Zoobiquityを読んでいます。
The model of substance addiction as a brain disease made sense to me, but until recently, applying the term "addiction" to behaviors seemed sloppy--a "no-fault," feel-good copout, a lazy, twentieth-century inability to break bad habits.
It's not me, Your Honor. It's my disease.
上に出てきた "copout" はこの後にも次の個所に出て来ました。
He notes that learning, along with behaviors such as gambling, shopping, and sex, "evoke neural signals that converge on a small group of interconnected brain areas called the medial forebrain pleasure circuit." Successful dog training creates what we could call a learning addiction, driven by pleasure circuits. Linden notes that these circuits "can also be co-opted by artificial activators like cocaine or nicotine or heroin or alcohol."
"copout" を辞書で調べます。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to avoid doing something that you should do or that you have promised to do because you are frightened, shy, or you think it is too difficult: She copped out of the parachute jump at the last minute with some feeble excuse.
・Wiktionary: An excuse made in order to avoid performing a task or duty; a reason offered when someone cops out. It was a cop-out to say he couldn't sign the petition because he sprained his wrist.
Zoobiquityを読んでいます。内容は期待以上に面白く、図書館で借りる本の合間に少しづつ読むつもりでしたが、どんどん読み進んでいます。英語の表現や単語も覚えたいものが多く出て来ます。
Drug seeking. Raised tolerance. Attempts to get stronger and more frequent doses.
Begging or jonesing for a drug. If human beings were the only creatures who showed these classic addiction behaviors, then we could say the disease is uniquely human. But clearly we aren't alone. Across the animal kingdom--not just in mammals with highly developed brains--animals react to drugs in comparable, although of course not totally identical, ways.
"jonesing" は人の名前のJonesを思い起こさせますが、関係あるのでしょうか？
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to want something very much: I'm jonesing for a coffee - can we take a break?
・Oxford English Dictionary: Have a fixation on; be addicted to: Palmer was jonesing for some coke again.
Origin 1960s: said to come from Jones Alley, in Manhattan, associated with drug addicts.
やはり関係ありましたね。
"My husband's a packrat How can I get him to throw things away?"
ここでは "packrat" はガラクタを集める人を指している様ですが、どうでしょう？ 辞書で確認します。
・Wiktionary: One who tends to acquire various objects; one who collects, accumulates or has trouble throwing things away.
・Dictionary.com: to save in the manner of a pack rat: I’m looking through the stuff my grandpa pack-ratted away in the attic.
"pack rat" と言う動物がいるのですね。"pack rat" を辞書で見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A ratlike rodent that accumulates a mound of sticks and debris in the nest hole, native to North and Central America. Also called wood rat.
米国でベストセラーになった近藤麻理恵さんのthe life-changing magic of tidying upを読んでいます。 Keep only those things that speak to your heart.
Then take the plunge and discard all the rest. By doing this, you can reset your life and embark on a new lifestyle.
"plunge" に飛び込む意味があるのを知っています。"take the plunge" は慣用句として覚えた方が良さそうです。"take the plunge" で辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: informal Commit oneself to a course of action about which one is nervous.: I was skeptical at first but I eventually decided to take the plunge.
・American Heritage Dictionary: To begin an unfamiliar venture, especially after hesitating: After a three-year engagement, they're finally taking the plunge.
私も長年使わないのに捨てないで部屋のスペースを占領しているガラクタが幾つもありますが、この本を読んだら "Then take the plunge and discard." できるようになるでしょうか？
When I see lovers' names carved in a tree, I don't think it's sweet.
I just think it's scary how many people bring knives on dates.
(From Reader's Digest Feb., 2016)
近藤麻理恵さんのthe life-changing magic of tidying upを読んでいますが、ちょっと引っ掛かる表現が出て来ました。
One client in her twenties defined her dream as "a more feminine lifestyle." She lived in a messy seven-mat room (seven tatami mats take up about ten by thirteen feet of floor space) with a built-in closet and three sets of shelves of different sizes.
