英语词汇you’re pulling my leg的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

you’re pulling my leg. Early English hangmen were so inept that friends or relatives were permitted to pull on a victim’s dangling body to end his suffering. This gruesome practice was once thought to be the origin of the humorous phrase you’re pulling my leg, meaning you’re fooling me, making fun of me, putting me on. Several word detectives worked overtime to es- tablish the round-about explanation for this, to no avail in the end, for it turned out that the phrase didn’t go back to the days of blundering English hangmen at all; that misconception had been fostered by the misdating of the first quotation using the phrase, which appears now to have originated no earlier than the mid-19th century. Instead of being real gallows humor, the phrase seems to be connected somehow with tripping a person up. One theory is that British footpads or muggers worked in pairs, including a specialist known as a “tripper up.” Using a cane with a curved handle or piece of wire, this tripper up would trip his victim so that his accomplice could pounce on him and relieve him of his wallet. Since this was a ruse and a leg was actually being pulled, it gave rise to the expression you’re pulling my leg. This, too, is only a theory, however. The most we can say is that the phrase probably has some relation to some- body being tripped up or fooled.

词汇	you’re pulling my leg
词源	you’re pulling my leg. Early English hangmen were so inept that friends or relatives were permitted to pull on a victim’s dangling body to end his suffering. This gruesome practice was once thought to be the origin of the humorous phrase you’re pulling my leg, meaning you’re fooling me, making fun of me, putting me on. Several word detectives worked overtime to es- tablish the round-about explanation for this, to no avail in the end, for it turned out that the phrase didn’t go back to the days of blundering English hangmen at all; that misconception had been fostered by the misdating of the first quotation using the phrase, which appears now to have originated no earlier than the mid-19th century. Instead of being real gallows humor, the phrase seems to be connected somehow with tripping a person up. One theory is that British footpads or muggers worked in pairs, including a specialist known as a “tripper up.” Using a cane with a curved handle or piece of wire, this tripper up would trip his victim so that his accomplice could pounce on him and relieve him of his wallet. Since this was a ruse and a leg was actually being pulled, it gave rise to the expression you’re pulling my leg. This, too, is only a theory, however. The most we can say is that the phrase probably has some relation to some- body being tripped up or fooled.
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