英语词汇wet one-s beak的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

wet one’s beak. The Roman historian Suetonius mentions a boy whose nickname was Beak. For untold centuries beak (of an animal) has been a humorous synonym for the human nose. Even the expression to dip one’s beak, “to take a drink,” is over 150 years old. The expression to wet one’s beak, “to partake of an enterprise,” usually a criminal activity, was not recorded in English until Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (1970): “ ‘After all, this is my neighborhood [he said] and you should let me wet my beak.’ He used the Sicilian phrase of the Mafia, ‘Fari vagna- vie a pizzu.’ Pizzu means the beak of any small bird such as a ca- nary. The phrase itself was a demand for part of the loot.”

词汇	wet one-s beak
词源	wet one’s beak. The Roman historian Suetonius mentions a boy whose nickname was Beak. For untold centuries beak (of an animal) has been a humorous synonym for the human nose. Even the expression to dip one’s beak, “to take a drink,” is over 150 years old. The expression to wet one’s beak, “to partake of an enterprise,” usually a criminal activity, was not recorded in English until Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (1970): “ ‘After all, this is my neighborhood [he said] and you should let me wet my beak.’ He used the Sicilian phrase of the Mafia, ‘Fari vagna- vie a pizzu.’ Pizzu means the beak of any small bird such as a ca- nary. The phrase itself was a demand for part of the loot.”
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