| 词源 |
sleeper. A sleeper, for “any unexpected success,” dates to the 1930s. One speculation has the word deriving from sleeper, for “an unbranded steer,” a late 19th-century term that came to mean, in one sense, “something taken for something else.” An- other vague possibility is sleeper for “a bet in faro when the own- er has forgotten it, when it becomes public property, anyone having a right to take it.” By this reasoning the sleeper, or bet, could turn out to be a good one. |