英语词汇down to the wire的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

down to the wire. For over a century wire has been synony- mous with the finish line in horse racing, because of the wire stretched across the track that the horses passed under at the end of a race. The Oxford English Dictionary records the term from William McPaul’s Ike Glidden (1902): “The conquering colt swept under the wire for a nose ahead of the trotter.” But Mitford Mathew’s A Dictionary of Americanisms cites an earlier, 1887 U.S. newspaper usage of wire, claiming it as an American- ism. A Dictionary of Americanisms goes on to date down to the wire as an expression first recorded in 1950 in the newspaper account of a baseball game. Widely used as slang now for “to the very last moment or the very end,” it is also heard as to go to the wire.

词汇	down to the wire
词源	down to the wire. For over a century wire has been synony- mous with the finish line in horse racing, because of the wire stretched across the track that the horses passed under at the end of a race. The Oxford English Dictionary records the term from William McPaul’s Ike Glidden (1902): “The conquering colt swept under the wire for a nose ahead of the trotter.” But Mitford Mathew’s A Dictionary of Americanisms cites an earlier, 1887 U.S. newspaper usage of wire, claiming it as an American- ism. A Dictionary of Americanisms goes on to date down to the wire as an expression first recorded in 1950 in the newspaper account of a baseball game. Widely used as slang now for “to the very last moment or the very end,” it is also heard as to go to the wire.
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