词汇大师-- Would a Top Banana Run Around Like a Chicken

　　AA:    I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: English teacher Nina Weinstein explains some common idioms in American English. She likes teaching idioms in categories to help her students remember them.

　　NINA WEINSTEIN: "Often when you see an idiom book, the idioms are presented in alphabetical¹ order, so you don't really have anything to hang on to."
RS: "You need a context, is what you're saying."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "Exactly."
RS: "So let's start off with animal idioms. Give us a few."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "OK, animal idioms. We've got to eat like a bird. So if we imagine how much a bird eats, how much can a bird eat?"
RS: "Very little."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "Very little. To eat like a horse -- so now we've got a two thousand pound animal who's going to be eating a lot more. To quit something cold turkey is another idiom."
AA: "It means to stop suddenly, like to stop smoking suddenly."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "Exactly."
RS: "I love this one, to run around like a chicken with its head cut off."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "Right, we can imagine how people kill chickens when they're going to eat chicken. They chop the head off and them I'm told -- I'm actually a vegetarian² so I'll just have to trust this one. But I'm told that the chicken still runs around even though it doesn't have its head on. But you can imagine it doesn't have a lot of direction."
RS: "And just moving on from there, the food idioms seem to present a better picture of things. To be the top banana, that's a great one -- "
NINA WEINSTEIN: "That's a great one."
RS: "To be to top in your class, to be the best at something."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "And to be the boss. The top banana would be the boss."
AA: "And usually, you would hope that the top banana would be a smart cookie, would you not?"
NINA WEINSTEIN: "You would. To be a smart cookie, that's another one where I don't really know what the story is."
RS: "It's funny, when you just isolate³ these things, they seem to be quite funny. To be a nut, we know someone who is crazy is referred to as a nut, it can be not clinically crazy -- especially not clinically crazy!"
NINA WEINSTEIN: "Exactly, exactly."
RS: "And if something is a piece of cake, it doesn't mean that you necessarily consume it."
NINA WEINSTEIN: " We have also a piece of pie -- or, I'm sorry, not a piece of pie but easy as pie, or a piece of cake. So they both mean easy. And I think that one is a little bit more obvious. If we think about how people make cakes, cakes can be very simple to make, and pies are even easier, and so it has that connotation of something easy to do."
RS: "Another category that you have down here are color idioms, and I know there's probably a gazillion of them, but let's just name a few."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "OK, we have to see red, and I think that one can come from the idea of your blood sort of going to your head when you become angry. People's faces turn red when they become angry. To be tickled⁴ pink ... [Laughter]"
RS: "Means you're very happy. Doesn't mean anything about tickling⁵."
AA: "Versus⁶ feeling blue."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "You're feeling blue, OK, you don't have enough oxygen in your body so that's where you kind of get that negative -- "
AA: "Yeah, that term forever has been associated with sort of feeling down or feeling -- "
RS: "Sad."
AA: "Sad."
RS: "Well, the blues⁷, the music the blues."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "The blues."
AA: "And so you can see red or feel blue or you can have a green thumb. What does that mean?"
NINA WEINSTEIN: "A green thumb means that you're a good gardener, you're good with plants."
RS: "We might have a green thumb under a blue moon."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "We might."
RS: "What does once in a blue moon mean?"
NINA WEINSTEIN: "Once in a blue moon would be very infrequently."
AA: "Yeah, there's actually like, there's a technical definition of what that means that astronomers⁸ use, but basically in common use, when you say once in a blue it just means once -- kind of, you know, rarely."
RS: "There's a very popular song called 'Blue Moon.' Old song."
AA: "That's right."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "Will you sing some of it?"
RS: "Blue moon. I won't sing it, but maybe you will. We can find a recording⁹ of that."
AA: "That's right, that's right."
RS: "I saw you standing¹⁰ alone ... "
NINA WEINSTEIN and RS: "Without a love of my own."
RS: "Thank you for helping¹¹ me out there."
NINA WEINSTEIN: "You are so welcome! I don't think anyone else is going to thank us, but we thanked each other."
RS: "OK."
AA:    English teacher and author Nina Weinstein plans to reissue a book called "Crazy Idioms" in August through Amazon.com. Her other books include second editions of "Vocabulary Tools" and "Whaddaya Say: Guided Practice in Relaxed Speech."
And that's WORDMASTER for this week. Previous segments with Nina can be found at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.
MUSIC:   "Blue Moon"/The Marcels

1 alphabetical   

adj.字母（表）的，依字母顺序的

参考例句：

• Please arrange these books in alphabetical order.请把这些书按字母顺序整理一下。
• There is no need to maintain a strict alphabetical sequence.不必保持严格的字顺。

2 vegetarian   

n.素食者；adj.素食的

参考例句：

• She got used gradually to the vegetarian diet.她逐渐习惯吃素食。
• I didn't realize you were a vegetarian.我不知道你是个素食者。

3 isolate   

vt.使孤立，隔离

参考例句：

• Do not isolate yourself from others.不要把自己孤立起来。
• We should never isolate ourselves from the masses.我们永远不能脱离群众。

4 tickled   

（使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐

参考例句：

• We were tickled pink to see our friends on television. 在电视中看到我们的一些朋友，我们高兴极了。
• I tickled the baby's feet and made her laugh. 我胳肢孩子的脚，使她发笑。

5 tickling   

反馈，回授，自旋挠痒法

参考例句：

• Was It'spring tickling her senses? 是不是春意撩人呢？
• Its origin is in tickling and rough-and-tumble play, he says. 他说，笑的起源来自于挠痒痒以及杂乱无章的游戏。

6 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

7 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

8 astronomers   

n.天文学者，天文学家( astronomer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Astronomers can accurately foretell the date,time,and length of future eclipses. 天文学家能精确地预告未来日食月食的日期、时刻和时长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Astronomers used to ask why only Saturn has rings. 天文学家们过去一直感到奇怪，为什么只有土星有光环。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

10 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

11 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。