时间:2019-02-03 作者:英语课 分类:实用英语


英语课

女主角:Nice pen.


男主角:I got it over there. It's a steal.


  在一部电视片剧集中,男女主角在路边露天咖啡室聊天时说上述两句话。


  假如你不看中文字幕,听到这两句话会怎样 理解呢?


  It's a steal 是不是指笔是偷来的呢?男主角是贼吗?


  非也,非也。


  我们可用上文下理来理解这句地道英文口语的意思。


  女主角说Nice pen是因为看到男主角有一枝漂亮的笔,这句话自然有赞美的意思,即“这笔蛮别致的”。


  男主角答:I got it there, 再说it's a steal.


  A steal 是英美流利口语,指“极廉宜的东西”。


  男主角不是贼。他说的话意思是:“我在那边买的,很便宜。”


  由于cheap有低劣蹩脚之意,于是近年流行用it's a steal取代it's cheap。


  七十年代出版的梁实秋主编的《最新实用英汉辞典》中,steal还没有便宜货的释义,可见it's a steal是

近年流行的口语。


  说到字典,比方你听到外籍朋友说three hundred dollars for this

dictionary - isn't that a bit steep。


  Steep在句中是什么意思呢?


  相信大家不会把steep解作“陡峭”或“险峻”吧,原因是这两个释义在汉语中不能与字典搭配。


  大家应可猜到steep解作“昂贵 ”。这话的意思正是“这本字典要三百块钱,是不是贵了一点?”


  学了这个惯用法后,你要说“那所房子索价六百万元是太贵了点”,自然可以脱口说出:Six million

dollars for that house is a bit steep.


  除了steep,指“昂贵”的常用英文单词有四:expensive, costly 1, pricey,

dear。五六十年代常在教科书看到的dear现在已甚少听到外国人用了。试举两个例句


  Meat is dear this week. (这个星期肉很贵)


  Diamonds are very dear. (钻石价格非常昂贵)


  这些句子只能在英国旧小说中看到。在现代英文口语(modern colloquial 2

English)中,dear已很少用。


  且听以下三句电视对白:


  男主角在车行看中了一辆名牌轿车,于是问推销员:How much does it cost?(这辆车多少钱?)


  售货员答:It comes to $15,000.(一万五千块)


  男主角面带不悦之色说:It's a rip off.(贵得太离谱了。)


  Rip off 在美丽俚语中有“敲竹杠”的含义。这也是英汉用词的巧合。


  后来男主角还是忍痛买了那车。他去接朋友时说:It cost me an arm and a

leg。


  大家猜到这句话是什么意思吗?


  英美人的俚语(slang and colloquial expressions)大都很形象化,活灵活现,

绘声绘影。


  试试用“影像联想法”理解这话。Cost somebody an arm and a leg,要某人的一

手一脚,真要命,引伸指“非常昂贵”。


  It cost me an arm and a leg指“那车花了我很多钱”。

 



adj.昂贵的,价值高的,豪华的
  • It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
  • This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用,左不过贵了些。
adj.口语的,会话的
  • It's hard to understand the colloquial idioms of a foreign language.外语里的口头习语很难懂。
  • They have little acquaintance with colloquial English. 他们对英语会话几乎一窍不通。
学英语单词
AACRAO
acceptance of materials report
airdrying
angle beam ultrasonic examination
arthrodia
automatic water quality monitor
balancing layer
Ban Huai Pong
Banbān, 'Irq
brand marketing
buyout repo
cantilever hood
carbohydrate recognition domain
cauterisations
ceramic fiber felt
complex value
constringence
correctly
counter-clockwise rotation
crystal fiber laser
cuneiform bones
dielectric membrane
doctuss
drynursed
duckish
effective distortion
epic film
fashion element
flat sliding
fund warrant
gauge glass cutter
geologic-topographic map
get an egg on the head
go flatting
gollania varians (mitt) broth
grand pas de basque
herringboning
high pressure arc discharge
histabutyzine
horizontal filter
hot isostatic bonding
hypotyposes
Iatrobdella
induction field
infective stricture of ureter
Intermarket spread swaps
isentropic procedure
Kharabali
kinetic energy in rotation
Krivorozh'ye
lea management
magnetic instrumentation tape
magnetic original
Max Perutz
methoxylvalue
Monggo
motor gliders
MVCF
nasus cartilagineus
negative ignore gate
nepro
not care for
osteogeny
paccha
parjure
pass-port
perforated wall
perore
Philodemus
pooling
pretype
proteinomimetic
regular closed subset
remede
repairable system
restricted publication
ride the bench
robbinss
root/shoot ratio
rozinski
runner-up finish
Santa Irene
secant conic chart
second law of motions
Shetland sheep dog
shunt coil
slave pedestal
soil water belt
spindle drive
super-duty fire clay
superheater external covering
ticketsnow
trival
tunkhannock
Ucar
weak topology
weighted squared error loss function
wet crepe
whip-fish
white clover
Zamboanguita
zdpr