1. More fool you   你真是太傻了

Meaning

Said in reply to someone who has reported doing something that is considered to be obviously foolish.

Origin

From Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.

BIANCA: The more fool you, for laying on my duty.

Ex 

 You lent him money? More fool you; you'll never see it again. 

你借钱给他了？你是个傻瓜；你再也看不到你的钱了。

2.More honoured in the breach than in the observance  犯法必遵法更受人尊敬

Meaning

This is usually thought to mean a rule which is more often broken than observed. The context of the play shows the real meaning as 'it is more honourable to breach than to observe'.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603:

HAMLET Ay, marry, is't:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.

 

3. Much ado about nothing   无是生非

Meaning

A great deal of fuss over nothing of importance.

Origin

This phrase is sometimes shortened just to 'much ado'. It is of course from Shakespeare's play - Much Ado About Nothing, 1599. He had used the word ado, which means business or activity, in an earlier play - Romeo and Juliet, 1592:

"Weele keepe no great adoe, a Friend or two."

Ex

The whole controversy is for too much ado about nothing .

这场争论完全是无事生非.

4. Mum's the word   保持缄默

Meaning

Keep quiet - say nothing.

Origin

Mum; not mother but 'mmmmm', the humming sound made with a closed mouth. Used by Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 2:

"Seal up your lips and give no words but mum."

Ex

   I don't want you to tell anyone that I'm applying for a new job. Mum's the word! 

  我不要你告诉任何人我正在申请新工作，别声张！

5. Salad days   少不更事时期

Meaning

The days of one's youthful inexperience.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, 1606:

CLEOPATRA: My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;
Get me ink and paper:
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I'll unpeople Egypt.

'Salad days' is used these days to refer to the days of carefree innocence and pleasure of our youth. It has also been used to refer to the time of material affluence in our more mature years, when the pressures of life have begun to ease - something akin to 'the golden years'. Shakespeare meant the former, and the clue is in the colour. While he used green in other contexts to signify jealousy - 'the green-eyed monster' in Othello and, in Love's Labours Lost "Green indeed is the colour of lovers", it is used here to mean immature. The green of salad leaves, which are invariably short-lived, is an obvious allusion to youthfulness. Green is also used in other expressions to mean unready for use, for example, 'green (unripe) corn', 'green (unseasoned) timber and 'greenhorn' (an inexperienced recruit).

The phrase 'salad days' lay dormant for two hundred years or more but became used widely in the 19th century. For example, this citation from the Oregon newspaper The Morning Oregonian, June 1862:

"What fools men are in their salad days."

http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/salad-days.jpgSalad Days was later used as the title of a highly successful is a musical, which premiered at the Bristol Old Vic in 1954. The music was written by Julian Slade and the lyrics by Dorothy Reynolds and Julian Slade. This was also the inspiration for the Monty Python spoof sketch Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days, in which the carefree young things featured in the musical were hacked to pieces in a typically gory Sam Peckinpah manner.

 Ex

During my salad days when I was green in judgement I often blundered. 

少不更事时期我的判断幼稚，常犯错误。

6. Neither a borrower nor a lender be

既不当债户，又不当债主。

Meaning

Literal meaning.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603:

LORD POLONIUS:
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

 

7. Night owl   夜猫子

Meaning

A person who is active late at night.

Origin

http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/night-owl.jpg'Nightowl' was originally just a synonym for 'owl' and has been used as such since at least 1581, when Bell and Foxe included it it their translated work Against Jerome Osorius. That seems rather tautological as owls are predominantly nocturnal and, in an apparent general acceptance of that view, the literal use of the word is now rather rare.

The figurative use of the term, i.e. as a reference to people rather than owls, also began in the 16th century. Shakespeare used it in 1594 in the narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece:

This said, his guilty hand pluck'd up the latch,
And with his knee the door he opens wide.
The dove sleeps fast that this night-owl will catch:
Thus treason works ere traitors be espied.

The Bard didn't give up on the literal usage though. It appears, in contexts which make the literal reference to a bird clear, in both Richard II, 1597:

"For nightowles shreeke, where mounting larkes should sing."

and in Twelfth Night, 1616:

"Shall wee rowze the night-Owle in a Catch?"

 Ex

He has always been a night owl.

他向来就是一个夜猫子。

8. No more cakes and ale? 

  不再吃喝玩乐,不再享受生活

Meaning

Cakes and ale are synonymous with the good life, like beer and skittles.

Origin

The word cake is often used as as a metaphor for 'a good thing' - as in 'take the cake' for example. The first use of cakes and ale with that allusion is Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, 1601:

SIR TOBY BELCH:
Out o' tune, sir: ye lie. Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Ex

 Life isn't all cakes and ale, you know. 

要知道生活并非都是吃喝玩乐。

9. Now is the winter of our discontent

     不愉快的时光

Meaning

The time of unhappiness is past.

Origin

http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/richard.jpgNow is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York was coined by Shakespeare and put into print in Richard III, 1594. The 'sun of York' wasn't of course a comment on Yorkshire weather but on King Richard. In this play Shakespeare presents an account of Richard's character that, until the late 20th century, largely formed the popular opinion of him as a malevolent, deformed schemer. Historians now view that representation as a dramatic plot device - necessary for the villainous role that Shakespeare had allocated him. It isn't consistent with what is now known of Richard III, who in many ways showed himself to be an enlightened and forward-looking monarch.

"Now is the winter of our discontent" are the opening words of the play and lay the groundwork for the portrait of Richard as a discontented man who is unhappy in a world that hates him. Later he describes himself as "Deformed, unfinished, sent before his time into this breathing world, scarce half made up". This deformity, which has now been shown to have been exaggerated or even deliberately faked in portraits of Richard, is given as the source of his supposed evil doings. He says that as he "cannot prove a lover" he is "determined to be a villain".

The brooding malevolence that Shakespeare has Richard personify mirrors the playwright's view of the state of the English nation during the Wars of the Roses.

GLOUCESTER:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

 

10. Off with his head   砍他的头(表示责备某人)

Meaning

Literal meaning. That is, 'chop off his head'. It is now usually used humorously as a means of mildly reproaching someone.

Origin

http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/queen-of-hearts.jpgShakespeare used the phrase many times in his plays and I can find no record of any earlier usage. For example, in Henry VI Part III, 1593:

QUEEN MARGARET:
Off with his head, and set it on York gates;
So York may overlook the town of York.

Lewis Carroll became the best-known user of the phrase when he included it in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, (published 1865), The Queen of Hearts shrieks the phrase several times in the story - in fact she doesn't say a great deal else:

The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting' Off with his head!' or 'Off with her head!' about once in a minute.