Re: Help with American idiom please
Louise Bremner wrote:
> Kevin Gowen <kgowenNOSPAM@myfastmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> Most of the time, I can figure out the meanings of various Seppongo
>>> idioms from the context (although I recently discovered I'd gone
>>> wildly wrong with "take a rain check"), but there's one idiom that's
>>> confusing me. Is there a website somewhere that gives detailed
>>> explanations? Googling on the phrase in question just brings up
>>> pages that use it, not a description of what it means.
>>
>> What's the confusing idiom?
>
> I daren't post it here, since it's so public and I don't want to
> trigger another flame fest if that person gets to see it later.
You can email me if you like. I'm tastefully discreet.
>> Others have given you great references but have ignored the real
>> issue: What was your "rain check" howler?
>
> Not so much of a "howler". I'd guessed at its meaning from films, and
> so
> took it as a polite brush-off: "Thanks but no thanks". So I got
> somewhat miffed when someone used it at me, until he later came back
> and said he
> now had time--the movies never show that bit.
You did end up learning of its origins in baseball, yes?
--
Kevin Gowen
"I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New
York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White
House."
- Columbia University professor Eric Foner in the London Review of
Books, on the attacks of 11 September 2001. A new study has recently
suggested that the inferno that destroyed the World Trade Center and
killed thousands of innocents was indeed more frightening than the
rhetoric of the Bush administration.
Fnews-brouse 1.9(20180406) -- by Mizuno, MWE <mwe@ccsf.jp>
GnuPG Key ID = ECC8A735
GnuPG Key fingerprint = 9BE6 B9E9 55A5 A499 CD51 946E 9BDC 7870 ECC8 A735