spayed or neutered

Reader's　Digest 6月号の記事 "LIFE in these United States" からの引用です。

I ran into a neighbor walking his dog. It was his first pet, so I made sure to lavish praise on the cute pup. Not knowing the gender I asked if it was spayed or neutered.
"Neither." he replied. "She's a shepherd mix."

2/13/2014 に "spaying" のタイトルで "spay"、"neuter、"castrate" を取り入れていますが、ネイティブでもこれらの言葉を知らない人がいるのですかね？　それとも犬を連れていた人はネイティブではない方だったのですかね？

Go to the gym

Reader's　Digest 6月号の記事 "LIFE in these United States" からの引用です。

I was working out in the gym when I noticed a man in street clothes, who stood watching me and the others for about 20 minutes before leaving. He came a secondday, staying for a half hour. On the third day, I asked him what he was doing.
He smiled and said, "My doctor said I have to go to the gym."

constitutional

Vladimir Nabokovの "Lolita" の Part 2, Chapter 35から引用します。

So I trudged upstairs. My right hand clutched muffled Chum in my pocket, my left patted the sticky banisters. Of the three bedrooms I inspected, one had obviously been slept in that night. There was a library full of flowers. There was a rather bare room with ample and deep mirrors and a polar bear skin on the slippery floor. There were still other rooms. A happy though struck me. If and when master returned from his constitutional in the woods, or emerged from some secret lair, it might be wise for an unsteady gunman with a long job before him to prevent his playmate from locking himself up in a room.

"constitutional" のここでの意味(a regular walk taken as a form of exercise)は１５年前（6/22/2008）に知りましたが、何故この様な意味があるのか調べるために "constitution" を辞書で見ると：

・Oxford English Dictionary: the condition of a person’s body and how healthy it is: to have a healthy/strong/weak constitution
・Vocabulary.com: A constitution is a statement of the basic principles and laws of a nation, state, or group, such as the U.S. Constitution. Another very common meaning of constitution is the physical makeup of a person.
The noun constitution is from Latin, from constitutus, "set up, established," plus the suffix -ion, meaning "act, state, or condition." So think of a constitution as how a body (yours, the government's) is set up. If you have a strong constitution, it means you don't get sick very often.

なるほど、"constitution" は元々国の事だけではなく人間も対象なのですね。

Lumpers and Splitters

'50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need to Know' by Adrian Furnhamの19章Multiple intelligencesからの引用です。

'Lumpers' stress the concept 'g' (general intelligence) while 'splitters' argue that intelligence is made up of very different specific abilities not closely related. Lumpers point to the evidence that suggests that when individuals are given a range of different tests of ability (verbal reasoning, spatial intelligence, memory) they correlate highly. That is, bright people tend to do well on all of them; average people average; and less bright people poorly. Splitters point to many individual cases of people with great skills in on area but poor abilities in others.
Most academic psychologists are lumpers, believing that the extensive available evidence points to the fact that people tend to score similarly on very different tests. Indeed this is the assumption underlying conventional test measurement.

"Lumpers and splitters" は対語で覚えた方が良さそうですね。 "lumpers" の単語の方は余り目にしないので辞書で確認します。

・Collins Dictionary: Biology informal: a taxonomist who believes that classifications should emphasize similarities among organisms and therefore favors large, inclusive taxa (opposed to splitter)
・Wiktionary: (biology, linguistics) A scientist in one of various fields who prefers to keep categories such as species or dialects together in larger groups.
この言葉を掲載していない辞書も多いのでWikipediaも見てみました。以下は冒頭部分からの引用です。
Lumpers and splitters are opposing factions in any discipline that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories. The lumper–splitter problem occurs when there is the desire to create classifications and assign examples to them, for example schools of literature, biological taxa and so on. A "lumper" is a person who assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" is one who makes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways.

baggy-eyed

先週久しぶりに旅行に行きました。　食事が豪華過ぎたので体重が増えました。　今日からジムで体を絞らないといけない。　夏は暑いので旅行はしない方が良いとも思いました。　
さて、Vladimir Nabokovの "Lolita" の Part 2, Chapter 35から引用します。

Speaking of bathrooms I was about to visit a third one when master came out of it, leaving a brief waterfall behind him. The corner of a passage did not quite conceal me. Gray-faced, baggy-eyed, fluffily disheveled in a scanty balding way, but still perfectly recognizable, he swept by me in a purple bathrobe, very like one I had. He either did not notice me, or else dismissed me as some familiar and innocuous hallucination and, showing me his hairy calves, he proceeded, sleepwalker-wise, downstairs.

