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Вчера узнала новое выражение: "Beat around the bush", думаю, его можно перевести как "ходить вокруг да около". Задумалась о происхождении, поскольку мне почему-то представлялись собой кустарники, с которых кто-то пытается стрясти плоды. Но, вроде, трясут обычно деревья, так что полезла в гугль. Оттуда вынесла, что, оказывается,
The figurative meaning of the odd phrase 'beat around the bush' or, as it is usually expressed in the UK, 'beat about the bush', evolved from the earlier literal meaning. In bird hunts some of the participants roused the birds by beating the bushes and enabling others, to use a much later phrase, to 'cut to the chase' and catch the quarry in nets. So 'beating about the bush' was the preamble to the main event, which was the capturing of the birds...
The phrase is old and first appears in the medieval poem Generydes - A Romance in Seven-line Stanzas, circa 1440:
Butt as it hath be sayde full long agoo,
Some bete the bussh and some the byrdes take.
знание потырено отсюда
The figurative meaning of the odd phrase 'beat around the bush' or, as it is usually expressed in the UK, 'beat about the bush', evolved from the earlier literal meaning. In bird hunts some of the participants roused the birds by beating the bushes and enabling others, to use a much later phrase, to 'cut to the chase' and catch the quarry in nets. So 'beating about the bush' was the preamble to the main event, which was the capturing of the birds...
The phrase is old and first appears in the medieval poem Generydes - A Romance in Seven-line Stanzas, circa 1440:
Butt as it hath be sayde full long agoo,
Some bete the bussh and some the byrdes take.
знание потырено отсюда