英语词汇show a leg的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

show a leg; shake a leg. Show a leg means to get up from bed, to hurry, or be alert. One version of its birth says that when the bos’n’s mate on early 19th-century sailing ships woke up the crew in the morning, he cried, “Show a leg, show a leg or a stocking!” At that time, according to the story, women were al- lowed to be on board ship, ostensibly as sailors’ wives, and a “leg in a stocking put over the side of a hammock indicated that the occupant was a woman, who was allowed to remain until the men had cleared out.” A more prosaic and reasonable account says the bos’n cried, “Come on, all you sleepers! Hey! Show a leg and put a stocking on it.” Shake a leg, meaning “hur- ry,” may derive from this earlier phrase, for both are nautical expressions and no better explanation has been given.

词汇	show a leg
词源	show a leg; shake a leg. Show a leg means to get up from bed, to hurry, or be alert. One version of its birth says that when the bos’n’s mate on early 19th-century sailing ships woke up the crew in the morning, he cried, “Show a leg, show a leg or a stocking!” At that time, according to the story, women were al- lowed to be on board ship, ostensibly as sailors’ wives, and a “leg in a stocking put over the side of a hammock indicated that the occupant was a woman, who was allowed to remain until the men had cleared out.” A more prosaic and reasonable account says the bos’n cried, “Come on, all you sleepers! Hey! Show a leg and put a stocking on it.” Shake a leg, meaning “hur- ry,” may derive from this earlier phrase, for both are nautical expressions and no better explanation has been given.
随便看	on the pad on the pig-s back on the qui vive on the rocks on the ropes on the same sheet of music with on the shady side of 40 on the side of the angels on the spot on the spree on the square on the tip of my tongue on the town on the wagon on the warpath on the whole i’d rather be in philadelphia on the wrong side of the door when brains were handed out on tick on velvet on your own hook oo oof oomph op-ed page open and shut