十年前（4/11/2013）に取り上げた "baggy eyes" と同じ意味でしょうね。
いずれの表現も辞書での用例は見当たらないので余り使われない表現なのでしょうか？　"puffy eyes" はどうでしょうか？

persecutory delusions

'50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need to Know' by Adrian Furnhamの11章Delusionsからの引用です。

However, other researchers point to the fact that many with the disorder have had 'difficult' childhoods characterized by instability and turbulence, callousness and coldness. Thus some psychoanalytically inclined psychologists have seen delusions as an impairment in the ego defence system aimed to protect and bolster the self. So they see the paranoid or persecutory delusions as an attempt to project onto others things that the individuals do not like to admit in themselves.

"paranoid or persecutory delusions" とあるので "persecutory delusions" の意味は "paranoid" とだいたい同じようですが、Outlookの検索では次の辞典しか説明がありませんでした。

・Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine: A fixed, false, and inflexible belief that others are engaging in a plot or plan to harm an individual.
・Wikipedia: A persecutory delusion or persecution complex is a common type of delusional condition in which the affected person believes that harm is going to occur to oneself by a persecutor, despite a clear lack of evidence. The person may believe that they are being targeted by an individual or a group of people. Persecution delusions are very diverse in terms of content and vary from the possible, albeit improbable, to the completely bizarre. The delusion can be found in a multitude of disorders, being more usual in psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and delusional disorder.

"persecution complex" とも言われるとありましたが、これで調べると普通の辞書にも次の様な説明がありました。

・Oxford English Dictionary: a strong false belief or fear that other people hate you or are trying to harm you
・Collins Dictionary: an acute irrational fear that other people are plotting one's downfall and that they are responsible for one's failures: The man with a persecution complex who sees conspiracies where there are none.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: People with a persecution complex suffer from the feeling that other people are trying to harm them.

日本語の被害妄想のことですね。

acronyms - sequel

略語(頭字語)問題の解答とReader's Digestに記載の例文を示します。

DOE: B depends on experience
Andre felt hesitant to apply for jobs that listed the salary as DOE.
SEP: A somone else's problem
Malcolm dismissed the fallen stop sign as SEP and kept walking.
ABC: B airway, breathing and circulation
Paramedics check ABCs to determine whether a person needs CPR.
ROM: C range of motion
Debbie has lost ROM in her arthritic shoulder.
TMI: A too much information
Nelli wondered whether some of the details in her birth story were TMI for her co-workers.

acronyms

Reader's Digest 5月号のWORD POWERクイズは略語(頭字語)の意味を問うものでした。
三択問題ですが、15問の内知らない５個の略語は全部外れました。外れた略語は以下の５個です。

DOE: A date of event; B depends on experience; C day off due to exhaustion
SEP: A somone else's problem; B solar energy production; C seismic event prediction
ABC: A against book censorship; B airway, breathing and circulation; C access to basic care
ROM: A royal order of merit; B rate of mortality; C range of motion
TMI: A too much information; B test of machine; C toxic materials index

ROMはread only memoryが選択肢にあれば分かったのですが。
皆さんは上記の略語の意味はA、 B、Cの何れか分かりますか？　

black thumb

Reader's Digest 5月号の記事 "Love is a Hoot" から引用します。
Beloved Blossoms
My husband, Larry, was excellent at giving unique gifts. One Chrismas, he gave me 100 daffodil bulbs of all kinds and colors. It is my favorite flower, tied to special memories of my grandmother. However, I have a black thumb and thought, Oh no! Am I going to have to plant all of these? Reading my mind, Larry assured me that planting was part of the gift. He planted all 100 bulbs all over our yard, and they blossom into a beautiful landscape each spring. Larry passed a few years ago, but each spring when the daffodils boom. I know his love still surrounds me.

"black thumb" は聞いたことがありませんが、"green thumb" の反対を意味しているのは明白です。　辞書に掲載されているか確認します。

・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary:　a notable inability to make plants grow : a tendency to fail as a gardener: In addition, I have a black thumb that can kill a petunia at 10 paces.
・Wiktionary: A lack of skill in gardening; brown thumb.: First of all, call me Sam; second, you should know I have a black thumb when it comes to anything other than cactus.

私も家庭菜園の真似事をしているのですが、"green thumb" でわなく "black thumb" ですね。

Cutting the Mustard

Reader's Digest 5月号の記事 "Love is a Hoot" から引用します。
Cutting the Mustard
I stepped away from making my turkey sandwich for just a moment. When I got back, my husband had added the mustard for me in the shape of a heart. It wasn't some grand gesture but, nine years later, I still think abou it and smile.

タイトルの表現 "Cutting the Mustard" は過去２度（6/16/2010、1/28/2021）取り上げています。