柜子里藏著什麼
每個人都有屬於自己的秘密，但並不是所有的秘密都能像「a skeleton in the cupboard」一樣不可告人。有人將之翻譯為「家醜」，或「不可告人之事」。
翻躍了國外幾片論文後發現，它並不一定指一個人自己身上的秘密，不僅如水門事件這種大丑聞，一個領域裡頭大家心照不宣的秘密，或者是在一個實驗流程、商業模式中，那些不可避免的令人詬病但不會被接發的部分，也可以用它來表示。而且秘密一旦被揭露，後果很可能是聲名狼藉、一敗塗地。
那麼我們來看看這篇文的開頭：
We often read in novels how a seemingly respectable person or family has some terrible secret which has been concealed（隱瞞） from strangers for years. The English language possesses a vivid saying （生動的諺語）to describe this sort of situation. The terrible secret is called "a skeleton in the cupboard". At some dramatic moment in the story, the terrible secret becomes known and a reputation is ruined.
名聲受損，可以用一個高級的詞——tarnish，他表示make or become less valuable or respected，使（人、物的）價值或受尊重程度下降，經濟學人中有兩個句子：
If firms are careless about security, they risk tarnished reputations and lost customers.
如果企業對網路安全漫不經心，就會面臨信譽受損和失去客戶的風險。
Established giants such as Google or Amazon would once have been wary of tarnishing their brands by having anything to do with payments systems, but now all kinds of contestants are getting interested.
像谷歌或亞馬遜這樣的巨頭曾經警惕不和支付系統發生任何關係，以防砸了自己招牌。但現在，各類競爭者都對支付產生了興趣。
Tarnish一詞源於法語動詞ternir（使失去光澤）和形容詞terne（灰暗），原意指的是金屬因為暴露在空氣中，久了會失去光澤。比如說食物讓銀器生鏽了，可以說Some foods tarnish silver. 當一個人的信譽、企業的品牌、個人名望「玷污」、「敗壞」等。比如說提升一個企業受損的形象，可以說「improve the tarnished public image」。
The reader』s hair stands on end when he reads in the final pages of the novel that the heroine, a dear old lady who had always been so kind to everybody, had, in her youth, poisoned every one of her five husbands.
The reader』s hair stands on end.表示受到驚嚇，頭髮豎起，這種更多地接近汗毛豎起的狀態，但如果是怒髮衝冠，那要怎麼表達呢？有一種說法是to bristle with anger，bristle是表示直發、直立起來、發怒的意思，也有the hair stands erect and raises one"s cap from the head，表示你的頭髮也氣得跳腳把帽子頂了出去的狀態。
我們之前就已經學過了過去完成時態（The Past Perfect Tense），「主語+had+動詞過去分詞」表示曾經做過某事，並且對後來有影響，像老太太在年輕的時候poisoned她的丈夫這種事情也是對她後來的人生有影響的事情，我們還可以在中間插入一個具體的時間段，讓一個表述更加清晰。
in her youth表示的是在一個人年輕的時候，但是注意另外一個短語「in one"s old age」卻表示的是「落葉歸根」的意思。
It is all very well for such things to occur in fiction. 說的是這種事情發生在小說里還是很好的，言下之意是現實中有這種事兒就並不好了。繼而他想告訴我們的就是「現實中真的有這種事情。」把戲劇和現實的skeleton聯繫在一起，接著去寫你接下來的故事，也不會讓前後主題分離，變成我們常說的「兩塊皮」。
To varying degrees,（不同程度上） we all have secrets which we do not want even our closest friends to learn, but few of us have skeletons in the cupboard.（程度比較深）
The only person I know who has a skeleton in the cupboard is George Carlton, and he is very proud of the fact.
這個proud是自豪的意思，自豪的程度大概等於，當你考了100分的時候你爸媽驕傲的程度。「If you feel proud, you feel pleased about something good that you possess or have done, or about something good that a person close to you has done.」甚至還可以到吹噓的程度，一般能夠讓你做到這樣的，得是非常厲害的成就才算得上了。so，不要小看了這個詞呀～
George studied medicine in his youth. Instead of becoming a doctor, however, he became a successful writer of detective stories. I once spent an uncomfortable weekend which I shall never forget at his house. George showed me to the guestroom which, he said, was rarely used. He told me to unpack my things and then come down to dinner. （介紹背景）
After I had stacked my shirts and underclothes in two empty drawers, I decided to hang one of the two suits I had brought with me in the cupboard. （把西裝掛起來防皺）
stack指的是把東西堆積起來，但屬於一種有分類地疊起來的方式，類似這樣的
I opened the cupboard door and then stood in front of it petrified. （petrified真的就是指被嚇得要死的那種「驚呆」）A skeleton was dangling（晃來晃去） before my eyes. The sudden movement of the door （我打開門的時候那個突然的震動）make it sway （搖擺）slightly and it gave me the impression that it was about to leap out at（沖著我來） me. Dropping my suit, I dashed downstairs to tell George. （我衝下樓去才是重點，扔掉衣服是伴隨狀語）This was worse than『a terrible secret; this was a real skeleton! But George was unsympathetic.（蛙式冷漠） 『Oh, that,』he said with a smile as if he were talking about an old friend. 『That』s Sebastian. You forget that I was a medical student once upon a time.』
once upon a time表示曾經的意思，它經常用在講故事的開頭。
另：文中的單引號是從前老派英國人的寫法，現在的單引號只用於直接引語之中的第二個直接引語上。
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