先日Cambridge Dictionary(On Line)を使った時に右側にA blog from Cambridge Dictionaryとあり、"A bit long in the tooth: words and phrases for talking about old age" と題された記事へのリンクがあり、興味が湧いたので読んで見ました。
そのブログの抜粋です。
The humorous phrase a bit long in the tooth means that someone is old, usually in the context of being too old to change their ideas or do something new: I’m getting a bit long in the tooth to go back to school. More cruelly, we could talk about someone having one foot in the grave, meaning that they are close to death: He looked like a man with one foot in the grave.
全文は次のＵＲＬにあります。
https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2018/04/18/a-bit-long-in-the-tooth-words-and-phrases-for-talking-about-old-age/
ところで、"one foot in the grave" ですが、日本語では突っ込むのは棺桶ですね。
"long in the tooth" の由来が気になり、ついでに調べてみました。
The Word Detectiveに詳しい説明があり、以下がその抜粋です。
In any case, apparently it’s not all that easy to tell from just looking at a horse just how old the critter is. But when horses age, their gums recede, eventually to the point where the roots of Horsie’s teeth are visible, which makes the teeth themselves appear longer. Thus a horse visibly “long in the tooth” would be judged to be very mature at least, and possibly quite old. So a method of judging the age of a horse, originally of interest only to horse-traders and racing touts, gave us the common expression “long in the tooth,” meaning “over the hill.”
こちらの全文は次のＵＲＬにあります。
http://www.word-detective.com/2014/05/long-in-the-tooth/
そのブログの抜粋です。
The humorous phrase a bit long in the tooth means that someone is old, usually in the context of being too old to change their ideas or do something new: I’m getting a bit long in the tooth to go back to school. More cruelly, we could talk about someone having one foot in the grave, meaning that they are close to death: He looked like a man with one foot in the grave.
全文は次のＵＲＬにあります。
https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2018/04/18/a-bit-long-in-the-tooth-words-and-phrases-for-talking-about-old-age/
ところで、"one foot in the grave" ですが、日本語では突っ込むのは棺桶ですね。
"long in the tooth" の由来が気になり、ついでに調べてみました。
The Word Detectiveに詳しい説明があり、以下がその抜粋です。
In any case, apparently it’s not all that easy to tell from just looking at a horse just how old the critter is. But when horses age, their gums recede, eventually to the point where the roots of Horsie’s teeth are visible, which makes the teeth themselves appear longer. Thus a horse visibly “long in the tooth” would be judged to be very mature at least, and possibly quite old. So a method of judging the age of a horse, originally of interest only to horse-traders and racing touts, gave us the common expression “long in the tooth,” meaning “over the hill.”
こちらの全文は次のＵＲＬにあります。
http://www.word-detective.com/2014/05/long-in-the-tooth/
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