词汇大师-- Feeling Burned Out

　　AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: The Olympic flame may be out in Vancouver, but we're just getting fired up over terms related to fire.
RS: We lit on the idea after our friend and fellow master of words Grant Barrett had a scary experience.

　　GRANT BARRETT: "Two weeks ago, around three a.m., all the fire alarms in my home that I share with my wife and my son, they began to go off. Very loud, very annoying. And we rushed out of the building in our pajamas¹ out into the cold night and stood there on the street and watched our building burn. Fortunately everyone in the building made it out OK. But the family in the apartment beneath ours, their apartment is now black and charred² and they lost many of their belongings³."
AA: "The family below you was 'burned out,' which means ... "
GRANT BARRETT: "That's right, they were burned out, which means the fire was so severe that they were unable to return to their apartment."
RS: "And some people might have felt 'burned up.'"
GRANT BARRETT: "Right, because it turned out to be an electrical fault, something wrong with the wiring that caused the fire. So if we felt that the electrician who put the electric sockets⁴ there did a poor job, we'd be burned up, meaning we'd be irritated or angry at their poor work."
RS: "When something is burned up, it also means it's literally⁵ burned up."
AA: "It's destroyed."
RS: "It's destroyed."
GRANT BARRETT: "And it's interesting, because we have both 'burned up' and 'burned down.' And burned down tends to be used for bigger objects like houses and buildings and automobiles⁶, and burned up tends to be for smaller things like pieces of paper or leaves or something that basically once it's caught on fire, all that's left is a little bit of ash and some gas."
AA: "And getting back to the analogy of -- if the electrical work had been shoddy, poorly done or something, you would feel 'burned' by the company that did it. That's a common -- "
GRANT BARRETT: " We would indeed. By saying that we feel burned, we would feel ripped off or cheated, or if somebody had scammed us."
AA: "Now burned out also -- it can mean getting burned out of an apartment, out of your home, but if a worker is burned out, what does that means?"
GRANT BARRETT: "To really just have had enough. That is, it's hard to muster⁷ up the strength to continue to do this thing. You'll find that students who study a lot sometimes are burned out. And so they need a break or a vacation and then they can come back to it fresh."
RS: "Let's turn to fire now. If you're 'fired up,' what does that mean?"
GRANT BARRETT: "This goes back to the days when many of our machines were powered by steam. And so you'd throw coal or wood into a fire which heats the boiler⁸ that's filled with water. The water turns to steam and in that way the steam drives the machinery⁹.
"So if you fired up a boiler, that means that you're making it go a lot hotter and a lot faster. And by analogy we can say figuratively or metaphorically¹¹ that a person is fired up if they're highly motivated. That is, they have a lot of energy and they really want to do something and they'll do whatever it takes to make it happen."
RS: "Considering fire as a verb, if someone is 'fired,' that means they lose their job."
GRANT BARRETT: "This comes from guns and firearms. When you shoot a gun, you're also said to have discharged the gun. And discharge has another meaning, which means to let someone go from their job. That is, lay them off, fire them, whatever the term is for it. And so because of discharge already having two meanings, people then made the extension to fire also having the second meaning. So if you are fired, you are discharged."
RS: "Why don't we -- "
AA: "Wait, there's one more! When you're 'on fire.' I mean I heard this Olympian described on television, they said 'Ooh, he's on fire!'"
GRANT BARRETT: "It's by extension to the idea that something that makes you really move fast, it's fire or being on fire. Nobody wants to get burned. Some people said when the American hockey team beat the Finns, that they were on fire, because they beat them six to one. So it was a really good score and they had great success. That's another way of being on fire."
RS: "Another idiomatic¹² expression: 'light a fire' under someone. That means to get them to do something, right?"
GRANT BARRETT: "And this goes back to the boiler I was talking about. Imagine a big metal container. It looks kind of like a bathtub and it's closed on top with a lot of pipes and valves and gauges¹³ and stuff. And so by extension we can say that a human also begins to work once you light a fire under them."
AA: And then there are people who will complain that they spend their day 'putting out fires.' And these are not firefighters, though."
GRANT BARRETT: "No, no, no. If you spend your days putting out fires, and you mean this in a metaphorical¹⁰ way, it means that you're got a lot of small problems that you have to deal with all together. And so you spend a lot of time just kind of solving problems one after the other, without a lot of chance to kind of catch your breath and think about the larger picture of what you're doing."
RS: Grant Barrett edits dictionaries and co-hosts the public radio program "A Way With Words."
AA: Well, enough playing with fire. We've burned through all our time for WORDMASTER this week. Our segments are online at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 pajamas   

