powder kegs

The Japan Times Online, April 10, 2024の記事タイトル・サブタイトルを引用します。

How to stop the dominoes of war from falling in East Asia
Conflicts elsewhere have implications for East Asia's powder kegs — the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula.

"keg" からはビールなど液体の入った樽を連想しますが、"powder" は液体ではないし？ 辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: a dangerous situation that may suddenly become very violent: We're sitting on a powder keg of tension in the city.
・Collins Dictionary: If you describe a situation or a place as a powder keg, you mean that it could easily become very dangerous.: Unless these questions are solved, the region will remain a powder keg.
・Vocabulary.com: keg (usually made of metal) for gunpowder or blasting powder; a potentially explosive state

"powder" はここでは元々 "gunpowder or blasting powder" を意味していたのですね。

get into the groove

Reader's　Digest ３・４月合併号の記事 "Let's DANCE!" からの引用です。

Wearing all black and sitting on a tufted white ottoman in her sunlit living room, Sarah Robichaud is teaching a routine inspired by modern ballet to 80 students on Zoom. The Bolshoi-trained dancer spreads her arm wide in exaggerated movements to a slow cover of The Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" as her students get into the groove.

"get into the groove" の項目はありませんでしたが、"groove" の項で次の説明がありました。

・Wiktionary: (dated, informal) A good feeling (often as in the groove).
・Urban Dictionary: have passion about doing something and feel motivated to get it done: get into the groove of writing this paper
・Vocabulary.com: A groove is an indentation or rut in something — like the grooves on an old record.
Groove is rooted in an old Dutch word for "furrow" or "ditch." And that's just what a groove is: a carved out line, like wheel ruts in a muddy road or the narrow opening that a sliding door moves in. If you can't "find your groove," you feel off track and out of whack. But when you're "in the groove," everything is working smoothly and you've found a good routine. And if someone says "let's groove!", they want to dance.

溝の意味は知っていましたが、"in the groove" の意味も覚えましょう。

pulled that off

多和田葉子氏の小説 "Scattered All Over the World" を読んでいます。

I wanted to tell Miss Hammer all kinds of things about Fukui. One of the words iiza and nayza in Fukui dialect to help them remember the English words "either" and "neither." The whole class looked a little shocked when I pulled that off. But I was more surprised than anyone.

英語は難しい単語だけではなく、簡単な単語の組み合わせの表現も難しいと感じます。 "pulled that off" の意味を辞書で調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: to succeed in doing something difficult: We pulled off the deal.
・Collins Dictionary: to perform successfully, esp. something requiring courage, daring, or shrewdness: We'll be rich if we can pull the deal off
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to succeed in doing something difficult or unexpected: The central bank has pulled off one of the biggest financial rescues of recent years.

どうしてこの様な意味になるのか不思議。それが分からないので中々覚えられない。

mudra

多和田葉子氏の小説 "Scattered All Over the World" を読んでいます。
Lots of customers who came to Samurai asked me about Buddhism. It seemed as if every Danish woman had a miniature Buddha somewhere at home or in her office, and when they came to the restaurant they'd bend their fingers into complicated shapes and ask me, "What does this mudra mean?" Since many of them practiced zazen, too, sometimes a woman would say, "I can't seem to get my legs into a full lotus position.

"mudra" は文脈からすると、お釈迦さまのポーズを示しているようですが、辞書を見ます。

・Merriam-Webster: one of the symbolic hand gestures used in religious ceremonies and dances of India and in yoga: Sit up straight and put your hands in front of you in a meditation mudra: palms up, left hand on the bottom, right hand on the top with the two thumbs touching.
・Wiktionary: Any of the formal body positions and postures used in yoga and meditation.: For the next few minutes, the audience had sat mesmerized as the sisters performed, fingertips joining and parting in mudras, eyebrows quivering.
・Collins Dictionary: a stylized, symbolic gesture used in dances, rituals, etc. of India; specif., an intricate movement or positioning of the hands or fingers

宗教だけではなくヨガとかインドの舞踊でのポーズについても "mudra" と言われるポーズがあるのですね。

cinch

多和田葉子氏の小説 "Scattered All Over the World" を読んでいます。

When I had finished bandaging Tenzo's ankle, I got some ice out of the freezer, put it in a sandwich bag, and cinched its top with a rubber band. Tenzo lay back on the sofa with his eyes closed.

It's a cinch. の "cinch" は若い時に簡単に覚えたのですが、動詞の "cinch" の意味は直ぐに忘れてしまいます。　前回（8/7/2015）引用しなかった辞書（Vocabulary.com）の説明から一部を引用します。

Cinch is one of those words with many meanings that seem unrelated at first glance. The original 19th-century North American definition, which is still used today, is "saddle girth," the straps that keep a horse's saddle in place. As a verb, cinch means "to pull tight," the way you'd cinch a belt. Informally, to cinch is to make absolutely certain: "It'll cinch her college decision if that school offers a scholarship."
車のシートベルトを締める時に "cinch" を思い出すことにしよう。

Bread is Like the Sun

私の朝食はこの10年以上パンです。ハム、野菜、チーズ、卵を載せたオープンサンドで食べています。

Reader's　Digest ２月号の記事 "Laughter the Best Medicine" からの引用です。
Why is bread like the sun? It rises in the yeast and sets in the waist.