my secret questions

Reader's Digest 6月号の記事 'Laugh Lines' からの引用です。
I hate it when I forgot my password and can't answer my secret questions right. It's like I don't even know me.

take cover

George Orwellの 'Homage to Catalonia' を読んでいます。

It was an extraordinary form for the training of a guerrilla army to take. Obviously if you have only a few days in which to train a solder, you must teach him the things he will most need; how to take cover, how to advance across open ground, how to mount guards and build a parapet--above all, how to use his weapons.
オーウェルが参加した人民軍は入った時は武器もないので武器の使い方の訓練もなかったそうだ。ところで "take cover" は何でしょう？

・Oxford English Dictionary: Protect oneself from attack by ducking down into or under a shelter.: if the bombing starts, take cover in the basement
・McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs: to seek shelter from gunfire or other projectiles. As soon as the firing started, we took cover behind a huge boulder.

in the saddle

George Orwellの 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' を読みたいと思っているのですが、いつも貸出中になっていて借りれません。そこで小説ではありませんが、George Orwellがスペイン内戦に参加した体験を元にした 'Homage to Catalonia' を読むことにしました。
The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the begining it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had even been in town where the working class was in the saddle.
"in the saddle" は慣用句でしょう。辞書で調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: In a position of control or responsibility.: The drama immediately puts the working class in the saddle as the necessary actor and rescuer of the said society.
・Collins Dictionary: If you are in the saddle, you are in power or in control of a situation.: The armed forces and the hardliners are now going to be in the saddle.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: in charge or in control: The chairman is back in the saddle after his heart attack.

cadging cigarett

James BaldwinのGiovanni's Roomを読み始めました。どうも主人公はgay, bisexualのようで、何故この本が私の読む本リストに紛れ込んでいたのか分かりませんが、最近話題になることが多くなったLGBTについて参考になれば良いかな？
There were the usual paunchy, bespectacled gentlemen with avid, sometimes despairing eyes, the usual, knife-blade lean, tight-trousered boys. One could never be sure, as concerns these latter, whether they were after money or blood or love. They moved about the bar incessantly, cadging cigarettes and drinks, with something behind their eyes at once terribly vulnerable and terribly hard.
"cadging cigarettes and drinks" の意味が分かりません。辞書で "cadge" を調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Ask for or obtain (something to which one is not strictly entitled): He and Nolan cadged free rides on trams driven by Nolan's father.
・Collins Dictionary: to get (food, money, etc) by sponging or begging: Can I cadge a cigarette?
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to (try to) get something from someone else without paying for it: He's always cadging free meals and free trips from/off his clients.
物をねだるだけではなく車に只で乗せてもらう時にも使えるのですね。

case-sensitive

Reader's Digest 6月号の記事 'Laugh Lines' からの引用です。
I've just reset my password to Delicate Luggage Handler, as I was told it had to be case-sensitive.

return to the fold

村上春樹のUndergroundを読んでいます。
To all of them I posed the same question, that is, whether they regretted having joined Aum. Almost every one ansewered: "No, I have no regrets. I don't think those years were wasted. "Why is that? The answer is simple -- because in Aum they found a purity of purpose they could not find in ordinary society. Even if in the end it became something monstrous, the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them, and nothing else can easily replace it.
In that sense, then the Aum path is stil open to them. I don't mean that former members are likely to return to the fold. They are aware now that it is a very flawed and dangerous system, and agree that the years they passed in Aum were filled with contradictions and defects. At the same time I got the impression that, to a greater or lesser degree, there is still within them an Aum ideal--a utopian vision, a memory of light, imprinted deep inside them. If one day something that contains a similar light passes before their eyes (it needn't be a religion) what is indide them now will be pulled in that direction. In this sense what is most dangerous for our society at the moment is not Aum Shinrikyo itself, but other "Aum-like" entities.
村上春樹のUnderground自体はサリン事件の被害者へのインタビューで構成されていますが、Undergroundの続編の様な形でオウム真理教の元信者へのインタビューも実施し、上記はそこからの引用です。
今日取り上げた "return to the fold" は文脈からすると「元の仲間のところに戻る」意味の様ですが、辞書で "the fold" の意味を確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: the fold) A group or community, especially when perceived as the locus of a particular set of aims and values.: he's performing a ritual to be accepted into the fold
・Collins Dictionary: When someone joins an organization or group, you can say that they have come into the fold. When they leave the organization or group, you can say that they leave the fold.: The E.U. wanted to bring the U.S. back into the fold.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: your home or an organization where you feel you belong: Her children are all away at college now, but they always return to the fold during the holidays.

