某日，辦公桌上忽然出現了 Henry James 的《The Turn of the Screw》（鬼故事來的
）。同事看見，好奇地問：「書名點解？」栗連本書為何會出現都不知道，如何能解答同事的疑問？不過，我倆就著 screw 字聊了起來，先是 screwed up（弄糟了的事情），然後說到手頭上那一團糟的項目，同事不禁慨嘆一句：真是 project screw。唉，極有同感。
每次看見 screw 字，總會想起不好的東西，例如 to have a screw loose (傻、瘋)、to screw someone out of something (騙)。不過，to screw up one's courage 是「鼓起勇氣」、to have your head screwed on the right way 則是「不幹蠢事」。所以是好是壞，還是得看字典解釋。
話說回來，栗和同事都以為 a turn of the screw 是諺語，但 OALD 卻沒有收錄。後來問外籍同事，才知道諺語解作「令情況惡化的舉措」，記下來方便日後翻查。
The idiom 〝a turn of the screw〞can only be found in Macmillan English Dictionary, but not in others.
回覆刪除[版主回覆11/16/2010 20:21:00]唔知點解咁少詞典收錄。我提到的那本書是牛津出版的，但它的詞典卻沒有這條...
小栗, I am afraid this idiom is not a popular one. Actually, I have never heard of this until you mentioned it in your Blog. By the way, the meaning given by MED is also slightly different from that provided by your colleague. It means : 〝an occasion when someone puts more pressure on someone else to do something.〞Interestingly, I just found that 原來 there is another way of saying the same thing :〝to put/tighten/turn the screws on sb〞, and both Longman and Oxford have this entry. Strange, isn't it?
回覆刪除[版主回覆11/20/2010 07:44:00]確實不是常見的 idiom，要不看見那本書，沒想過 screw 有這樣的一個配搭。 MED 的解釋或許是後來演化出來的用法，Henry James 的原著應該沒那個意思。 謝謝補充。英文往往是一個意思有多種表達方法，要全記下來真不易......