Reader's Digest Dec/Jan号の記事からの引用です。
You're over 30 and have been with the same guy for three years, but you are not married. Calling him your boyfriend seems childish. Significant other is a euphemistic mouthful. Partner sounds as if you're in business together, and lover seems to steamy. How do you introduce him?
英語が母国語の人が感じる "boyfriend"、"significant other"、"partner" のニュアンスが分かる記事で興味が湧きます。
"mouthful" の意味を辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A long or complicated word or phrase that is difficult to say.: “Galinsoga” was too much of a mouthful for most nonbotanists.
・Collins Dictionary: If you describe a long word or phrase as a mouthful, you mean that it is difficult to say.: It's called the Pan-Caribbean Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Project, which is quite a mouthful.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a word or phrase that is difficult to pronounce or that has a lot of syllables: I've always called myself Henny because it's less of a mouthful than Henrietta.
"significant other" なんて覚えるとつい使いたい言葉ですが、英語が第二言語の我々は聞いて分かれば良く、やたらに使わない方が良いのでしょうね。
ところで、質問に対する適切な紹介法は次の通りでした。
Simple. Introduce the person by name.
Feb.8のThe Japan Timesの記事からの引用です。
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s Olympic realpolitik South Korea's president has both neutralized the threat of North Korean disruption to the Olympic Games and kept a thin-skinned U.S. president firmly on his ...
トランプ大統領は "thin-skinned" の反対の面の皮が厚い方だと思っていましたが、どういう意味なのでしょうか？
・Oxford English Dictionary: Sensitive to criticism or insults.: these bloggers sure are a thin-skinned crowd
・Collins Dictionary: If you say that someone is thin-skinned, you mean that they are easily upset by criticism or unpleasantness.: Some fear he is too thin-skinned to survive the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign.
・Wiktionary: (idiomatic) overly sensitive to criticism; quick to take offence; irritable; touchy: She's rather thin-skinned when it comes to comments about her work.
なるほど、批判されると直ぐにカットなる性格は "thin-skinned" なのですね。
Bob Barth, the spiritual director of the Missouri prayer ministry which supplied some of the experimental prayers, said: 'A person of faith would say that this study is interesting, but we've been praying a long time and we've seen prayer work, we know it works, and the research on prayer and spirituality is just getting started.' Yeah, right: we know from our faith that prayer works, so if evidence fails to show it we'll just soldier on until finally we get the result we want.
祈りに効果は絶対にあると信じている人は、効果のテストは良い結果が出るまで行えば良いと主張している様です。この "soldier on" の意味を調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: soldier on) informal Carry on doggedly; persevere.: Graham wasn't enjoying this, but he soldiered on.
・Collins Dictionary: If you soldier on at something, you continue to do it although it is difficult or unpleasant.: The government has soldiered on as if nothing were wrong.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to continue doing something although it is difficult: I admired the way she soldiered on when her business ran into trouble.
Richard DawkinsのThe God Delusionを読んでいます。
Perhaps there are some genuinely profound and meaningful questions that are forever beyond the reach of science. Maybe quantum theory is already knocking on the door of the un-fathomable. But if science cannot answer some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can? I suspect that neither the Cambridge nor the Oxford astronomer really believed that theologians have any expertise that enables them to answer questions that are too deep for science. I suspect that both astronomers were, yet again, bending over backwards to be polite: theologians have nothing worthwhile to say about anything else; let's throw them a sop and let them worry away at a couple of questions that nobody can answer and maybe never will.
著者のRichard Dawkinsは "bend over backwards" が好みの表現のようで、あちらこちらでこの "bend over backwards" を使っています。辞書で意味を調べます。
・Collins Dictionary: to make a special effort, esp in order to please: he bends over backwards to accommodate his customers
・Wiktionary: (idiomatic, informal) To make a great effort; to take extraordinary care; to go to great lengths.: They bent over backwards to make sure everything was just right for the visit.
フィギュアスケータ、荒川静香のイナバウアーを思い出せば憶えられそうです。
Richard DawkinsのThe God Delusionを読んでいます。
神への祈りは本当に効果があるのかどうかをテストで確かめる話です。
Templeton Foundation, to test experimentally the proposition that praying for sick patients improves their health. 36 Such experiments, if done properly, have to be double blind, and this standard was strictly observed. The patients were assigned, strictly at random, to an experimental group (received prayers) or a control group (received no prayers). Neither the patients, nor their doctors or caregivers, nor the experimenters were allowed to know which patients were being prayed for and which patients were controls. Those who did the experimental praying had to know the names of the individuals for whom they were praying - otherwise, in what sense would they be praying for them rather than for somebody else?
祈りの対象となる患者は勿論祈られていることを知らされず、医者や看護師もどの患者が祈られているか知らない状態でテストされることが "double blind" と言うようですが、辞書の説明を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Denoting a test or trial, especially of a drug, in which any information which may influence the behavior of the tester or the subject is withheld until after the test.: I strongly advise you to conduct proper double-blind tests of any ability you believe you can demonstrate, before attempting to undergo a testing for this prize.
この辞書は "single-blind" についても言及しています。
single-blind: Denoting a test or experiment in which information that may bias the results is concealed from either tester or subject.: Forty consecutive subjects with lipid profile abnormalities were enrolled in a single-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study.
Richard DawkinsのThe God Delusionを読んでいます。
The one thing all his theistic critics got right was that Einstein was not one of them. He was repeatedly indignant at the suggestion that he was a theist. So, was he a deist, like Voltaire and Diderot? Or a pantheist, like Spinoza, whose philosophy he admired: 'I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings'?
...
A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation.
...
A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs.
宗教用語が出てきますね。基本的な用語の様なのでこの際 "theist" と "deist" 覚えたいと思います。意味は引用個所の説明がありますが、元の言葉 "theism" と "deism" の意味を辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: theism: Belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.: Put more succinctly, theism is god-belief, and atheism is its absence.
deism: Belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe. The term is used chiefly of an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind.
"theism" は全知全能の一神教で "deism" は世界は神が作ったがその後のことは神は関与していないと考えていますね。神道やアニミズムもこの範疇に入りそうだ。
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