今日も誰でも知っている単語、"business"、ですが、こんな使い方（慣用句）がある事を初めて知りました。次の文はThe Running Manからの引用です。
The doctor produced a stopwatch from an inside pocket, clicked the business end of his ballpoint pen, and considered a list in front of him.
"the business end of" がボールペンでクリックする部分の事だと言うのは明白ですが、"business" を辞書で見ても適当な説明は見当たりません。 しつこく辞書を見ると慣用句で "the business end of" と言う表現があり、次の説明がありました。
・Oxford English Dictionary: The functional part of a tool, device, or weapon: he found himself facing the business end of six lethal-looking weapons
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: the part or end of something that actually does the work or carries out the procedure. Keep away from the business end of the electric drill so you won't get hurt. Don't point the business end of that gun at anyone. It might go off.
日本語にはない表現ですね。
Interviewing a university applicant, the admission officer asks, "If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?"
The student thinks it over, then answers: "The living one."
"envelope" と言うと入っている中身はつい手紙や書類と思いますが、Stephen KingのThe Running Manを読んでいたら、こんな物を入れるにも "envelope" が使われのだと知りました。
They were let into a cafeteria where they showed their I.D. cards again. Richards took a tray pushed it down a stainless steel ledge. He was given a box of cornflakes, a greasy dish of home fries, a scoop of scrambled eggs, a piece of toast as cold and hard as a marble gravestone, a halfpint of milk, a cup of muddy coffee (no cream), an envelope of sugar, an envelope of salt, and a pat of fake butter on a tiny square of oily paper.
今日の単語はThe Running Manに出てきた知っているが意味が分からない "cinch" です。
An inflated blood pressure cuff had been cinched to his right arm. A number of electrodes had been pasted to his head, and wires from both his head and arm were jacked into a console beside the doctor.
"a piece of cake" と一緒に覚えた "cinch" ですが、上の引用個所の"cinch" は動詞で、文脈からすると、恐らく血圧計の血圧バンドが締め付ける状態を示している様ですが、辞書で確認します。
・American Heritage Dictionary:
1. To encircle or wrap tightly: "her hair orderly, her nightgown cinched around her neck" (E. Annie Proulx).
2. To tighten (an encircling cord or belt, for example).
・Oxford English Dictionary: Secure (a garment) with a belt.: I've cinched my belts inward relentlessly, drilling new holes as the slimming down process did its job.
納得ですが、英語は "It's a cinch." とは中々いきません。
Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk. The els were slamming at high speed through the power rings above the second-floor window, their powerfull headlights searching the gray air.
"els" は何か高速の未来の乗り物の様ですが何でしょうか？ 複数形であることは確かなので、単数形は "el" のはずと "el" を辞書でみます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: a) An elevated railroad or section of railroad, especially that in Chicago. b) A train running on an elevated railroad.: ‘Sometimes riding the el at midnight takes one on a journey far deeper than merely underground.’
・Collins Dictionary: a shortened form of elevated railway or railroad
これなら日本にも、特に東京にはあちこちにあります。米国ではシカゴのループの他には印象がありません。
The Running Man by Stephen Kingを読み始めました。シュワルツェネッガーの主演で映画化され、ＴＶでも放映されたようですが、この手の映画には興味がないので見た事はありません。S.F.と言っても２０２５年の米国を舞台にしているので、私でもまだ何とか生きている可能性があります。
The man ahead of Richards turned around. He had a nervous, unhappy face and curly hair that came down in a widow's peak. "Say, you don't want to antagonize them, fella. They've got a grapevine."
私の興味は話の内容よりももっぱら英語の表現で、早速気になる表現が上の引用個所にあります。 "hair that came down in a widow's peak" は髪型あるいは生え方を示しているようで、"peak" が使われているので、どこか尖っているに違いありません。辞書で、"peak" の項を色々と見ましたが、髪に関する説明は見当たりませんでした。しかし、"widow's peak" と言う慣用句があることが分かりました。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A V-shaped growth of hair toward the center of the forehead, especially one left by a receding hairline in a man.
Origin: Mid 19th century: so called because it was formerly believed to be a predictor of widowhood for a woman.
・Wiktionary: A descending V-shaped point in the hairline in the middle of the forehead
男の髪の生え方を "widow's peak" とは可笑しな話ですが、そこが慣用句なのでしょう。
Reader's Digest 6月号の記事 Ari & the Cello Chairからの抜粋です。
One day, while dashing between assignments, I mistakenly knocked on the wrong door in an office building. An elderly man with a shock of white hair opened the door, and there, behind him, was a serene tableau: a dark cello and a wooden chair with the design of a lyre on it.
"shock of white hair" ですが、何故こんな所に "shock" が出てくるのか不思議です。 "shock" を辞書で見るとありました、こんな説明が：
・Macmillan Dictionary: hair that is very thick: The man had a shock of white hair.
・Oxford English Dictionary: An unkempt or thick mass of hair: a slender man with an untamable shock of black hair
でも何故 "shock" にこんな意味がと思い語源辞典のOnline Etymology Dictionaryを見ると次の説明がありました。
"thick mass of hair," 1819, from earlier shock (adj.) "having thick hair" (1680s), and a noun sense of "lap dog having long, shaggy hair" (1630s), from shough (1590s), the name for this type of dog, which was said to have been brought originally from Iceland; the word is perhaps from the source of shock (n.2), or from an Old Norse variant of shag (n.). Shock-headed Peter was used in 19c. translations for German Struwwelpeter.
余りすっきりしませんが、"shaggy" + "thick" から "shock of hair" が生まれたと勝手に思うことにします。
Reader's Digest 6月号の健康に関する記事 Weird Sympoms? からの抜粋です。
A small but pleasingly eccentric 2005 study by Dr. Uwe Wollina from Dresden, Germany, came up with the eyebrow-raising finding that men with greying hair and dark eyebrows were four times more likely to have type 2 diabetes than those whose above-eye hair was grey.
...
Another sign of a dicky heart is oddly, having diagonal creases in your earlobes, according to some researchers.
などなど、一見病気とは無関係な個所に変わった兆候が出るという興味深い話でした。
さて上に出てきた "dicky heart" は健康な心臓では無いことは明らかですが、"dicky" はどんな形容詞でしょうか？
・Collins Dictionary: (British, informal) in bad condition; shaky, unsteady, or unreliable ⇒ I feel a bit dicky today
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: weak, especially in health, and likely to fail or suffer from problems: Grandad's got a dicky heart.
I, Peerre Durand, hereby declare that I brought my daughter Lucile late to school today, Monday, 18th January.
But above all don't tell my ex-wife or she'll do me in.
Note: "do someone in"
・Oxford English Dictionary: informal Kill someone.: He tried to have some generals arrested, and some formed a conspiracy to do him in.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to kill someone: They threatened to do me in if I didn't pay up by Friday.
I am the principal of an elementary school. One day a bigger boy was brought into my office for discipline. He had hit two kindergarten classmates on the playground and knocked them down.
"He hit us twice!" the boys said.
"Is this true?" I asked.
"Yes," the older boy said. "I had to hit them twice; they didn't fall down the first time."
STICK-TO-IT-IVENESS: tenaciously resolute; persevering: Stick-to-it-ive people get ahead in life.
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