resident

今日採り上げる単語はReader's Digest 10月号の "letting go" と言う記事で使われていた "resident" です。
I called the doctor to ask about Tom's sudden difficulty with words. He said to take him to the emergency room. At the hospital I recited the details of Tom's illness to a resident in neurosurgery, and said we were panning to go to New York on Monday morning. The resident gave Tom a series of instructions: lift this leg; toch your nose. Tom's left side obeyed, but his right side did not. ここに出てきた "resident" は普通の "resident" ではないことは文脈からも明らかで、何らかの医療従事者に違いありませんが、 "resident" にそんな意味があるのでしょうか？ 辞書を見ます。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a doctor who is still training, and who works in a hospital: She's a first-year resident in oncology at Boston General Hospital.
・Wiktionary: A graduated medical student who is receiving advanced training in a specialty.: She's a resident in neurosurgery at Mass General.
・Collins Dictionary: (US & Canadian) a physician who lives in the hospital where he or she works while undergoing specialist training after completing his or her internship.
なるほどね。

too clever by half

昨日採り上げた "Chinese burn" が出ていた記事で、"A fish out of water" の遊び（授業？）が合った時の事です。
Hours passed, days passed. My dreamy attention had long since wandered elsewhere, anywhere, when Miss Smith enquired, sweetly, "Is anyone bored with our little game?"
I immediately stuck up my hand, and gave a straightforward answer to a straightforward question from an adult.
"Me, MIss."
"And what was your name again?"
"Peter Goldsworthy, Miss."
"Is that so? Well, Peter Goldsworthy, you can stand in the corner with your face in your hands for the rest of the afternoon, your ungrateful little boy!"
I had plenty of time to ponder her words, while the angling continued behind my back. Try as I might, I couldn't come up with even the glimmer of an explanation. What exactly had I done wrong? Something very wicked, cleary - but what?
Being too clever by half, as my mother was told later, when she demanded an explanation from Miss Smith. Mum, trained as a primary school teacher herself, was indignant at my treatment.
"too clever by half" とはどんな意味でしょう。単純な褒め言葉ではないようですね。
・Cambridge Idioms Dictionary: (British) to be too confident of your own intelligence in a way that annoys other people At school he had a reputation for arrogance.: 'Too clever by half' was how one former teacher described him.
・Wiktionary: (idiomatic, of a person, plan, theory, etc.) Shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful.
・Urban Dictionary: To be "too smart by half" (also common is "too clever by half") is to be too smart for one's own good, meant either literally or ironically. As an idiom, it is usually sarcastic. The phrase has a wide range of potential uses; for instance, it can mean:
1.) Something so complex that it's self-obfuscating.
2.) A seemingly clever action that is in fact foolish.
3.) Logically accepting something as necessary that isn't.
4.) Overanalysis.
5.) Elitism (see ivory tower).
かなり皮肉がこめられた表現ですね。

Chinese burn

オーストラリア人が小学生の頃の苦い思い出をReader's Digest 10月号に書いていました。タイトルのA fish out of waterは、厚紙で作った魚にクリップを付け、床に並べて魚釣りをする遊びの授業での経験から来ています。
Almose all of us remember what we thought and felt on our first day of school. It offers a smal window into our pasts, or at least a rare satellite pass over that foreign country.
I had no difficulty letting go of my mother's hand on that fateful day, if only because I'd refused to hold it in the first place. "Someone might see us," she remembers me saying, as if we were adulterous lovers. To avoid the risk of being sprung in public I even made her walk on the other side of the street.
Nor was I traumatised by the generous Grade 2 boy who offered me, with a kindly smile, a Chinese burn at morning recess.
オーストラリア人でもこんな感覚があるのかと意外に感じました。それはそうとして、私の関心は "Chinese burn" の意味です。辞書で調べます。
・Collins Dictionary: a minor torture inflicted by twisting the skin of a person's wrist or arm in two different directions simultaneously: I was giving him a Chinese burn while kicking at Stan to stop him reaching me.
・Urban Dictionary: A basic form of causing physical pain that is usually experienced for the first time in infant school. It invloves gripping the top of somebody's forearm with both hands then rotating the hands in opposite directions, thus stretching the skin. Tolerance to this increases with age, unless a meathead tries it and mangles not only your skin, but your muscles, ligaments and bones also.
1. Aww, I let my little cousin give me a chines burn today, and I pretended it hurt me.
2. Johnny Meatface wrestled me to the ground today and give me a chinese burn. I couldn't even breathe, let alone scream.
なるほど。

