桐野 夏生の "Grotesque" を読んでいます。
What the hell was happening? I'd studied my butt off in the hopes of finally getting away from Yuriko, and now here she was seeping back into my life some kind of poison gas! I sighed in despair. Yuriko was as dumb as a doornail, but her beauty would forever entitle her to special treatment. On that score, the Q School system was no different.
"as dumb as a doornail" は昔学校で習った "as cool as a cucumber" と同様に形容詞を強調する常套句・慣用句に違いありません。ただこの表現を載せている辞書は余りありませんでした。
・Wiktionary: (simile) irrefutably or unquestionably dumb
・Farlex Dictionary of Idioms: Exceptionally foolish, dimwitted, or unintelligent.
"doornail" は "dumb" と言うより、むしろ機能しない、死んでいるとの意味で "as dead as a doornail" の方が使われている様だ。
・Merriam-Webster: used to stress that someone or something is dead: The old captain was dead as a doornail.
・The Phrase Finder: To be 'as dead as a doornail' is to be utterly dead, devoid of life (when applied to people, plants or animals) or finished with, unusable (when applied to inanimate objects).
What the hell was happening? I'd studied my butt off in the hopes of finally getting away from Yuriko, and now here she was seeping back into my life some kind of poison gas! I sighed in despair. Yuriko was as dumb as a doornail, but her beauty would forever entitle her to special treatment. On that score, the Q School system was no different.
"as dumb as a doornail" は昔学校で習った "as cool as a cucumber" と同様に形容詞を強調する常套句・慣用句に違いありません。ただこの表現を載せている辞書は余りありませんでした。
・Wiktionary: (simile) irrefutably or unquestionably dumb
・Farlex Dictionary of Idioms: Exceptionally foolish, dimwitted, or unintelligent.
"doornail" は "dumb" と言うより、むしろ機能しない、死んでいるとの意味で "as dead as a doornail" の方が使われている様だ。
・Merriam-Webster: used to stress that someone or something is dead: The old captain was dead as a doornail.
・The Phrase Finder: To be 'as dead as a doornail' is to be utterly dead, devoid of life (when applied to people, plants or animals) or finished with, unusable (when applied to inanimate objects).
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