(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
Now, the VOA Special English program, Words and Their Stories.
Baloney is a kind of sausage that many Americans eat often. The word also has another meaning in English. It is used to describe something – usually something someone says – that is false or wrong or foolish.
Baloney sausage comes from the name of the Italian city, Bologna. The city is famous for its sausage, a mixture of smoked, spiced meat from cows and pigs. But baloney sausage does not taste the same as beef or pork alone.
Some language experts think this different taste is responsible for the birth of the expression "baloney." Baloney is an idea or statement that is nothing like the truth...in the same way that baloney sausage tastes nothing like the meat that is used to make it.
Baloney is a word often used by politicians to describe the ideas of their opponents.
The expression has been used for years. A former governor of New York state, Alfred Smith, criticized some claims by President Franklin Roosevelt about the successes of the Roosevelt administration. Smith said, "No matter how thin you slice it, it is still baloney."
A similar word has almost the same meaning as baloney. It even sounds almost the same. The word is "blarney." It began in Ireland about 1600.
The lord of Blarney Castle, near Cork, agreed to surrender the castle to British troops. But he kept making excuses for postponing the surrender. And he made them sound like very good excuses. "This is just more of the same blarney."
The Irish castle now is famous for its Blarney stone. Kissing the stone is thought to give a person special powers of speech. One who has kissed the Blarney stone, so the story goes, can speak words of praise so smoothly and sweetly that you believe them, even when you know they are false.
A former Roman Catholic bishop of New York City, Fulton Sheen, once explained, "Baloney is praise so thick it cannot be true. And blarney is praise so thin we like it."
Another expression is "pulling the wool over someone's eyes." It means to make someone believe something that is not true. The expression goes back to the days when men wore false hair, or wigs, similar to those worn by judges in British courts.
The word "wool" was a popular joking word for hair. If you pulled a man's wig over his eyes, he could not see what was happening. Today, when you "pull the wool over someone's eyes," he cannot see the truth.
This VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES was written by Marilyn Christiano. I'm Warren Scheer.
文本来自51voa，译文属可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载
词汇解释
1.sausage n.香肠，腊肠
She loves sausage and mash.
她喜欢香肠和土豆泥。
2.slice v.切成薄片, 割, 切开
A tract of territory had been sliced away.
领土被割去了一块。
3.surrender v.投降, 屈服, 让与, 放弃
They surrendered to the enemy.
他们向敌人投降了。
内容解析
1.But he kept making excuses for postponing the surrender.
make excuses for 找借口
Don't make excuses for him.
你别袒护他。
We can never improve if we always make excuses for ourselves.
为自己找藉口的人永远不会进步。
参考译文
这里是美国之音慢速英语成语典故。
Baloney是一种香肠，许多美国人都常吃。这个词在英语中还有别的意思，经常用来表示某人说的一些事是假的、错的或荒谬的。
Baloney香肠来自意大利城市博洛尼亚，该市以香肠著称，这种香肠用烟熏并调味过的牛肉猪肉做成。但boloney香肠跟原来的牛肉和猪肉味道并不一样。
有的语言学家认为，这种不同的味道就是baloney这个说法的来历，baloney这种说法是指跟事实不一样，就像baloney香肠和其原材料的味道根本不一样。
政客们通常用来描述其对手们的观点。
这个表达用了多年了，纽约州前州长Alfred Smith曾批评过罗斯福总统关于其政府执政成功的说法，Smith说，“不管切得多薄，香肠还是香肠”（引申义是：不管如何狡辩，都是胡扯。）
还有一个和baloney意思几乎相近的词，发音也差不多，这个词就是blarney，起源于1600年的爱尔兰。
科克附近Blarney城堡的勋爵同意向英国军队投降，但他找借口推迟投降时间。而且，这些理由听起来还不错，“这是更多的只是奉承话”。
这座爱尔兰城堡现在以其Blarney石头而著名，人们认为，亲吻这块石头，就能有特别的语言能力。这个故事说，亲吻了这块Blarney石头，就能讲出动听的奉承话，即使是假的也会信以为真。
纽约罗马天主教主教Fulton Sheen曾解释说，“baloney（胡扯、瞎说）如此夸张，它不可能是真实的；而blarney（奉承话）如此单薄（意思是极易被看破），我们却都喜欢。”
另一个短语是pulling the wool over someone's eyes，意思是让人相信不真实的东西。这个短语要追溯到男人戴假发的时代，就像现在英国法庭上法官戴的假发那样。
Wool这个词常用来戏指头发，如果把一个人的假发拉到盖住眼睛，他就什么都看不到了。当你蒙蔽了一个人，他就看不到真相了。
这里是美国之音慢速英语词汇典故，作者Marilyn Christiano，我是沃伦·谢尔。
