長くなるので引用しませんが、より詳しい説明がWikipediaにあり、そこには不気味の谷を示すグラフも出ています。
今日の単語もReader's Digest 6月号の脳の記事からです。
Your Brain: Glial Cells
These cell are an essential part of the brain. The word glia means "glue" and they hold the active neurons in place. They also work in multiple ways to keep the whole nervous system healthy. Humans have the most abundant and largest glial cells of any animal.
"glia" についての辞書の説明を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: The connective tissue of the nervous system, consisting of several different types of cell associated with neurons. Also called neuroglia.: These factors play a pivotal role in brain development by direction the formation of neurons and supporting cells called glia from uncommitted progenitor cells.
この手の単語はWikipediaの方が詳しい説明があるのでWikipediaから一部を抜粋します。
As the Greek name implies, glia are commonly known as the glue of the nervous system; however, this is not fully accurate. Neuroscience currently identifies four main functions of glial cells:
1.To surround neurons and hold them in place
2.To supply nutrients and oxygen to neurons
3.To insulate one neuron from another
4.To destroy pathogens and remove dead neurons.
For over a century, it was believed that the neuroglia did not play any role in neurotransmission. However 21st century neuroscience has recognized that glial cells do have some effects on certain physiological processes like breathing, and in assisting the neurons to form synaptic connections between each other.
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