村上春樹の短編集 'after the quake' の中の 'Super-Frog Saves Tokyo' から引用します。
"So, then, have I succeeded in gaining your trust with regard to the matter I broached to you last night? Will you join me to fight against Worm?'
上の "broach" は既に（8/18/2016）取り上げている意味で、また "broach" は "broker" と関係があることもかなり前に（10/30/2008）書きました。
村上春樹の短編 'Super-Frog Saves Tokyo' から引用します。
Frog fell silent, but soon, as if dredging up his last ounce of strength, he began to speak again. "Fyodor Dostoevsky, with unparalled tenderness, depicted those who have been forsaken by God. He discovered the precious quality of human existence in the ghastly paradox where by men who had invented God were forsaken by that very God. Fighting with Worm Nights'. I..." Frog's words seemed to founder. "Mr. Katagiri, do you mind if take a brief nap? I am utterly exhausted."
以前ブログに "men created Gods" と書いた覚えがありますが、上の引用文に同じ様な意味の記述 'men who had invented God' があります。
上に出てきた "founder" は既に取り上げていますが（7/14/2010）、"founder" の語源に関するMerriam-Webster's Online Dictionaryの次のコメントを紹介します。
Founder comes from Middle English foundren, meaning "to send to the bottom or "collapse." That word came from the Middle French verb fondrer, and ultimately from the Latin noun fundus, meaning "bottom." When something "founders," it usually hits the bottom in one sense or another. A foundering horse - that is, a disabled one - is likely to collapse to the ground. When a ship founders, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. "Founder" has a broader, figurative sense, too - if your marriage or your career is foundering it isn't doing well and is therefore headed downward.
Frog fell silent, but soon, as if dredging up his last ounce of strength, he began to speak again. "Fyodor Dostoevsky, with unparalled tenderness, depicted those who have been forsaken by God. He discovered the precious quality of human existence in the ghastly paradox where by men who had invented God were forsaken by that very God. Fighting with Worm Nights'. I..." Frog's words seemed to founder. "Mr. Katagiri, do you mind if take a brief nap? I am utterly exhausted."
以前ブログに "men created Gods" と書いた覚えがありますが、上の引用文に同じ様な意味の記述 'men who had invented God' があります。
上に出てきた "founder" は既に取り上げていますが（7/14/2010）、"founder" の語源に関するMerriam-Webster's Online Dictionaryの次のコメントを紹介します。
Founder comes from Middle English foundren, meaning "to send to the bottom or "collapse." That word came from the Middle French verb fondrer, and ultimately from the Latin noun fundus, meaning "bottom." When something "founders," it usually hits the bottom in one sense or another. A foundering horse - that is, a disabled one - is likely to collapse to the ground. When a ship founders, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. "Founder" has a broader, figurative sense, too - if your marriage or your career is foundering it isn't doing well and is therefore headed downward.
村上春樹の短編集の中の 'Thailand' から引用します。
In Bangkok, Satsuki stayed mainly with her Detroit friends. Those were the ones she felt most comfortable with. She had worked at the university hospital in Detroit for almost ten years, researching the immune function of the thyroid gland. Eventually she had had a falling-out with her securities analyst husband, whose dependency on alcohol had grown worse year by year, in addition to which he had become involved with another woman - someone Satsuki knew well.
Satsukiと夫の二人の仲がうまくいっていない文脈からして "falling-out" は口論かあるいは別れることを意味しているのだろうと推測して辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A quarrel or disagreement.: She told several New York newspapers that her fiance has been falsely accused, calling it a, quote, ‘personal vendetta,’ adding that the two had a falling-out at work.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: an argument: Rachel and Fi had a falling-out and now they're not speaking to each other.
口論の喧嘩で、離婚の意味ではないですね。
村上春樹の短編集の中の 'Thailand' から引用します。
She opened her book and tried to read from where she had left off, but forgetting was out of the question.
本一冊をを一気に読んでしまうことはまずないので、ほとんどの場合前に読んでいた終わりから読み始めるのですが、前に読み終えて止めた箇所を表現するのに英語でこの様に簡単に言えるのですね。 "leave off" の意味と用法を辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Discontinue (an activity): He must start every day where he had to leave off the previous evening.
・Dictionary.com: Stop, cease; also, stop doing or using. For example, Mother told the children to leave off running around the house, or Please use a bookmark to show where you left off reading.
村上春樹の短編小説 'All God's Children Can Dance' を読んでいます。
He trod the earth and whirled his arms, each graceful movement calling forth the next in smooth, unbroken links, his body tracing diagrammatic patterns and impromptu variations, with invisible rhythms behind and between rhythms. At each crucial point in his dance, he could survey the complex intertwining of these elements. Animals lurked in the forest like trompe l'oeil figures, some of them horrific beasts he had never seen before.
この "Animals lurked in the forest like trompe l'oeil figures" はどんな意味でしょうか？ フランス語の様な "trompe l'oeil" を辞書で調べます。
・Collins Dictionary: a painting, etc. that creates such a strong illusion of reality that the viewer may not at first be sure whether the thing depicted is real or a representation: I'm restoring the trompe l'oeil, making it look like rosewood with a mahogany inlay.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a painting that is cleverly designed to trick people into thinking that the objects represented in it are really there: He is said to have painted a trompe l'oeil of grapes which was so realistic that birds tried to peck at them.
・Wiktionary: A genre of painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.
