2017年9月29日 星期五

lead sb by the nose, wily, prequel to “Walden.” , excerpt


By JOHN PIPKIN
Reviewed by BRENDA WINEAPPLE
This novel of a young Thoreau setting fire to 300 acres of Concord forest is in effect a wily prequel to “Walden.”




The fifth book in the series introduces 1,120 words and 80 idioms (adding up to the 1,200 items mentioned in the title), giving readers an opportunity to learn important words and idioms in business-related English concerning general topics ranging from management strategies to finance and banking matters through interesting excerpts from articles, mainly from The Economist. Three compact discs are included.


Taiwan actress Stephanie Hsiao will play a wily Cupid on TV in excerpts from the Peking Opera "Matchmaker." Acclaimed as the "most beautiful woman in Taiwan ..



Bourgeois also had the advantage of a long life: from 1911, when she was born in Paris into a family of tapestry dealers and restorers, to 2010, when she died in New York at the age of 98, a wily, celebrated art star. That’s seven years more than Picasso had and, like him, she worked almost to the end.


Give the wily Mr Aso credit, too, for leading the opposition by the nose since he came to office on September 24th.


lead sb by the nose INFORMAL
to control someone and make them do exactly what you want them to do

wily
adjective
(of a person) clever, having a very good understanding of situations, possibilities and people, and often willing to use tricks to achieve an aim:
a wily politician
See also wiles.



wi·ly ('pronunciation
adj.-li·er-li·est.
Full of wiles; cunning.

excerpt Show phonetics
noun [C]
a short part taken from a speech, book, film, etc:
An excerpt from her new thriller will appear in this weekend's magazine.

excerpt Show phonetics
verb [T] MAINLY US
This passage of text has been excerpted from her latest novel.

紐約時報
Cloak and Dollar Oversight 
It is time to bring the almighty dollar in from the cold as a principal agent in the wily art of avoiding intelligence oversight.
稍深

The surest way to track power on Capitol Hill is to follow the money through the precincts of “the old bulls” — the ranking committee appropriators who paw the floor at any threat to their authority. All the more interesting, then, that the incoming House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, would risk their ire by forming a select committee to force the two discordant spheres of intelligence committees — budget wielders and policy watchdogs — to find common ground.
For decades, rival committees and egos have been at the heart of Congress’s failure to effectively oversee the government’s mass of overlapping spy agencies. The results have been so bad that the 9/11 commission said they contributed to the lack of preparedness for the terrorist attacks...



Books of The Times

More on the Career of the Genius Who Boldly Compared Himself to God




He was a Nietzschean shaman who regarded art as a mysterious, magical force, offering the possibility of exorcism and transfiguration; a chameleon who effortlessly moved back and forth between Cubism and classicism, irony and sentimentality, cruelty and tenderness; a wily, self-mythologizing sorcerer who inhaled history, ideas and a cornucopia of styles with fierce, promiscuous abandon — all toward the end of exploding conventional ways of looking at the world and remaking that world anew.



top-heavy, Do outside (or out of) the box

Nearby hangs another bit of brilliant upgrading: the 36 airy, tragi-comedic images of “The Fragile.” All were originally sketchbook doodles — Munch-scream faces, top-heavy women or heads. Digitally printed on fabric, these images were supplemented with spider’s legs, nipples and so forth in pale red or blue dye. Bourgeois did this for seven editions, meaning that every print in every edition is unique.




America's corporate world has grown top-heavy thanks to the dominance of large firms. This stagnation in competition isn't hurting profits, but workers' wages instead
Workers benefit when firms must compete aggressively for them
ECONOMIST.COM



The genre represents only about 1.2% of recorded and streamed albums sold—compared with the 26.8% for rock and 22.6% for hip-hop, rhythm and blues combined
Playing outside the box
ECONOMIST.COM

頭重腳輕

top-heavy 

Pronunciation: /tɒpˈhɛvi/ 


ADJECTIVE

1Disproportionately heavy at the top so as to be in danger of toppling:double-decker carriages proved to be unsafe and top-heavy
2(Of an organization) having a disproportionately large number of senior administrative staff:a top-heavy bureaucracy



think outside (or out of) the box




informal Think in an original or creative way.

2017年9月20日 星期三

bong, stoner, done for, done thing, bongo


BBC Breakfast


Big Ben's famous bongs will sound for the last time next Monday before major conservation works - regular bongs won't restart until 2021!