Sweet dreams

On the morning of her birthday, a woman told her husband, "I just dreamed you gave me a diamond necklace. What do you think it means?"
"Maybe you'll find out tonight," he replied.
That evening, the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife.
She ripped off the wrapping paper and found a book titled The Meaning of Dreams.

filibuster of the athletic world

Baseball players face no such danger since the most rigorous activity they perform is the slow jog from the spot where they stand still to the spot where they sit. Their game is one of long periods of inaction followed by short, intense periods of somewhat less inaction. Yes, they sometimes swing a bat or catch a ball, but only after every other form of stalling is exhauseted. A baseball game is the filibuster of the athletic world.
(from Reader's Digest Oct. 2013 Game or Lame?)

rehome

今日の単語はReader's Digest 10月号の記事SAVIOUR OF STRAYS [SINGAPORE]からです。
Now 43, Ling has fought Singapore's practice of culling lost animals by rescuing and rehoming countless cats for over 20 years, taking a maximum 15 at a time, rehoming the pedigreed first, and keeping the non-pedigree for herself.
野良猫を助けて "rehoming" する。だいたい意味は分かりますが、辞書で確認します。普通の辞書には出ていませんでしたが、次ぎの二つの辞書に分かり易い説明がありました。比較的最近使われるようになった言葉なのでしょう。
・Wiktionary: To find a new home for (especially of pets).: The cat recovered after treatment by a vet and has now been rehomed.
・Urban Dictionary: Modern euphemism for getting someone else to take responsibilty for an unwanted animal or pet. Rehoming an animal may include an exchange an exchange of money, from the person taking the animal to the person giving it away.
The term rehome may be gaining ground over a similarly used term, 'adopt', as in 'please adopt this animal my kids won't play with anymore.: I have two red-nosed, unspayed pitbull females that I need to rehome because I am moving.
この単語も直ぐに覚えられそうです。

list

死にそうになっているネズミの子供を助けて育てた話がReader's Digest 10月号にありました。そのLove Ratと題された記事から抜粋します。
When we found him, he was blind and soaking, slumped in an alleyway, clearly close to death.
He struggled to stand, then listed to one side and collapsed again.
"listed" ですが、日本語にもなっているリストの意味しか知りませんが、上の文での意味は明らかに別の意味ですね。文脈からすると「よろめく」感じですが、辞書で確認します。・Cambridge English Dictionary: (of a ship) to lean to one side, especially as a result of damage: The tanker is listing badly and liable to sink at any moment.
・Vocabulary.com: cause to lean to the side: “Erosion listed the old tree”; tilt to one side: “The ship listed to starboard”
To make a list is to put things in order or to name them, like a grocery list or a wish list.
Listing is also leaning over, creating a slant called a list.
List can also be a verb used to describe what you do when you make a list. You could list all the state capitals, people's names, your favorite movies, or pretty much anything.
Listing can be done numerically, alphabetically, or randomly. Also, a line or surface that leans or tilts has a list, like a sagging bookcase that's overloaded. To lean in this way is to list: the Leaning Tower of Pisa is listing. へエー！という感じです。"the Leaning Tower of Pisa is listing"の文で覚えると記憶できそう。