Etymology: From the French trompe-l’oeil (“trompe l’oeil”, literally “deceives the eye”), from trompe ("deceives") + l' ("the") + oeil ("eye").
Usage Note: This phrase is sometimes misconstructed as trompe l’oeil and trompe-d’oeil, which, literally interpreted in French, means “deceives of eye".
フランス語のだまし絵が語源なのですね。
Reader's Digest, March 2017の記事 'Life' にあった話です。
The ophthalmologist's very cute assistant was examining my 20-year-old grandson, when out of the blue she said, "You must really work out."
"Well, yes, I do," said my grandson, beaming. "I run and lift weights. Thank you for noticing."
"Oh, you misunderstood," she said.
"You have popped blood vessels in your eyes. We see that with people who work out."
村上春樹の短編をこれまでに幾つか読みましたが、世間の村上春樹人気に反して、彼の作品は私は余り面白いとは思いませんでした。そのせいもあって、彼の長編小説を読む気にはなりませんが、彼が新作を発表する度にマスコミが騒ぐことと、図書館にも彼の本は幾つもあり、特に英語に訳された日本人の作品としては一番多いと言って良いほど何冊もあるので、なるべく薄い本から又読んでみることにしました。まず、阪神大震災後の短編集 'after the quake' を読みます。村上氏は英語のタイトルを小文字にするように指定したと聞いています。その中の最初の話 'All God's Children Can Dance' から引用します。
Until he graduated from elementary school, Yoshiya used to go out with his mother once a week on missionary work. She achieved the best results of anyone in the church. She was so young and lovely and seemingly well bred (in fact, she was well bred) that people always liked her. Plus she had this charming little boy with her. Most people would let down their guard in her presence. They might not be interested in religion, but they were willing to listen to her. She would go from house to house in a simple (but figure-hugging) suit distributin pamphlets and calmly extolling the joys of faith.
"figure-hugging suit" の "figure" も "hugging" も知っている単語ですが、"figure-hugging" とは何でしょうか？ 辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: (of a garment) fitting closely to the contours of a woman's body: a low-cut, figure-hugging dress
・Collins Dictionary: Figure-hugging clothes fit very close to the body of the person who is wearing them. Figure-hugging is usually used to describe clothes worn by women.: figure-hugging cocktail dresses
なるほど、答えを見ると容易に納得できますね。
EMOTIONAL FIRST AIDを読んでいると次のタイトルの項目がありました。
The Psychological Wounds Guilt Inflicts
1. Self-Condemnation: How Guilt Plays
Whac-A-Mole with Our Joy and Happiness
この "Whac-A-Mole" を調べると次の面白い意味でした。
・Oxford English Dictionary:
a) An arcade game in which players use a mallet to hit toy moles, which appear at random, back into their holes.: next time you are near a kiddie amusement park, go in and play a round of whack-a-mole
b) Used with reference to a situation in which attempts to solve a problem are piecemeal or superficial, resulting only in temporary or minor improvement.: the site's security team has an ongoing battle against spammers, but it's a game of whack-a-mole
・Wiktionary: The practice of trying to stop something that persistently occurs in an apparently random manner at the point where the occurrence is noticed, such as terminating spammers’ e-mail accounts or closing pop-up advertisement windows
From the arcade game Whac-A-Mole, which involves quickly and repeatedly hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from holes.
EMOTIONAL FIRST AIDを読んでいます。
For people geographically closed to the attacks, those who chose not to express their emotions had fewer symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder two years later than people who had shared their thoughts and feelings online. Furthermore, the more people wrote (i.e., the longer their posts), the poorer they fared two years later.
"fare" は名詞の料金、運賃の他に動詞として旅をするとか食事をする意味があるのは知っていますが、上の引用個所の動詞の意味が分かりません。辞書を引きます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Perform in a specified way in a particular situation or over a particular period of time.: the party fared badly in the spring elections
・Collins Dictionary: to be in a specified condition or position; get on; go through an experience: he fared well on his trip
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to succeed or be treated in the stated way: How did you fare in your exams?: Low-paid workers will fare badly/well under this government.
Before I Say Good-Byeを読んでいます。Nellと霊媒師、Bonnieとの会話です。
“Hear me out, Bonnie. If you did channel to Adam, what you claim he said to me was untrue. I know now that he did not love me. A man who loves his wife does not have an affair with his assistant. He does not open a safe-deposit box with her under another name. I am sure that Adam didn’t love me because that is precisely what he did.”
“You’re wrong, Nell. Adam did love you.”
“No, I am not. And I’m also not a fool. I know you are helping either Adam or Winifred by trying to get the safe-deposit key that was inadvertently left in Adam’s jacket.”
I’ve hit home, Nell thought. Bonnie Wilson was moving her head from side to side, not so much in denial as in despair.
"hit home" は初めて見る表現ですが、ここではNellは愛していた、そして愛されていたと深く信じていた夫のAdamが、Nellを裏切っていたことを知り、Nellの心にグサッと来たところです。辞書で "hit home" の意味を確認します。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to cause you to realize exactly how unpleasant or difficult something is: The full horror of the war only hit home when we started seeing the television pictures of it in our living rooms.
・Wiktionary: To be especially memorable, meaningful, or significant; to be fully understood, believed or appreciated. Do you think the message really hit home with him?
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: and strike home Fig. to really make sense; [for a comment] to make a very good point. Mary's criticism of my clothes hit home, so I changed. The teacher's comment struck home and the student vowed to work harder
"strike home" とも言うのですね。
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