DWI

最近飲酒運転による悪質な事故、と言うより事件が続いたので飲酒運転が大きな問題になっていますね。飲酒運転は英語では "driving while intoxicated" と少々長いので、新聞のタイトルでは次のように略語の DWI を使っています。

SDF seaman wrecks car, held for DWI

A member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force is arrested for driving while intoxicated after his car struck a utility pole while he was fleeing the police.

How a Native Would Say That

「その一言ネイティブならこう言います」“How a Native Would Say That” by David A Thayne, 小池信孝、を読みました。

「さすがだね」(“That’s the way to do it.”)、

「こうなったら意地だ」(“I’m not backing down now.”)、

「とぼけないで」(“Don’t give me that..”)

等々、覚えたいフレーズが満載です。 普通の会話本を卒業した人にお薦めの本です。

Miyazato bests Oyama

つい先日の新聞の見出しに "Miyazato bests bumbling Oyama" とありました。
良く知っている形容詞、副詞、名詞ではなく動詞の用法なので、英英辞書を引くと：
verb (used with object)
to get the better of; defeat; beat
とあり、例文として:
"He easily bested his opponent in hand-to-hand combat."
"She bested me in the argument."
が載っておりました。
英語って簡単な言葉でも知らない事が次から次に出てきます。
だから面白いんですね。

Bear

最近人里に熊が出没する事が頻発している様です。　熊に出会ったら、慌てて走り出してはいけないと聞いたことがありますが、何故だか知っていますか？

Because bears like fast food.

Fragrant Olive

今日は午後７時に帰宅できたので夕食前にジョッギングをしましたが、途中の３箇所で金木犀（fragrant olive）の香りがしました。　敬老の日にジョッギングをした時には今日の３倍の距離を走ったのですが金木犀の香りはしなかったので、恐らく昨日か今日、金木犀が一斉に開花を始めたのでしょう。
今年の夏は天候のせいか、関東では毎年良く目立つ夏の花木の西洋キョウチクトウ（oleander）、ムクゲ（rose of Sharon）、サルスベリ（crepe myrtle）の花がどこも元気がなかった。
金木犀の香りは余り長く続かないと思うが、しばらくはジョッギングの楽しみが増えた。

School Pranks

以前ＲＤで見たcartoonに “I hate wedgie man most.” のせりふがあり、この"wedgie man" の意味が分かりませんでしたが、やっと "wedgie" がいたずら（prank）の一種であることが分かりました。

A wedgie is any one of a variety of pranks involving pulling the victim's underwear up so that it wedges between the buttocks. This is to cause the victim pain and humiliation in front of others. A variation, known as an"atomic wedgie" involves stretching their underwear from their butt over their head.

Wikipedia には何十ものSchool Pranksの解説があり、その種類と数は驚くほどです。　Pranksの名称だけを見ても中々面白いものがあります。　その内３つを以下に紹介します。

Hertz donut
Asking a person if he wants a "Hertz donut". An unsuspecting person will believe he has been offered some kind of doughnut of the Hertz variety. When the victim admits to wanting one, the prankster hits or punches the victim and then says, "Hurts, don'it?"

Goosing
The prankster jabs at the anus of genitalia of the victim, usually with
his/her thumb. This was a fairly common practice during the 1930s and was not considered to be any more serious than hurling a spitball of putting gum on someone's chair. A variant is known in Japan as "kancho".

Capital of Thailand
This is generally done with the pranks asking their unsuspecting victim, "What is the capital of Thailand?" More than often the prankster calls "Bangkok" and punches the victim in the balls. This was popularized in the American Pie movies.

Get a Life

前回のPop Phraseでも触れた "get a life" と言うフレーズは大分昔ですが "Saturday Night Live"（これはコメディー番組ですがsitcomではありません。NHKのサラリーマンNEOのようなスタイルのコメディです。）でポピュラーになった台詞で、NEET にピッタリの言葉です。　長くなりますが、英辞郎、英英辞書、Wikipedia の説明を以下に引用します。

【1】 （自分の人生のために）何かを始めろ、元気を出せ、もっと人生を楽しめ、楽しい人生を過ごせ、出直せ、一人前になれ、何かをつかめ◆命令形で使われる。◆「自分の価値観・自由・独立心を持ち、人に頼らず、夢に向かって生きろ！」と一言で言いたいとき、あるいは、相手が落ち込んでいたり、暗い人生を送っているときに「元気を出して楽しい人生を過ごせよ！」と励ましてあげるときの表現。
・ Get a life! You're 30 years old! You should have started a career by now. しっかりしろよ。おまえはもう30歳だぞ。今頃はちゃんとした仕事を持っていてもいいころなんだぞ。
【2】 いいかげんにしろ◆命令形で使われる。
【3】 《野球》（打者がアウトにならなくて）命拾いする
【4】 〈命令形で〉ほっといてくれ

American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms の説明
Acquire some interests or relationships of one's own. For example, Stop sitting around and complaining. ? get a life.
<abuse> Standard way of suggesting that someone has succumbed to terminal geekdom. Often heard on Usenet, especially as a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of theology too seriously. This exhortation was popularised by William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that ended "Get a life!", but some respondents believe it to have been in use before then. It was certainly in wide use among hackers for at least five years before achieving mainstream currency in early 1992.

