这8个短语很日常，起源却出人意料

　　有点懵了吧！来普特英语小编告诉你。

　　1. Pass the buck¹

　　推卸责任

　　We all know that buck is informal American English for a dollar. Indeed, it can also be used for an Australian dollar, a New Zealand dollar, a South African rand, and an Indian rupee – but none of those senses are related to pass the buck, meaning ‘shift the responsibility to someone else’.

　　我们都知道buck表示美元，是一个不正式的美式英语词。它还能用来指澳元、新西兰元、南非币和印度卢比——但是没有一个意思和推卸责任的短语有关。

　　This particular buck is ‘an article placed as a reminder² in front of a player whose turn it is to deal at poker³’ – which means passing it make much more sense. This item also gives us the phrase the buck stops here; both figurative phrases have moved far beyond their poker origins.

　　这里的buck特指用来提醒打扑克牌的一件东西，这样传递它就讲得通了，而且还有一个短语是责任止于此。这些比喻性的短语比它们源自扑克牌的用法更常用。

　　2. Turn over a new leaf

　　洗心革面

　　You might have wondered what raking the lawn had to do with the decision to ‘start to act or behave in a better or more responsible way’. Well, it has nothing to do with foliage⁴, in case you were wondering, but relates to another common use of leaf: one of the pages in a book. A similar derivation gives us to take a leaf out of someone’s book, meaning ‘imitate or emulate⁵ someone in a particular way’.

　　你或许会好奇用耙子耙草坪跟洗心革面有什么关系。事实上，它和枝叶没有关系，而是和leaf另一个常用的意思有关：书页。一个相似的衍伸词组是take a leaf out of someone’s book，表示“模仿某人或把某人当做偶像”。

　　3. Push the envelope

　　挑战极限

　　This envelope isn’t the sort you’d put letters in. As we discovered in a post about the linguistic⁶ influence of aviation, push the envelope was originally aviation slang relating to graphs of aerodynamic performance and exceeding the set of limiting combinations of speed and altitude.

　　这里的envelope并不是平时放信件的那种，这个短语最初是航空俚语，和空气动力性能有关，超出了速度和海拔的限定，所以有挑战极限的意思。

　　4. Ring the changes

　　换汤不换药

　　An editor might ring the changes in red, but this phrase – meaning ‘vary the ways of expressing or doing something’ – has nothing to do with pen and paper. Instead, it came originally with allusion⁷ to bell-ringing and the different orders in which a peal⁸ of bells may be rung.

　　它最初和响铃的典故有关，有不同的订单，接着会有一串响铃的声音。

　　5. Leave someone in the lurch⁹

　　不顾他人的安危

　　Lurch means ‘an abrupt¹⁰ uncontrolled movement, especially an unsteady tilt¹¹ or roll’. It turns out that they’re unrelated; the word  lurch in this phrase derives¹² from the French lourche, which is the name of a game resembling backgammon. In French, you might find it in demeurer lourche, ‘be discomfited’.

　　Lurch表示突然失控的移动，尤其是不稳定的倾斜或滚动。但和这个短语没有关系，短语里的lurch起源于法语词lourche，是个类似十五子棋的游戏名称。

　　6. Lick into shape

　　塑造，整顿

　　In Medieval Europe, it was believed that bears’ young were born shapeless, and licking into shape refers to the alleged¹³ practice of bears licking their offspring into ursine¹⁴ form.

　　在中世纪的欧洲，人们以为年幼的熊出生时是不成形的，licking into shape据称指的是熊会舔它们的后代，让它们变成像熊的样子。

　　7. Flash in the pan

　　昙花一现的人或物

　　The flash arises from an explosion of gunpowder¹⁵ within the pan, which was a part of the lock that held the priming in old types of gun.

　　这里的flash源自火药的爆炸，是旧式手枪点火锁的一部分。

　　8. Pull out all the stops

　　全力以赴

　　These stops are organ pipes of a particular tone and range of pitch and the handles which control them; by pulling all the stops out, you would create a louder, more elaborate sound.

　　这里的stops是指特殊音调的风琴管、音域和控键，把这些都拔掉后，你能制造更大更精美的声音。

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