pining

昨日は朝から卓球の試合がありましたが、全敗をかろうじて間のがれた散々な成績でした。夜はテニスパーティーでテニスはちょっとビールはいっぱい、いや９杯も飲みました。
さて平日の生活に戻ります。The Art of ChoosingのLiving in the Worldの章にComponents of griefの表がありその中の一項目に次の事が書かれていました。
Depression: Feeling of pining and despair
"pining" の意味が直ぐにピンと来ませんが、原型は "pine" だと思うので、それなら "pine for" で確か、恋い焦がれるの意味があったので、亡くなった人をいつまでも忘れられずに悲しむ感情かなと推定しますが、辞書を見ます。"pining" を項目にしている辞書はほとんどなく、有っても "The act of one who pines." (Wikitionary) と書かれているので、やはり "pine" の意味から判断するしかありません。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to strongly desire esp. something that is difficult or impossible to obtain: Bradley pined for his wife, who was far away.
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: to yearn intensely and persistently especially for something unattainable: they still pined for their lost wealth
・Wiktionary: to yearn deeply; suffer with longing; long painfully (often followed by for): "to pine for one's home and family."
やはり "pine for" にたどり着きますね。

Getting Results

A woman is feeling unwell, so she goes to her GP.
He immediately spots the problem and says to her, "Take this red pill after breakfast with a glass of water."
"OK."
"Take this blue pill after lunch with two glasses of water."
"OK."
"And take this yellow pill after dinner with three glasses of water."
"Good heavens," says the woman, "whatever is the matter with me?"
"You don't drink enough water."
私はこの女性と同じで余り水を飲まないので腎臓結石ができ易く、今も２個ほどキープしています。

make the call

The Art of ChoosingのAnd Then There Were Noneの章からの引用です。
Julie is your premature baby, born after only 27 weeks of gestation and weighing less than two pounds. She's critically ill from having suffered a brain hemorrhage. For these reasons, she is being treated in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a renowned academic hospital, her life sustained by a machine that helps her breathe.
...
After much delivberation, they have decided that it's in Julie's best interest that they withdraw treatmen--by turning off the ventilation machine--and let her die.
...
And parents who make this choice in real life are often worse off than parents whose doctors make the call.
引用文の最後に出てきた "make the call" の "call" はかなり前に覚えた表現 "It's your call." の "call" と同じだと文脈から分かりますが、この表現は初めてだと思うので取り上げました。 "call" の意味を辞書で再確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A decision, judgement, or prediction: personally, I'm all in favor, but it's your call
・Cambridge English Dictionary: informal: a decision: It was a tough call, but eventually I decided to give up my job.
・Wiktionary: decision or judgement. That was a good call.
引用文の状況下では確かに医者に判断を任せたくなる気持ちは分かりますが、最近のニュースで聞いた、腹腔手術で多くの患者を死なせたような酷い医者も世の中にはいるので、やはりここは "It's your call." でしょう。

can ill afford

The Art of ChoosingのLord of the Thingsの章に入りました。
Enrollment rate were dismal for those who most needed Part D--the low-income individuals eligible for full prescription drug coverage at no personal cost. If they enroll now, they will incur late penalties they can ill afford; if they don't, many will have to forgo medication that they can't pay for on their own.
"can ill afford" の意味は "cannot afford" とほぼ同じ意味だと思いますが、助動 詞の "can" と動詞の間に副詞が入っている表現は珍しいので辞書で確認します。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: (formal or old-fashioned): If you can ill afford to do something, it will cause problems for you if you do it: We can ill afford to lose another member of staff.
・Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary: (formal can ill afford) If you cannot afford to do something, you must not do it because it would cause serious problems for you: We can't afford to make any mistakes at this stage in the project.: He can ill afford to fail any of his exams.
・Oxford English Dictionary: Only with difficulty; hardly: she could ill afford the cost of new curtains
"formal" って日本語では文語表現のことでしょうか。ところで動詞の "afford" は昔高校生の頃に "I can't afford a Ford." で覚えた記憶があります。未だにフォードは買えません。

give short shrift

The Art of ChoosingのLord of the Thingsの章から引用します。
Looking at 25-year averages, stocks reliably outperform bonds and especially money markets, which may not even keep up with inflation. Yet in our study, even the employees in their late teens and early twenties, who could afford more risk, gave short shrift to stocks as the number of funds in their plans increased.
"shrift" の「懺悔」の意味は思い浮かぶのですが、"short shrift" で「懺悔」からは中々連想し難い意味があることを５年前に(2/1/2010)ブログで取り上げているのに、再度辞書を見るまでは思い出せませんでした。従って "short shrift" の復習です。
・Idioms Dictionary: to give very little attention to someone or something, either because you are not interested in them or because you are annoyed with them (usually passive) A planning application for a new nightclub in the town centre was given short shrift by the council. Sue gave Robert short shrift when he turned up drunk for her party.
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: a brief period of consideration of a person's ideas or explanations. They gave the reporter short shrift and got him out of the office. My plan got short shrift from the board―a ten-minute presentation; they then voted it down.
・Vocabulary.com: Shrift is an old-fashioned way to talk about the traditional religious ritual of confession and absolution. Shrift comes from the equally antique word shrive, which is what a priest does when he hears a confession. The phrase "short shrift" began as a description of the brief chance a condemned prisoner had to confess his sins before being put to death, and evolved to mean "to dismiss with little consideration."
これから死刑に処せられる罪人の懺悔は牧師も長く聴いていられないのは当然でしょうね。