Stuart Hall: ‘He was incredibly well mannered. He wouldn’t raise his voice because that wasn’t the done thing.’ Photograph: David Levene

World’s oldest bongs discovered in Russia

Archaeologists have uncovered 2,400-year-old golden bongs used by royalty to smoke cannabis and opium in Russia. The bongs were uncovered in a secret chamber covered with clay by construction workers during…
DANGEROUSMINDS.NET



Dictionary: bon·go1 (bŏng'gō, bông'-pronunciation
n.pl. -gos.
A large, forest-dwelling antelope (Boocercus eurycerus) of central Africa, having a reddish-brown coat with white stripes and spirally twisted horns.
[Probably of Bantu origin; akin to Lingala mongu, antelope.]

bon·go2 (bŏng'gō, bông'-pronunciation
n.pl. -gos or -goes.
One of a pair of connected tuned drums that are played by beating with the hands.
[American Spanish bongó, probably of West African origin.]

n. - 非洲產大羚羊
2.
n. - 一種用手指敲的小鼓
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ボンゴ

Plot summary forExpresso Bongo (1959)

Johnny Jackson, a sleazy talent agent, discovers teenager Bert Rudge singing in a coffee house. Despite Bert's protestation that he really is only interested in playing bongos, Johnny starts him on the road to stardom. The deal they cut, however, is highly exploitative of the young singer, and their relationship soon begins to go bad. Written by George S. Davis {mgeorges@prodigy.net}
Pop manager Johnny Jackson ducks and dives in the 1950's Soho of coffee bars, strip clubs and clip joints. With singer Bert Rudge he realises he is on to a winner. Renaming him Bongo Herbert and trickily launching his career on network television, he seems to have hit the jackpot. But Johnny is both greedy and naive, and having a successful artiste is new to him. He is soon out of his depth, with only his stripper girlfriend Masie King always there with support. Written by Jeremy Perkins {jwp@aber.ac.uk}





done

Definition of done in English:

VERB

past participle of do1.

ADJECTIVE

Back to top  
2No longer happening or existing:her hunting days were done
3British informal Socially acceptable:therapy was not the done thing then

EXCLAMATION

Back to top  
Used to indicate that the speaker accepts the terms of an offer:‘I’ll give ten to one he misses by a mile!’ called Reilly. ‘Done!’, said the conductor
Phrases


a done deal


1
An agreement that has been finalized:although a few details still had to be worked out, the settlement was a done deal





done for

2
informal In a situation so bad that it is impossible to get out:if the guard sees us, we’re done for
Image result for Honoré Daumier LAFAYETTE DONE FOR





 bong

NOUN




low-pitchedresonant sound of the kind made by a large bell:the clock had struck the hour and it was only three bongs

VERB

[NO OBJECT]Back to top  
(Especially of a bellemit a low-pitchedresonant sound.

Origin

1920s (originally US): imitative.







stoner
Pronunciation: /ˈstəʊnə /

Definition of stoner in English:




NOUN

1informal A person who regularly takes drugs, especially cannabis.
2[IN COMBINATION] British A person or thing that weighs a specified number of stone:couple of 16-stoners
Waiting to inhale: the stoner movie is back


Phil Hoad: What is it that we love about cinema’s stoners? As Inherent...
THEGUARDIAN.COM|由 PHIL HOAD 上傳




2017年9月19日 星期二

prove (SHOW), hair of the dog , for a song

European Union officials want to cut farm subsidies and encourage increased production amid soaring global food prices. But agreeing on which subsidies to remove, or on how to use EU farm money to lower food prices, is proving tough.


Housing bill

A hair of the dog
Jul 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition
Congress has been too lenient on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Illustration by David Simonds
IT IS hard to deal with an alcoholic. But most experts would agree that the answer is not to leave your credit card behind the bar, persuade the pub landlord to stay open till dawn and leave the inebriate to get on with it. Sadly that is how the American Congress, in its new housing bill, is treating those troubled mortgage groups, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.




of the dog that bit you
Whatever made you ill used as a remedy, especially alcohol as a hangover cure. For example, A little hair of the dog will cure that hangover in no time.
This expression, already a proverb in John Heywood's 1546 compendium, is based on the ancient folk treatment for dogbite of putting a burnt hair of the dog on the wound. It is often shortened, as in the example.

Housing bill

A hair of the dog 

for a song

informal
very cheaply:
She bought the bed for a song at an auction.
Because the shop's closing down, most of the stock is going for a song (= being sold very cheaply).

hair of the dog

informal An alcoholic drink taken to cure a hangover.
From hair of the dog that bit you, formerly recommended as a remedy for the bite of a mad dog
Example sentences
  • The team also experimented with the hair of the dog - or drinking a little more alcohol in the morning.
  • I started the day off trying to stave off my hangover with the hair of the dog.
  • Down the ages, there have been numerous ‘folk’ cures and remedies for hangovers, one of the best known being ‘the hair of the dog that bit you’ - another drink on waking.

prove (SHOW)
verb [T; L] proved, proved, ESP. US proven
1 to show a particular result after a period of time:
The operation proved a complete success.
The dispute over the song rights proved impossible to resolve.
[L (+ to be)] The new treatment has proved to be a disaster.

2 prove yourself to show that you are good at something:
I wish he'd stop trying to prove himself all the time.