offcut

Reader's DigestのEveryday Kitchenコーナーの10月号の記事はTurn leftover vegetable scraps into stockというタイトルです。記事の一部を抜粋します。
Over the week, as we cook, most of the vegetable offcuts go straight in the bag. For example, onion skins, carrot tops, silverbeet stems, capsicum ends, herb stalks, the woody bit of a head of broccoli, the green ends of a leek, tomato offcuts or leftover bits of ginger.
"head of broccoli" という言い方はキャベツも同じですね。さて、今日採り上げたい単語は "offcut" です。　初めて見る単語ですが、意味は多分「切れ端」で合っているでしょう。 辞書で確認します。
・Collins Dictionary: a piece of paper, plywood, fabric, etc, remaining after the main pieces have been cut; remnant: Use the offcut to fill the next border gap if it is wider than the gap.
・Oxford English Dictionary: British: a piece of waste material that is left behind after cutting a larger piece: a timber offcut: offcuts of carpet
この単語は直ぐに覚えられそうです。

bon mot

Animal Farmからの抜粋です。 Here it became apparent that Mr Pilkington was about to spring some carefully-prepared witticism on the company, but for a moment he was too overcome by amusement to be able to utter it. After much choking, during which his various chins turned purple, he managed to get it out: 'If you have your lower animals to contend with,' he said, 'we have our lower classes!' This bon mot set the table in a roar; and Mr Pilkington once again congratulated the pigs on the low ration, the long working-hours and the general absense of pampering which he had observed on Animal Farm.
"bon mot" は外来語（多分フランス語？）でしょう。Animal Farmと近隣の人間社会との仲介商人のMr Pilkingtonが言った、 'If you have your lower animals to contend with, we have our lower classes!' の事を指していると思いますがどんな意味でしょうか？　辞書を見ます。
・Collins Dictionary: a clever and fitting remark: People could learn a lot from University of Toronto art professor Elizabeth Legge, who always has a bon mot or two.
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: a clever remark: witticism: She had a sparkling bon mot for every occasion.
・Oxford English Dictionary: a witty remark: mid 18th century: French, literally 'good word'
やはり仏語でしたね。"bon mot" と言えるかどうかは疑問ですが、Animal Farmに出てきたもっとも印象的な言葉は、革命当初に打ち出されたTHE SEVEN COMMANDMENTSを一つに集約し、７番目のコマンドの "All animals are equal." を修正した、"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS." です。私はこれでどこかの国の憲法を連想しました。忘れている方も多いと思うので、その一部を引用します。
・第十四条　すべて国民は、法の下に平等であつて、人種、信条、性別、社会的身分又は門地により、政治的、経済的又は社会的関係において、差別されない。・第一条　天皇は、日本国の象徴であり日本国民統合の象徴であつて、この地位は、主権の存する日本国民の総意に基く。
つい最近山本議員が園遊会で天皇に手紙を渡したことが問題となり、氏の行動が批判の的になっていますが、問題の本質が日本国憲法の矛盾にあることを指摘する声がないのが私には不思議でなりません。
マスコミを始め、世の中の知識人と称される人も皆、裸の王様の話も忘れているのでしょうね。
Animal Farmを読んでいると、北朝鮮の事や、派遣社員の待遇の事など色々と連想させられます。
高校生の時以来ほぼ半世紀振りに Animal Farm を読み直しましたが、皆さんも（再度）読むことをお薦めします。

in a body

40年振りに行った鳥取から帰って来ました。今回は米子のとっとり花回廊にも寄って来ましたが、大山を背景にしたフラあーパークは思っていたよりも素晴らしいところでした。鳥取市からはちょっと離れていますが、行く価値は十分にあります。
さて、いつもの英語の勉強に戻ります。革命により人の支配から動物達の平等なAnimal Farmになったはずですが、いつのまにかNapoleonの独裁政治の社会になり、不平分子の動きもあります。しかし、Napoleonの力による権力の行使は残酷さが増してきます。
And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones.
When it was all over, the remaining animals, except for the pigs and dogs, crept away in a body.
"in a body" は表面的には何かの "body" に入っているようですが、それでは意味が通じません。辞書で意味を確認します。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: (formal) If people do something in a body, they do it together as a group, in an official way: The cleaning staff went in a body to the manager to complain.
・Dictionary.com: as a group; together; collectively: We left the party in a body.
なるほど、慣用句として覚えましょう。