the wool is being pulled over our eyes

今日もThe Art of ChoosingのI, Robot?の章から引用します。
The cumulative result of these tactics is that though we may feel steeped in variety, we actualy have far fewer qualitatively different options than we realize. This makes choosing a fraught process because we spend a lot of energy trying to sort through a plethora of options for no good reason, and we can't help but wonder if the wool is being pulled over our eyes.
最後に出てきた "the wool is being pulled over our eyes" は文字通りに解釈すると「目 がウールで覆われる」ですが、いかにも慣用句・比喩表現の様です。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Deceive someone by telling untruths.: He presents it as though he's pulling the wool over our eyes, only we are all too stupid to notice.
・Dictionary.com: to deceive or delude someone: The boy thought that by hiding the broken dish he could pull the wool over his mother's eyes.
なるほど、だます、ごまかすために、目をウールで覆うのですね。何故か反対に近い「目から鱗が落ちる」を連想してしまいます。

puffery

２ヶ月振りにジョッギングをしたら、フルマラソンに出た翌日の様に足が痛い。若くないので少しさぼると筋肉が直ぐに衰えるのを実感しました。英語も離れたら忘れるのでしょうね。
さてThe Art of ChoosingのI, Robot?の章の一節を引用します。
Nothing on the Crystal Geyser bottle actually claims that its water is of higher quality, or tastier, or fresher than what comes out of your kitchen tap, or out of the bottles of competitors. There may be "a difference," but what is it and compared to what? The legal term for this tactic is "puffery," which the Federal Trad Commission (FTC) defines as those subjective claims that "ordinary customers do not take seriously."
Puffery includes the hyperbole of the Energizer Buny, as well as terms and phraseslike "best", "revolutionary," "sofphisticated," "gourmet," "you'll love it," "years younger," and a legion of other buzzwords that sound appealing but mean very little.
今日は上の "puffery" を覚えたい。意味は文章中に説明があるので、宣伝文句で使われる誇 張を示していると思えますが、辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: chiefly North American: Exaggerated or false praise.: There has always been a fine line between legitimate puffery and misleading advertising.
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: exaggerated commendation especially for promotional purposes: hype: the newspaper's local stories are often thinly disguised puffery for area businesses
普通は宣伝文句を文字通りまともに受け取ることはありませんが、やはり影響はされるのでしょうね 。

Midnight Shift

今日はお彼岸、これから墓参りに行きます。 After trick-or-treating at Halloween a teen takes a shortcut through a cemetry.
Halfway across, he's startled by a tapping noise coming from the misty shadows.
Trembling with fear, he spots an old man with a hammer and chisel chipping away at a headstone.
"I thought you were a ghost," says the relieved teen.
"What are you doing working so late?"
"Oh, those idiots," grumbles the old man. "They misspelled my name!"
ラフカディオ・ハーンの怪談を思い起こさせる話ですね。

teal and cerulean

今日はThe Art of ChoosingのI, Robot?の章に出てきた色を示す単語を覚えます。
Yet even in this riot of color and style, there are patterns. Bold primary colors seem quite popular, and you begin to notice many cool colors as well: green shirts, teal blouses, cerulean and azure dresses and skirts.
著者のSheena Iyangarさんはインド出身で盲目の女性ですが、インターネットの動画を参照したり、上記の個所のようにビジュアルの判断を必要とする内容が結構多く、目が見えなくてどうしてこの様な文が書けるのか不思議です。それはともかく私としては上に出てきた "teal" と "cerulean" の色を覚えたい。まず "teal" は：
・Oxford English Dictionary: A dark greenish-blue color.: I would say the best dress this month has got to be Naomi Watts wearing that Roly Mare dress with the square neckline, form-fitting, and a beautiful sort of teal blue.
・Wiktionary: A dark, somewhat bluish-green colour; a dark cyan.
次に "cerulean" は：
・Oxford English Dictionary: Deep blue in color like a clear sky: cerulean waters and golden sands
・Wikipedia: Cerulean, also spelled caerulean, is a color term that may be applied to certain colors with the hue ranging roughly between blue and cyan, overlapping with both. It also largely overlaps with azure and sky blue, although cerulean is dimmer.
"azure" との区別が難しい。まあ感覚の問題でしょうね。 "cerulean" は発音にも注意です。私は大抵の場合発音はONLINE Merriam Webster Dictionary で確認しています。

adulterant

今日の単語はThe Art of ChoosingのI, Robot?の章からです。
For me, the names couldn't make the colors look better or worse, so I simply wanted as objective a description of each color as possible. Ironically, I--the blind person--was concerned primarily with the visual properties of the color, while the sighted people were evaluating the color "package." I didn't care about the name--an adulterant, I thought--precisely because I couldn't see the color.
"adulterant" は直ぐに "adultery" を連想（あくまで単語ですが）してしまいます。語源的に関係があるのでしょうか？ "adulterant" を辞書で見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A substance used to adulterate another.: The adulterants ranged from water in the case of milk, cheaper varieties of oils in the case of edible oils to colours in the case of rice and tea.
・Vocabulary.com: any substance that lessens the purity or effectiveness of a substance: it is necessary to remove the adulterants before use
・Wiktionary: That which adulterates; or reduces the purity of.
上記最初の辞書の定義を見た時は、動詞の "adulterate" も見なくてはと思いましたが、その必要は無いですね。しかし、"adultery" との語源的な繋がりを確かめたいので "adulterate" をONLINE ETYMOLOGYで見ると：
1530s, back-formation from adulteration, or else from Latin adulteratus, past participle of adulterare "to falsify, corrupt," also "to commit adultery." Earlier verb was adulter (late 14c.).
"adultery" の項には次の説明がありました。
"voluntary violation of the marriage bed," c.1300, avoutrie, from Old French avouterie (12c.), noun of condition from avoutre, from Latin adulterare "to corrupt" (see adulteration).
やはり "adultery" は昔から不純で夫婦の絆を壊す行為なのですね。