misgivings,lend, bygone, Let bygones be bygones

Ill health curtailed Greene's activities shortly before Pearl Harbor, but he was able during the war to serve part-time as a consultant to the State Department's Division of Cultural Relations. He maintained a deep interest in Chinese affairs, and while he gradually, with misgivings, came to regard the Kuomintang as China's best hope, he was outraged by the attacks on John S. Service and other Americans who had reported favorably on Chinese Communist activities. He also lent active encouragement to the development of East Asian studies in the United States. Greene's home in his later years was Worcester, Massachusetts. He died in West Palm Beach, Florida, of cardiac failure and chronic nephritis and was buried in Westborough, Mass. He was survived by his wife, Kate Brown, whom he had married on May 8, 1920, and their two children, Edward Forbes and Katharine Curtis.

misgíving[mis・gíving]

[名][U][C]((通例〜s))疑惑；懸念；不安, 心配

have［feel］ misgivings about one's health
健康に不安を感じる.

mis・gíving・ly

[副]

lend
(lĕnd)

v., lent (lĕnt), lend·ing, lends. v.tr.

1. 1. To give or allow the use of temporarily on the condition that the same or its equivalent will be returned.
   2. To provide (money) temporarily on condition that the amount borrowed be returned, usually with an interest fee.
2. To contribute or impart: Books and a fireplace lent a feeling of warmth to the room.
3. To accommodate or offer (itself) to; be suitable for: The Bible lends itself to various interpretations.

v.intr.
To make a loan. See Usage Note at loan.

idiom:

lend a hand

1. To be of assistance.

[Middle English lenden, alteration of lenen (on the model of such verbs as senden, to send , whose past participle rhymed with lent, past participle of lenen), from Old English lǣnan.]

lender lend'er n.

býgòne[bý・gòne]

[形]((比較なし))((限定))((文))過去の, 昔の；旧式の

memories of bygone days
過ぎ去りし日の思い出.

━━[名]((通例〜s))過去のこと, （特に悲しい）過去の出来事

let bygones be bygones
過去の不和を水に流すことにする, 和解する.

［北部中英語. gone byが一語となったもの］

Let bygones be bygones

Meaning

Allow the unpleasant things that have happened in the past to be forgotten.

Origin

'Let bygones be bygones' is one of the small group of phrases the meaning of which people enquire about more than they do the origin. On the face of it, the meaning is obvious and seems to require no explanation - after all, bygones can hardly be anything other than bygones. We don't have sayings like 'let greengrocers be greengrocers', so is there more to it? As it turns out, there is.

In the 15th century, a bygone was was simply 'a thing that has gone by', i.e. a thing of the past. Shakespeare used it with that meaning in The Winters Tale, 1611:

This satisfaction, The by-gone-day proclaym'd, say this to him.

As time progressed, 'bygones' came to refer specifically to past events that had an unpleasant tinge to them; for example, quarrels or debts. The Scottish churchman Samuel Rutherford recorded that usage of the phrase in a letter during his detention in Aberdeen in 1636. In the letter he regrets the follies of his youth and acknowledges his debt to God in showing him the error of his ways:

"Pray that byegones betwixt me and my Lord may be byegones."

So, there is a little more to the phrase 'let bygones be bygones' than to the more literal 'let sleeping dogs lie' or the old proverb 'let all things past, pass' that was recorded by John Heywood in his 1562 edition of Proverbs. 'Let bygones be bygones' uses both meanings of the word 'bygones' and means, in extended form, 'let the unpleasantness between us become a thing of the past'.

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