单项选择题Lucky is the man who has no "skeleton in his closet". When
a man has done something in his life that he is ashamed of, that he wants to
hide, he is said to have a "skeleton in his closet". Some people may have more
than one skeleton.
As we have noted many times, it is
hard to find out how these expressions begin. Sometimes, we get some hard facts.
But more often we have to depend on guesswork. And that is true of this phrase,
which came from England.
Before 1932, English law did not
permit a doctor to cut open a dead human body for scientific examination, unless
it was the corpse (尸体) of an executed (处决) criminal.
But when
it became legal, more and more doctors demanded skeletons for a more scientific
study of medicine. It was helping in the advance of modern medicine. The demand
had become so strong that men began to rob tombs and sell skeletons to doctors
at high prices.
We are told that a doctor would usually buy
just one skeleton for scientific study. It became very important in his work.
But he had to keep it hidden because most people objected to keeping such a
thing. As a rule, the doctor would keep his skeleton in some dark corner where
it could not be seen, or hide it in a closet.
After a time,
people began to suspect (怀疑) every doctor of hiding a skeleton in the closet.
From this suspicion, the phrase "a skeleton in the closet" took on a broader,
more general meaning to describe anything that a man wanted to keep others from
discovering. It could be proof of a criminal act, or something much less
serious. Well, that is one theory.
One writer, however,
believes that the phrase might have come from something that really happened. It
is his guess that a hidden closet in some old English country home may have
turned up a real skeleton, clear proof of some old family shame or crime. Well,
one man’s guess is as good as another. But this sounds like a story by the great
French novelist, Balzac.
Baizac tells us of a man who suspected
his wife of having a lover. The husband comes home by surprise. But she hears
him and quickly hides her lover in the closet of her bedroom. He enters her room
and asks her if she is hiding her lover. He says he will not open the door to
the closet if she promises him there is no one there; He will believe her. She
answers firmly that she is not hiding anyone in the closet.
The
husband then begins to build a solid brick wall against the closet. His wife
watches, knowing that her lover will never come out alive. But she will not
change her story and admit her guilt.
单项选择题The number of speakers of English in Shakespeare’s time is
estimated (估计) to have been about five million. Today it is estimated that some
260 million people speak it as a native language, mainly in the United States,
Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. In
addition to the standard varieties of English found in these areas, there are a
great many regional and social varieties of the language as well as various
levels of usage that are employed both in its spoken and written
forms.
In fact, it is impossible to estimate the number
of people in the world who have acquired an adequate (足够的) working knowledge of
English in addition to their own languages. The purpose for English learning and
the situations in which such learning takes place are so varied that it is
difficult to explain and still more difficult to judge what forms an adequate
working knowledge for each situation.
The main reason
for the widespread demand for English is its present-day importance as a world
language. Besides serving the indefinite needs of its native speakers, English
is a language in which some of important works in science, technology, and other
fields are being produced, and not always by native speakers. It is widely used
for such purposes as meteorological and airport communications, international
conferences, and the spread of information over the radio and television
networks of many nations. It is a language of wider communication for a number
of developing countries, especially former British colonies. Many of these
countries have multilingual populations and need a language for internal
communication in such matters as government, commerce, industry, law and
education as well as for international communication and for entrance to the
scientific and technological developments in the West.
