英语词汇sleep like a top的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

sleep like a top. A top spinning at high speed is so poised and steady that it hardly seems to move. Writers first compared sound sleepers to spinning tops over 350 years ago, and even though we now know that no one sleeps so soundly the whole night through, the comparison remains a good one—for a spinning top begins to wobble after a while, is rewound, and resumes its steady spinning. Some authorities have tried to trace the phrase back beyond its first recorded use in English (1616), to the French word taupe, a “mole,” the implication be- ing that one sleeps as peacefully as a mole. But the French saying is also to “sleep like a top,” dormir comme un sabot, not dormir comme une taupe, “to sleep like a mole.” Tops, like yo- yos, are in fact said to be “sleeping” when they are spinning perfectly. William Congreve played on both meanings when he wrote in his comedy The Old Bachelor (1693): “I can ensure his anger dormant, or should be seen to rouse, ’tis but well lashing him and he will sleep like a top.” Congreve’s play, which brought him sudden fame, has a cast of aptronyms second to few. There is Heartwell, the kind old bachelor; Vainlove, who forsakes his mistress; Fondlewife, the uxorious old banker; and even a cow- ardly bully named Captain Bluffe.

词汇	sleep like a top
词源	sleep like a top. A top spinning at high speed is so poised and steady that it hardly seems to move. Writers first compared sound sleepers to spinning tops over 350 years ago, and even though we now know that no one sleeps so soundly the whole night through, the comparison remains a good one—for a spinning top begins to wobble after a while, is rewound, and resumes its steady spinning. Some authorities have tried to trace the phrase back beyond its first recorded use in English (1616), to the French word taupe, a “mole,” the implication be- ing that one sleeps as peacefully as a mole. But the French saying is also to “sleep like a top,” dormir comme un sabot, not dormir comme une taupe, “to sleep like a mole.” Tops, like yo- yos, are in fact said to be “sleeping” when they are spinning perfectly. William Congreve played on both meanings when he wrote in his comedy The Old Bachelor (1693): “I can ensure his anger dormant, or should be seen to rouse, ’tis but well lashing him and he will sleep like a top.” Congreve’s play, which brought him sudden fame, has a cast of aptronyms second to few. There is Heartwell, the kind old bachelor; Vainlove, who forsakes his mistress; Fondlewife, the uxorious old banker; and even a cow- ardly bully named Captain Bluffe.
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