回線トラブル

日曜日の夜にインターネットが私のＰＣで使えなくなり、翌日調べると固定電話も発信・受信ができないのに気が付き、スマホで調べると東京地区等でＯＣＮがトラブル発生とありました。しかし、まさかそんな広い範囲で一日以上回線のトラブルが解消されないのはあり得ないと思い、原因・故障個所は我が家だけと思っていましたが、結局昨夜トラブルは自然と解消していることが分かりました。考えて見ると、現在回線の契約をどことしているのかも怪しくなりました。大昔ＮＴＴと契約したのは確かですが、その後東日本ＮＴＴに変わり、回線もＡＤＳＬ、光に変更されたの覚えていますが、ここ数年自動振り込み、ペーパーレスにしているので回線料も幾らどこに払っているのかも意識していませんでした。NTT.comに支払いをしていると思いますが、これがプロバイダーとの契約だけなのか、回線料も含まれているのか怪しい。
いずれにせよ、ペーパーレスはＰＣやインターネットが故障した時は非常に面倒なことになることを実感しました。
ブログのEnglish Collectionは明日から再開する予定です。

nitpicking

Reader's Digest 6月号の記事 'All in A Day's Work' からの引用です。
To resolve work conflicts between management and staff, I brought both sides together and asked employees to jot down key words on a flip chart. One participant complained about management's tendency to interfere and wrote the word nitpicking.
A manager leaped to his feet to ask, "Shouldn't there be a hyphen between nit and picking?"

cut the apron strings

村上春樹のUndergroundを読んでいます。
My mother never watches TV talk shows and had no idea about Aum. When I told her that becoming a renunciate meant we couldn't see each other again, she cries a little. She had no idea. Though she'd thought is strange how my health and appetite had improved. "I suppose it's time for me to cut the apron strings," she said.

"cut the apron strings" も慣用句に違いありません。
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: to stop providing support: The company has relied on government support, but the government is now threatening to cut the apron strings.
・Urban Dictionary: breaking free from dependency on another person: Once I graduated from college, my mom had to cut the apron strings. she would no longer enable me. Tough love, you know.
・Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary: If a person, a country or an organization cuts the apron strings, they become independent. At 21, I was still living the life I'd been living when I was 15. I just had to get away from that, to cut those apron strings. Note: Verbs such as loosen or let go of can be used instead of cut.
元々は母がエプロンの紐を子供に繋いで、家事をしている時でも子供が危険な目に会わない様にしていたことから発生した慣用句で、"the apron strings" は母の子に対する保護・干渉の意味から、上記辞書にもあるように母と子の関係以外にも比喩として使われる様になったようだ。

give them the slip

村上春樹のUndergroundを読んでいます。
After the drug initiation everyone was dead tired, so the door was left open for a time. I wasn't too zonked out by then so I prepared a change of clothes and after making sure the coast was clear, dressed and crept out of the building. There were guards, but I managed to give them the slip.
上の引用個所の最後に出てきた "give them the slip" は文脈からすると警備員の目を盗んで抜け出すことが出来たことを意味していると推測できますが、"give them the slip" は慣用句と思われますので、辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Evade or escape from someone.: Of course I followed him, but they must have seen me and they gave me the slip.
・Collins Dictionary: If you give someone the slip, you escape from them when they are following you or watching you.: He gave reporters the slip by leaving at midnight.
・Wiktionary: To evade, escape, or get away from somebody.: The police chased the suspect for two days before he finally gave them the slip and vanished.