2措辞

flowers. The whole place had an air of tidiness, thrift, and modest comfort.

—Thomas Wolfe

Exercise

The following words are rather general in meaning. Think of words that are more specific.

walk look at cry angry tree animal flower wind rain

IV. Idioms

An idiom is a fixed group of words with a special meaning which is different from the meaning of the words that form it. To “red a book”, for instance, is not a idiom, for the meaning of the phrase is the meaning of the three words put together. To “read between the lines” is different. The four words that form the phrase give no hint as to what it means and none of the words cn be changed to form another understandable phrase.

English is rich in idioms. The following types of idioms are the most common:

1. phrasal verbs: put up with, turn out, look forward to, carry on, come across;

2. n. + prep. + n.: a straw in the wind, the apple of one’s eye, like a fish out of water, in a

world of one’s own;

3. prep. + n.: in kind (以实物), on the air, at length, with flying colors;

4. v. + n.: won’t hold water, slip one’s mind, kill two birds with one stone, go to the dogs 5. as... as: as easy as pie, as big as life, as different as night and day, as poor as a church

mouse

6. Pairs of words: wear and tear (磨损, 折磨), high and dry (搁浅, 孤立无援), touch and

go (一触即发), in black and white (白纸黑字).

7. Sayings: One man’ s meat is another man’s poison. (兴趣爱好因人而异). A stitch in time saves nine. (小洞不补, 大洞吃苦).

Take it or leave it. (要么接受, 要么放弃, 不容讨价还价).

Idioms help to make one’s language sound natural and idiomatic, so they are frequently used in speech and writing. But in using idioms, foreign learners of English should remember the following two points:

1. Most idioms are informal or colloquial in style and ca be used in conversation, but a few

are slang and should be used with care; 2. Many idioms become clichés and are no longer fresh or interesting, such as armed to the

teeth and as good as gold, and should be used sparingly.

Exercises

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I. Give phrasal verbs that mean the same as the following verbs:

continue endure investigate expect destroy (a building) build

start postpone begin to like II. Explain the following sentences and word groups: 1. All his geese are swans. 2. Let sleeping dogs lie. 3. a wolf in sheep’s clothing 4. a white elephant 5. a white lie 6. blue blood 7. Blue Book 8. blue jackets 9. a blue stocking 10. red tape

V. Figures of Speech

Figures of speech are ways of making our language figurative. When we use words in other than their ordinary or literal senses to lend force to an idea, to heighten effect, or to create suggestive imagery, we are said to be speaking or writing figuratively. For example, it is more vivid and colorful to say that stars “twinkle like diamonds in the sky” than to say that they “shine brightly in the sky”.

Similarly, “Imperialism is a paper tiger” is an expression definitely more suggestive of outward ferocity and inner weakness and, therefore, more forceful than the literal statement “Imperialism appears to be strong but inwardly it is weak,” though the idea is essentially the same.

Like a diamond is a simile, and paper tiger is a metaphor, and with hyperbole, personification, euphemism, and metonymy, make up a score or more of figures of speech most commonly used today. Each figure has its own form and characteristic features, and its own way of achieving effect. Sometimes two or more figures are used together to give greater effect. Among the most common of them are:

1. Simile it is a figure of speech which makes a comparison between two unlike elements having at least one quality or characteristic in common. To make the comparison, words like as, as…so, and like are used to transfer the quality we associate with one to the other. Sometimes the association is between unfamiliar and familiar things, or between abstract and concrete images:

O my love?s like a red, red rose.

---- Robert Burns

Records fell like ripe apples on a windy day.

---- E. B. White

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As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.

---- Proverbs. 25, the Bible

In the above three examples, people and things of different categories are compared: a woman and a rose, records and ripe apples, cold waters and news. But each pair has one similarity: loveliness, falling quickly, and urgent need. The discrepancy between the two things compared makes their similarity all the more striking.

2. Metaphor Like a simile, it also makes a comparison between two unlike elements, but unlike a simile, this comparison is implied rather than stated. In a simile, the words like, as, as…so are used to make the comparison, as in

1) Jim was as cunning as a fox. 2) The world is like a stage.

In a metaphor, however, the comparison would appear simply as

1) Jim was a fox.

2) The world is a stage.

A metaphor, then, is in a sense, a condensed simile, different from the latter only in form and artistry.

Metaphors have three main uses: descriptive, illuminative and illustrative, can be seen from the following examples:

1. The hallway was zebra-striped with darkness and moonlight.

---- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (A description of the alternate bands of light and shade in the hall, like a zebra’s stripes.) 2. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

---- Thomas Jefferson

(The suggestion here is that liberty cannot be achieved or defended without bloodshed ---- the shedding of the blood of both the defenders and the oppressors of liberty in a violent struggle.)

An important form of the metaphor, and one often used by writers when they wish to describe or explain something in detail is the many-aspect extended or branching metaphor. In a branching metaphor, there is usually a basic comparison which is developed in such a way that every new stage of its elaboration throws new and related light on the subject. For example:

All the world?s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances. And one man in his time plays many parts,

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His acts being seven ages …

---- Shakespeare

The basic comparison in this famous passage is “The world is like a stage.”

A metaphor or a simile has to be fresh to be effective. One that has been frequently used over a long period of time will become dull and stale, and cease to function as a metaphor or simile. “The leg of a table” must have been a metaphor when it was first used, but today we feel that leg is used in its literal sense.

3. Personification it is a figure of speech that gives human form or feelings to animals, or life and personal attributes to inanimate objects, or to ideas and abstractions, e.g.

1. The wind whistled through the trees.

2. If not always in a hot mood to smash, the sea is always stealthily ready

for a drowning.

---- Joseph Conrad

In these two examples, natural phenomena, the wind and the sea, are personified.

Personification is a simple enough figure to recognize and to understand. It is easy enough to use, too, except for one problem ---- gender, or the grammatical classification of the thing personified as masculine or feminine. Should it be male or female, he or she? There is no problem with animals, where the sex is known, but objects and ideas would present difficulties.

There is no guide to usage here unless custom and personal taste could be considered guidelines. It is customary, for example, to call ships she. Sometimes wind storms are given women’s names, e.g. Hurricane Katrina, Typhoon Alice. Poets and writers tend, too, to characterize various natural phenomena as male or female according to cetain idealistic or romantic conceptions, e.g.

Feminine

1. Nature ---- Mother Nature 2. Earth ---- Mother Earth

3. morning ---- Aurora; daughter of the dawn (Homer); mild blushing goddess

(Logan P. Smith)

4. evening ---- the pale child, Eve

5. night ---- empress of silence, and the queen of sleep (Christopher Marlowe);

the pale child, Eve, leading her mother, night (Alexander Smith)

6. the moon ---- Diana, Luna, Phoebe; Queen of heaven, queen of night

(Shakespeare); queen and huntress, chaste and fair (B. Jonson) Masculine

1. the sun ---- Helios, Apollo, Hyperion; the god of life and poesy and light

(Byron)

2. rivers ---- the Father of Waters (of the Mississippi and the Irrawaddy, for

example)

3. time ---- Father Time;

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