英语词汇sink or swim的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

sink or swim. An old saying that can be traced back at least to Chaucer about 1368. Chaucer, who may have coined the ex- pression, wrote: “Ye rekke [reckon] not whethyr I flete [obsolete for swim] or sink.” Since then, most writers give the phrase as sink or swim, not Chaucer’s swim or sink, and it is often used to mean “no matter what happens,” as in Byron’s famous lines in Don Juan (1819) regarding the writing life: “And what I write I cast upon the stream / To sink or swim—I have had at least my dream.”

词汇	sink or swim
词源	sink or swim. An old saying that can be traced back at least to Chaucer about 1368. Chaucer, who may have coined the ex- pression, wrote: “Ye rekke [reckon] not whethyr I flete [obsolete for swim] or sink.” Since then, most writers give the phrase as sink or swim, not Chaucer’s swim or sink, and it is often used to mean “no matter what happens,” as in Byron’s famous lines in Don Juan (1819) regarding the writing life: “And what I write I cast upon the stream / To sink or swim—I have had at least my dream.”
随便看	fortnight fortune cookies fortunella forty-gallon baptists forty thieves for whom the bell tolls fosbury flop fossick fotch-on fo-ti-tieng foul ball foul play founder fountain pen fourdrinier fourflusher four horsemen fourierism four-leaf clover four-letter man four-letter word four million four-minute mile fourscore and seven fourteen hundred