1.Screw your courage to the sticking place      鼓足勇气

Meaning

Be firm and resolute.

Origin

This line is from Shakespeare's Macbeth, 1605:

Lady Macbeth:
'We fail! But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail.' 只要集中你的全部勇气，我们决不会失败。

 

 

2. Send packing       把(某人)撵走

Meaning

Send away ignominiously.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I, 1599:

FALSTAFF: 'Faith, and I'll send him packing.

 

3. Set one's teeth on edge     使牙齿发酸;(喻)使人恼怒

Meaning

Literally, to cause an unpleasant tingling of the teeth. More generally, the expression is used to describe any feeling of unpleasant distaste.

Origin

The earlier form of the phrase was 'to edge the teeth' and described the feeling of sensitivity caused by acidic tastes, like raw rhubarb.

A Middle English citation of a version of 'teeth on edge' is found in Wyclif's Bible, or to give it its full name The Holy Bible, made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his followers, 1382:

"And the teeth of sones wexen on egge."

Shakespeare used the expression in Henry IV, Part I, 1596:

HOTSPUR: Marry,
And I am glad of it with all my heart:
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;
I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn'd,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree;
And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry:
'Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag.

 

4.  Short shrift    不理会,忽视,轻视

Meaning

To make short work of - to give little consideration to.

Origin

http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/confessional.jpgShrift? Not a word you hear every day. In fact, apart from in this expression, it is now so rarely used that it's hard to think of a shrift that isn't short. The verb form, shrive, is also now an almost forgotten antique. A shrift is a penance (a prescribed penalty) imposed by a priest in a confession in order to provide absolution, often when the confessor was near to death. In the 17th century, criminals were sent to the scaffold immediately after sentencing and only had time for a 'short shrift' before being hanged.

Shakespeare was the first to write it down, in Richard III, 1594.

RATCLIFF:
Dispatch, my lord; the duke would be at dinner:
Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head.

It doesn't appear again in print until 1814, Scott's Lord of the Isles:

"Short were his shrift in that debate. If Lorn encounter'd Bruce!"

That seems an uncommonly long time to wait for a phrase that is in regular use. We can assume that, given the gap, the phrase wasn't part of the language in Shakespeare's day, or for some time afterwards, and that he coined it himself. Some sources cite it as '14th century', but neglect to offer any evidence to support that.

It didn't migrate across the Atlantic quickly either. The first citation there is from the Adams Sentinel, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, August 1841:

"The negroes were to be tried on Wednesday, and it was believed that a short shrift and a speedy doom would be awarded to the guilty."

 

5. Shuffle off this mortal coil       摆脱尘世烦恼

Meaning

To die.

Origin

From Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' speech in Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603:

"What dreames may come, When we haue shufflel'd off this mortall coile, Must giue vs pawse."

In Shakespeare's time 'coil', or coile', or coyle', meant 'fuss' or 'bustle'. That usage was recorded in Michael Drayton's Idea, the shepheards garland, 1593:

"You Will, and Will not, what a coyle is here?"

Shakespeare also used it prior to his 'mortal coil' expression, in King John, 1595:

"I am not worth this coyle that's made for me."

 

6. Rhyme nor reason       毫无道理

Meaning

A thing which has neither rhyme nor reason makes no sense, from either a poetic or logical standpoint.

Origin

This line originates in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, 1590:

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE:
Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?

The bard must have liked the line as he used it again in As You Like It, 1600:

ROSALIND: But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?
ORLANDO: Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.

 

7. Primrose path    无忧无虑舒适安逸的生活

Meaning

The pleasant route through life, of pleasure and dissipation.

Origin

This phrase was coined by Shakespeare, in Hamlet, 1603. It is evidently a simple allusion to a path strewn with flowers.

Ophelia:
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

Ophelia is warning her brother take his own advice and not reject the difficult and arduous path of righteousness that leads to Heaven in favour of the easy path of sin.

Shakespeare later used 'the primrose way', which has the same meaning, in Macbeth. This variant is hardly ever used now.

 

 

8. Pound of flesh       一磅肉(合乎法律的无理要求)

Meaning

Something which is owed that is ruthlessly required to be paid back.

Origin

http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/shylock.jpgThis of course derives from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1596. The insistence by Shylock of the payment of Antonio's flesh is the central plot device of the play:

SHYLOCK:
The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is deerely bought, 'tis mine, and I will haue it.

The figurative use of the phrase to refer to any lawful but nevertheless unreasonable recompense dates to the late 18th century.

 

9. Out of the jaws of death        走出虎口,脱离险境(鬼门关)

Meaning

Saved from great danger.

Origin

The figurative phrases 'the gates of death' and 'the jaws of death' refer to the approach to danger or death. The earliest citation I can find to 'the jaws of death' is in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, 1601.

ANTONIO:
Let me speak a little. This youth that you see here
I snatch'd one half out of the jaws of death,
Relieved him with such sanctity of love,
And to his image, which methought did promise
Most venerable worth, did I devotion.

 

10. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more   

     亲爱的朋友,让我们再试一次

Meaning

Let us try again one more time.

Origin

'Once more unto the breach' - is from the 'Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George!' speech of Shakespeare's Henry V, Act III, 1599.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/henryV.jpgThe most celebrated rendition of the speech comes from Laurence Olivier's performance in the 1944 film The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France, better known to the world just as Henry V.

The breach in question is the gap in the wall of the city of Hafleur, which the English army held under siege. Henry was encouraging his troops to attack the city again, even if they have to 'close the wall with English dead'.

KING HENRY V:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

See also - like a greyhound in the slips.

See also - stiffen the sinews.