原创/趣说时闻英语词汇证据确凿,铁证如山 smoking gun

发布于 2021-04-09 20:40 ，所属分类：知识学习综合资讯

smoking gun,又是两个极常见单词组成的词组，是冒烟的枪吗？As usual, 如果这么容易就不会在这里做文章了。

在时闻英语中这个词组也经常出现，我们看下面的例子吧。

A second smoking gun is that if the Sun were responsible for global warming, we would expect to see warming throughout all layers of the atmosphere, from the surfaceall the way up to the upper atmosphere (stratosphere).

(例句来源：4月2日NASA；图源：bing)

第二个确凿证据是，如果太阳是全球变暖的元凶，那么从地表一直到上层大气(平流层)，我们预计所有大气层都将变暖。

Now that Joe Biden has dummied up and pretended that there’s no crisis at the border, it’s instructive to go back and look at how he created the chaos. And we have discovered the smoking gun.

(例句来源：4月2日Patriot Daily Press；图源：bing)

既然乔·拜登闭口不谈，假装边境没有危机，回过头来看看他是如何导致这个混乱局面是有意义的。我们已经找到了确凿证据。

Republicans look for smoking gun on Whitmer’s handling of coronavirus in nursing homes.

(例句来源：3月26日MLive；图源：bing)

共和党人正在寻找惠特默在养老院处理冠状病毒的确凿证据。

"No smoking gun," pro-government Saudi commentators concluded in response to a U.S. intelligence assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had approved the operation to capture or kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

(例句来源：2月26日Yahoo；图源：bing)

“没有确凿证据，”支持政府的沙特评论人士在回应美国情报机构的评估时得出这样的结论: 沙特王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼批准了逮捕或杀害记者贾马尔·卡舒吉的行动。

The Senate got smoking-gun evidence of Trump’s guilt.

(例句来源：2月13日The Washington Post；图源：bing)

参议院得到了特朗普有罪的确凿证据。

It was the tapes of Richard Nixon discussing Watergate from the White House that ultimately became the famous “smoking gun” that persuaded many members of his own party to turn against him.

(例句来源：2月10日The New York Times; 图源：bing)

理查德·尼克松在白宫讨论水门事件的录音带，最终成为著名的“确凿证据”，从而说服了许多其党内人士转而反对他。

词汇扩展：

smoking gun

[sing.](informal)something that seems to prove that sb has done sth wrong or illegal

（来源：《牛津词典》）

N-COUNTAsmoking gunis a piece of evidence that proves that something is true or that someone is responsible for a crime.

（来源：《柯林斯英汉双解大词典》）

(犯错或犯法的）确凿证据

This memo could be the smoking gun that investigators have been looking for.

这份备忘录可能是调查人员一直在寻找的确证证据。

The search for other kinds of evidence tying him to trafficking has not produced a smoking gun.

在其它方面还没有找到能证明他参与此非法交易的确凿证据。

"Smoking Gun"

I get a constant busy signal

When I call you on the phone
I get a strong, uneasy feeling
You're not sitting there alone

I'm having nasty, nasty visions
And baby you're in every one, yeah
And I'm so afraid I'm gonna find you with
A so-called smoking gun

Maybe you wanna end it
You've had your fill with my kind of fun
But you don?x-oss-process=image/format,webp" style="max-width:100%">And you know that I'm not that dumb

I put two and one together
And you know that's not an even sum
And I know just where to catch you with
That well-known smoking gun

I'm standing here, bewildered
I can't remember just what I've done
I can hear the sirens whining
My eyes blinded by the sun

I know that I should be running
My heart's beating just like a drum
Now they've knocked me down and taken it
That still-hot smoking gun

Yeah, yeah, still-hot smoking gun
They've taken it, the still-hot smoking gun
Oh, they've taken it, still-hot smoking gun
They've knocked me down
And taken it
Oh

（其他例句参考来源：《牛津词典》，《柯林斯英汉双解大词典》）

smoking gun，作为确凿证据还是非常好理解。刚射击过的枪，枪口一定会冒烟。如果开枪人被抓到时，手上正好拿着冒烟的枪，那他一定开过枪了，即“证据确凿，铁证如山”。

查了一下词源，好像较多指向福尔摩斯探案故事，更频繁出现是在水门事件之后，感兴趣可以看以下词源。

Etymology ofSmoking Gun

All sources appear to agree on the idea that the saying comes from a similar expression in a 1893 Sherlock Holmes story,The Gloria Scott, in which Arthur Conan Doyle wrote:

'The chaplain stood with asmoking pistolin his hand,'

From that point, the phrase was used to conjure up the image of a killer holding a gun that was just fired as he stands over a dead body.

Checking withNgramthe expression seems to have become popular only from the 70's, probably during the Watergate investigation:

Nixon defenders insisted that while much impropriety could be observed, no proof of presidential obstruction of justice - 'no smoking gun' - had been found. (The Prase Finder)

（来源：english.stackexchange.com；www.investopedia.com）

Recap：本篇我们一起了解时闻英语中常见词组smoking gun的意思。