n.睡衣裤

参考例句：

• At bedtime,I take off my clothes and put on my pajamas.睡觉时，我脱去衣服，换上睡衣。
• He was wearing striped pajamas.他穿着带条纹的睡衣裤。

2 charred   

v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦

参考例句：

• the charred remains of a burnt-out car 被烧焦的轿车残骸
• The intensity of the explosion is recorded on the charred tree trunks. 那些烧焦的树干表明爆炸的强烈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 belongings   

n.私人物品，私人财物

参考例句：

• I put a few personal belongings in a bag.我把几件私人物品装进包中。
• Your personal belongings are not dutiable.个人物品不用纳税。

4 sockets   

n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴

参考例句：

• All new PCs now have USB sockets. 新的个人计算机现在都有通用串行总线插孔。
• Make sure the sockets in your house are fingerproof. 确保你房中的插座是防触电的。 来自超越目标英语 第4册

5 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

6 automobiles   

n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• When automobiles become popular,the use of the horse and buggy passed away. 汽车普及后，就不再使用马和马车了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Automobiles speed in an endless stream along the boulevard. 宽阔的林荫道上，汽车川流不息。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

7 muster   

v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册

参考例句：

• Go and muster all the men you can find.去集合所有你能找到的人。
• I had to muster my courage up to ask him that question.我必须鼓起勇气向他问那个问题。

8 boiler   

n.锅炉；煮器(壶，锅等)

参考例句：

• That boiler will not hold up under pressure.那种锅炉受不住压力。
• This new boiler generates more heat than the old one.这个新锅炉产生的热量比旧锅炉多。

9 machinery   

n.(总称)机械，机器；机构

参考例句：

• Has the machinery been put up ready for the broadcast?广播器材安装完毕了吗？
• Machinery ought to be well maintained all the time.机器应该随时注意维护。

10 metaphorical   

a.隐喻的，比喻的

参考例句：

• Here, then, we have a metaphorical substitution on a metonymic axis. 这样，我们在换喻（者翻译为转喻，一种以部分代替整体的修辞方法）上就有了一个隐喻的替代。
• So, in a metaphorical sense, entropy is arrow of time. 所以说，我们可以这样作个比喻：熵像是时间之矢。

11 metaphorically   

adv. 用比喻地

参考例句：

• It is context and convention that determine whether a term will be interpreted literally or metaphorically. 对一个词的理解是按字面意思还是隐喻的意思要视乎上下文和习惯。
• Metaphorically it implied a sort of admirable energy. 从比喻来讲，它含有一种令人赞许的能量的意思。

12 idiomatic   

adj.成语的，符合语言习惯的

参考例句：

• In our reading we should always be alert for idiomatic expressions.我们在阅读过程中应经常注意惯用法。
• In his lecture,he bore down on the importance of idiomatic usage in a language.他在演讲中着重强调了语言中习惯用法的重要性。

13 gauges   

n.规格( gauge的名词复数 )；厚度；宽度；标准尺寸v.（用仪器）测量( gauge的第三人称单数 )；估计；计量；划分

参考例句：

• A thermometer gauges the temperature. 温度计可测量温度。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The fuel gauges dropped swiftly. 燃料表指针迅速下降。 来自《简明英汉词典》