最後に Wikipedia による解説

Get a life is an American English idiom. Used as a command, the phrase generally instructs its addressee to go out and make their way in the world, without being supported by outside sources such as parents or benefactors. It may also be directed at someone who is perceived as boring or single-minded like geeks, to suggest they acquire some other, more practical interests or hobbies and get dates, find a job, move to their own house etc. It is also used when people don't know about something that another person considers popular or normal, such as a certain TV show or board game that this person assumes everyone else knows about.
The term was popularized by William Shatner's appearance in a 1987 episode of Saturday Night Live, in which he tells a group of trekkies to "get a life." However, evidence of the term's use in the vernacular extends at least back into the 1970s, perhaps as part of a mainstream backlash against hippies.

Get a Life is the name of a television sitcom that aired on the Fox Network from September 23, 1990 to March 8, 1992. The show starred Chris Elliott as a 30-year-old paperboy named Chris Peterson. Peterson lived in an apartment above his parents' garage (Elliot's parents were played by Elinor Donahue and his real life father, comedian Bob Elliott). The opening credits depicted Chris Peterson delivering newspapers on his bike to the show's theme song, "Stand" by R.E.M.
The show was unconventional for a primetime sitcom, and many times the storylines of the episodes were surreal. For example, Elliott's character actually dies in eleven episodes. The causes of death included being crushed by a giant boulder, old age, tonsillitis, stab wounds, gunshot wounds, and simply exploding. For this reason, it was a struggle for Elliott and Mirkin to get the show on the air. Many of the executiv! es at the Fox Network hated the show and thought it was too disturbing and that Elliott's character was too insane.

Pop Phrases

TVのsitcom（ホームコメディ）等で使われ一種の流行後となっている言葉をPop Phraseと言うそうです。

“Gimme a break!”, “Get a life!”, “Go for it!”, “Bring’em on!” などがその例ですが、次のような状況で使うPop Phraseもチャンスがあったら使って見たいですね。

Your friend brings up a big mistake you made in the past.

You say, “Don’t go there.”

An annoying colleague tries to guess your salary.

You say, “Not even close.”

You’ve told your brother you can’t lend him any money, but he keeps asking.

You say, “What part of “no” don’t you understand?”

Pop Phrase について書いた “Slam Dunks and No Brainers” by Leslie Savan　と言う本があると知ったので早速Amazon.comでペーパーバック版を予約したのですが、デリバリーは１０月中旬になるようです。

Weight-loss Patch

サロンパスのように貼るだけで体重が減らせる "weight-loss patch" が米国で販売されている事を聞いた事がありますが、そのこう薬("patch")の効果的な使用法を医者に尋ねると：

I was talking to my doctor about a weight-loss patch I had seen advertised. Supposedly you stick it on and the kilos melt away. "Does it work?”I asked. “Sure,” he said. “If you put it over your mouth.”

see change

"sea change" からは海の満引きとか、最近では温暖化が原因による海面の上昇を思い起こしますが、"sea change" はシェークスピアが "The Tempest" で「海の変化」により骨はサンゴに、目は真珠に変えられていると使用したのが最初のようで、現在は態度の180度転換、政策の根本的な変更の意味でよく使われている表現です。　出典は忘れましたが、最近読んだ記事に "Sea change" ではなく "C change" が正しい英語だと思っていたネイティブの投書とそれに対する回答があり、興味深い内容なので次に引用します。

Q. When I first heard the term "C change," it made good sense to me, the letter "C" symbolically showing a 180-degree change of direction. Lately, I've seen the term "sea change," the meaning of which I can't figure. Can you enlighten me, and if the water version is correct, what does it mean? -- Peter Wilkinson, New Haven, Conn.

A. I rather like the notion of this term as "C change," a letter's curvature indicating direction or shape, as in "U-turn," "S-curve," "C-clamp" or "T-bone."

But, alas, to paraphrase the first chapter of Moby Dick, "It's a watery world we live in, lads." This term, correctly rendered as "sea change," is indeed a liquid asset. But, given its overuse by politicians, pundits and professors to describe any shift in mood or policy, this asset is rapidly depreciating.

The first recorded use of the term comes from a rather macabre but magical poem sung by Ariel in Shakespeare's "The Tempest": "Full fathom five thy father lies;/Of his bones are coral made;/Those are pearls that were his eyes:/Nothing of him that doth fade/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into something rich and strange."

The ocean will do that to you, especially if you give it enough time. But when did people begin using "sea change" to mean a profound transformation? One of the earliest such uses occurred in Julian Hawthorne's 1877 novel "The Great White Wall" (not to be confused with Herman Melville's great white whale): " . . . a sea-change happened here which really deserves to be called strange."

What really deserves to be called strange is that, until writing this column, I had always assumed "sea change" referred to a fundamental transformation of the sea itself -- from a glass-like lake, for example, to a churning maelstrom. But now I learn it refers to something being transformed by the sea. For me, this sea change in the origin of "sea change" is hard to fathom.

ところで、"C-change" は CEO, CFO, CIO の交代の意味でも使われているようです。