【英语习语】
a bolt from the blue
【习语注释】
该习语中的bolt本义表示“门闩”,在这里表示“闪电”,the blue代指the sky,即“天空”。所以该习语主要用来喻指“a complete surprise, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky”,即“彻底的惊讶,就像晴空霹雳”,相当于汉语里的“晴天霹雳;出人意表;出乎意料;始料不及;令人吃惊;大感意外”。
【习语运用】
The news that the president was murdered came like a bolt from the blue for many people in this country.
总统被谋杀的消息对于这个国家的许多人来说就如同一个晴天霹雳。
We had been sure he was in New York, so his sudden appearance was a bolt from the blue.
我们大家都认定他在纽约,因此他的突然出现完全出乎我们的意料。
Miss Anne has just got her salary raised , so her decision to resign was a bolt from the blue
安妮小姐刚被加薪,所以她的辞职是我们始料不及的。
Bill did not see it coming at all. It was a complete bolt from the blue, the person said.
比尔一点也没想到会出现这种情况。该人士称,这完全是晴天霹雳。
【闲话习语】
该习语中还存在其他几种说法,如out of the blue或a bolt out of the blue。较早使用该习语的书面记录来自Thomas Carlyle的《The French Revolution》(1837):
“Arrestment, sudden really as a bolt out of the Blue, has hit strange victims.”
一说该习语源自罗马的抒情诗人Quintus Horatius Flaccus,即Horace(贺拉斯,与维吉尔、奥维德并称为古罗马三大诗人),他在自己的作品《Ode 34》中这么写道:
“My prayers were scant, my offerings few,
While witless wisdom fool'd my mind;
But now I trim my sails anew,
And trace the course I left behind.
For lo! the Sire of heaven on high,
By whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven,
To-day through an unclouded sky”
更多内容,请点击The saying 'A bolt from the blue' – meaning and origin.了解。
那么,你还知道英语里“晴天霹雳”的其它说法吗?欢迎留言探讨。
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