词汇 | snake in the grass |
词源 | snake in the grass. Latet anguis in herbe (“a snake lurks in the grass”), the Roman poet Virgil wrote in the third Eclogue, and from this ancient source comes our common expression for a hidden or hypocritical enemy. Proving that times don’t change much, the Latin proverb first appears in English as a line in a political song of about 1290: “Though all appears clean, a snake lurks in the grass.” |
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