東野圭吾の小説 "New Comer" を読んでいます。
'They can gripe all they damn want. I couldn't care less. Everyone enjoys taking potshot at the boss.'
'I'm worried that we're running out of time.'
"potshot" を調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: a shot that somebody fires without aiming carefully: (figurative) The newspapers took constant potshots at (= criticized) the president.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a criticism: The recent criticism of his leadership has included potshots from several leading political journalists.
・Vocabulary.com: Shooting a gun at a very easy target without warning is taking a potshot. And if you meanly and randomly criticize someone, that's another kind of potshot.
An overly easy criticism that's not well thought out is a common type of verbal potshot: "Your review was just a bunch of potshots at terrible movies!" This type of potshot comes from the gun-related version, first recorded around 1836. A potshot (or pot-shot) was a shot at an animal meant to "get it in the pot," or kill it strictly for food, rather than for the sport of hunting — the implication being that sport shooting required more skill.
'They can gripe all they damn want. I couldn't care less. Everyone enjoys taking potshot at the boss.'
'I'm worried that we're running out of time.'
"potshot" を調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: a shot that somebody fires without aiming carefully: (figurative) The newspapers took constant potshots at (= criticized) the president.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a criticism: The recent criticism of his leadership has included potshots from several leading political journalists.
・Vocabulary.com: Shooting a gun at a very easy target without warning is taking a potshot. And if you meanly and randomly criticize someone, that's another kind of potshot.
An overly easy criticism that's not well thought out is a common type of verbal potshot: "Your review was just a bunch of potshots at terrible movies!" This type of potshot comes from the gun-related version, first recorded around 1836. A potshot (or pot-shot) was a shot at an animal meant to "get it in the pot," or kill it strictly for food, rather than for the sport of hunting — the implication being that sport shooting required more skill.
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