この "seven-mat" は注もあり、７畳を指していることは疑問の余地もありません。しかし、４畳半、６畳、８畳は馴染みがありますが、７畳と言うのは聞いたことがないので、気になります。 日本語の原本でどうなっているのか機会があったら確かめたい。
図書館から日本語の原本「人生がときめく片づけの魔法」を借りて、上記の個所を調べると、日本語の原文は「７畳ほどの」となっており、７畳間の部屋ではありませんでした。これなら不自然ではないですね。
mariko kondoのdeclutteringの本がついにベストセラーの一位になったとUSA Todayに出ていました。 図書館の予約で順番待ちだったthe life-changing magic of tidying up（Cathy Hirano翻訳）が借りれるようになったので読み始ました。早速、本の内容に相応しい表現が出て来ました。
In Japan, people believe that things like cleaning your room and keeping your bathroom spick-and-span bring good luck, but if your house is cluttered, the effect of polishing the toilet bowl is going to be limited.
"spick-and-span" は初めて見る表現ですが、文脈からピカピカにすることだろうと推測できます。辞書で確認します。
・Collins Dictionary: extremely neat and clean ⇒ The apartment was spick and span.
・Wiktionary: (idiomatic) Clean, spotless; original sense “like new”. I mopped up the kitchen floor so it was spick-and-span. Originally from “new as new woodchips”
Zoobiquityを読んでいます。
In Tasmania, a leading producer of medical opium, users sometimes sneak into the fields. Ignoring security cameras, they hop fences and gorge on poppy straw and sap. Dosed on the drug, they flail around in circles, damaging crops. Sometimes they pass out in the fields and have to be carried away in the morning. And there's no way to prosecute these trespassing scofflaws, no rehab to send them to.
"scofflaws" は10/28/2013に取り上げた単語です。
さて、この手に負えない犯人の正体はこの文の後に出て来ました。
Because these freeloading opium eaters are wallabies.
"wallabies" は自宅から３分の所になる行船公園ないの小動物園にいますが、小型のカンガルーです。
The Japan Times Online, March 24の記事にあった表現です。
Turkey deported Brussels bomber in 2015, warned Belgium; brothers had long rap sheets
Turkey said Wednesday it had detained and then deported Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the two suicide bombers at Brussels airport, and accused the Belgian authorities of failing to confirm his links to terror.
"rap sheets" の意味を辞書で調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: North American informal A criminal record.: There had probably been a few more crimes added to her rap sheet since then as well.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: an official police document that lists the crimes that a particular person has committed
"rap sheets" が何故この様な意味になるのか調べると、元々 "rap" に次の意味がありました。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A criminal charge, especially of a specified kind: he’s just been acquitted on a murder rap
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a statement accusing someone of a crime, or the punishment that someone is given for a crime: He always said he was jailed on a bum rap (= false accusation).
なるほど。
Zoobiquityを読んでいます。期待以上の面白い内容で、ノンフィクションの本にしては興味深い単語も幾つも出て来ます。
Female robberflies sometimes employ a similar tactic to thwart unwanted sexual advances. Writes entomologist Goran Arnqvist, "If grasped by a male, they exhibit thanatosis (playing dead).
Once the female cease to move the male apparently no longer recognizes the lifeless female as a potential partner, loses interest and so releases the female." Whether or how this insect rape-prevention strategy has implication for human beings is unclear, but Arnqvist posits that since feigning death is so widespread in the insect world, females may have adapted this strategy to protect themselves from unwanted copulations.
"thanatosis" は学術用語なのでしょうか、意味はカッコ書きで補足されていますが一応辞書も見ます。
・Collins Dictionary: (of an animal) the ability to fake death in order to evade a predator or any other unwelcome intrusion
日本語では狸寝入りと言う言葉がありますが、実際に狸も "exhibit thanatosis" があるのでしょうね。
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