| 词源 |
back to the salt mines! Back to work, especially dreary, un- rewarding work, “slave labor.” This catchphrase may be several hundred years old. It originated in Russia, where people have been punished for centuries by banishment to Siberia and compulsory labor in the salt mines there. The phrase is, howev- er, first recorded in an 1890s play about Russian exiles in Siberia. |