Stacey Dooley: "Some people give me a hard time and tell me to ‘speak properly’. Some don’t like my accent or the fact I’m from Luton, but we often beat middle-class, middle-aged men in the ratings."
From the Archives, November 2005: That time Mark E. Zuckerberg swung by Cambridge to hire some new employees and announced he wasn't coming back to Harvard College. http://ow.ly/Sn1ff
Back to work today? Not to panic. Have a read of our 2014 guide to skiving: how to thrive at work with the minimum of efforthttp://econ.st/1yD3lIA
Skimping on sleep wears down your body in so many ways.
Getting Less Than 5 Hours of Sleep Leads to False Memories
Losing out on sleep can affect your memory, a study shows
TIME.COM
Google and ilk can't shirk responsibility for ranters
Sydney Morning Herald
The blogspot.com site which he uses is operated by Google, based in California and registered in Delaware. It requires a Google account and gmail address. One person posted an online comment about this yesterday, saying they had tried to report the ...
swing by something to make a short visit to a person or place
ilk,
n.
Type or kind: can't trust people of that ilk.
pron. Scots
The same. Used following a name to indicate that the one named resides in an area bearing the same name: Duncan of that ilk.
[Middle English ilke, same, from Old English ilca.]
WORD HISTORY When one uses ilk, as in the phrase men of his ilk, one is using a word with an ancient pedigree even though the sense of ilk, "kind or sort," is actually quite recent, having been first recorded at the end of the 18th century. This sense grew out of an older use of ilk in the phrase of that ilk, meaning "of the same place, territorial designation, or name." This phrase was used chiefly in names of landed families, Guthrie of that ilk meaning "Guthrie of Guthrie." "Same" is the fundamental meaning of the word. The ancestors of ilk, Old English ilca and Middle English ilke, were common words, usually appearing with such words as the or that, but the word hardly survived the Middle Ages in those uses.
skive1
skʌɪv/
BRITISHinformal
verb
- 1.avoid work or a duty by staying away or leaving early; shirk."I skived off school"
synonyms: malinger, pretend to be ill, feign/fake illness; More
noun
- 1.an instance of avoiding work or a duty by staying away or leaving early.
- shirkʃəːk/verb
- 1.avoid or neglect (a duty or responsibility)."I do not shirk any responsibility in this matter"
nounarchaic- 1.a person who shirks.
[動](他)〈仕事・責任などを〉のがれる, 避ける, 回避する；…をなまける((doing)).
━━(自)仕事をずるける, 責任をのがれる.
━━[名]（またshírk・er）仕事［義務］を忌避する人；なまけ者, 横着者.rant[rant]
- レベル：社会人必須
- 発音記号[rǽnt]
[動](自)大言壮語する, 大声を張り上げる, わめく；激しくしかる；大声で説教をする
rant and rave
どなりちらす.
どなりちらす.
━━(他)…を大声で言う((out)).
━━[名]
1 [U]大言壮語, 誇張した話；長広舌.
2 大げさな言葉.
rant・er
[名]わめく人.
rant・ing・ly
[副]swing the lead
- swing the lead
((英古風))
(1) 仮病などを使って職務を怠ける.
(2) ほらを吹く, 大げさに言う.
(1) 仮病などを使って職務を怠ける.
(2) ほらを吹く, 大げさに言う.
Swing the lead
more like this...
...other phrases about:
Meaning
To shirk one's labour; to
malinger.
Origin
I can recall that, as a child, I
was attracted to an explanation of the phrase 'swinging the lead' that went like
this:
Sailors used to use lines weighted with lead in order to check how deep the water was beneath their ships. The lazier mariners skimped on the task and just swung the lead in the air, calling out a fictitious depth.
Many years on and, as an
etymologist, my heart doesn't exactly sing when I receive yet another email
starting with "I've always believed that...". It seems time to revisit that
explanation of 'swinging the lead' that I took on trust in my formative years
and to check the facts.
A good place to start with
research into nautical language is Admiral W. H. Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book, 1867. This
is a glossary of the terms and expressions used by British sailors, most of
which date from when 'Britannia ruled the waves', the 18th and 19th centuries.
It is clear that sailors did indeed measure the depth of water by dropping in
lines weighted with lead. The weights were called 'sounding leads' and Smyth
includes this entry:
Lead, Sounding : An instrument for discovering the depth of water; it is a tapered cylinder of lead, of 7, 14 or 28 lbs. weight, and attached, by means of a strop, to the lead-line, which is marked at certain distances to ascertain the fathoms.Deep-sea Lead: A lead of a larger size, being from 28 to 56 lbs in weight, and attached to a much longer line.To Heave the Lead: to throw it into the sea as far ahead as possible, if the ship is underway.
The leads were
sometimes hollow and filled with tallow wax, so as to bring up particles of
whatever was on the sea floor, this being useful information to the ship's
helmsman. The ropes were knotted at six-foot (fathom) intervals and sounding was
also known as 'fathoming', that is. measuring in fathoms. This may be the source
of the term 'fathoming out'.
The depth of water is crucial to
sailors and, before the development of mechanical depth-sounders and, in the
20th century, SONAR echo-location, 'heaving the lead' was the only way of
determining it.
[Another bane of etymology is
the false acronym. SONAR
is a genuine example of an early acronym, meaning 'SOund NAvigation and
Ranging'.]
The leadsmen's role was important
and physically demanding - they were called on to throw weights of up to 56 lbs
into the sea and then haul them up at frequent intervals. The notion that they
might have avoided the exertion of their task seems easy to believe. Counting
against it is the fact that they would have had little opportunity for deception
as they were supervised by officers and had to show the material that adhered to
the tallow to the ship's navigator.
You may have noticed that, while
Admiral Smyth mentions 'heaving the lead', he makes no mention of 'swinging the
lead'. Indeed, until the early 20th century, nor did anyone else - the phrase is
first recorded during WWI. In 1917, the magazine To-Day published this:1
"It is evident that he had 'swung the lead' (using Army phrase) until he got his discharge."
It's possible that the phrase was
coined by soldiers in allusion to a supposed form of malingering by sailors. It
may also be that 'swing the lead' was a corruption of 'swing a leg', which was a
term previously used in both the British Army and Navy, with the same meaning.
What is certain is that 'swinging the lead' wasn't used by sailors themselves in
the days of sail.
And I had 'always believed
that'.... At least my childish belief, although it appears now to have been
overly gullible, did initiate an abiding curiosity about phrase
origins.
[ NO OBJECT]
skimp
Line breaks: skimp
Pronunciation: /skɪmp/
沒有留言:
張貼留言