英语词汇beat the living daylights out of you的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

beat the living daylights out of you. To say “I’ll let daylight into you!” to an enemy in days past was to threaten that you’d open him up, make a hole in him with a sword, knife, or gun. The expression, in the form of its variant “I’ll make daylight shine through you,” is recorded in America as early as 1774 and is probably much older. Sayings like “I’ll fill him full of holes” replaced the older expression when modern weapons like ma- chine guns made wholesale ventilation easier, but it lived on in the form of I’ll beat the living daylights out of you—I’ll beat you to a pulp, punish you unmercifully. Unlike the old swordsman’s words, this makes no sense literally. It is merely the ghost of an imaginative phrase.

词汇	beat the living daylights out of you
词源	beat the living daylights out of you. To say “I’ll let daylight into you!” to an enemy in days past was to threaten that you’d open him up, make a hole in him with a sword, knife, or gun. The expression, in the form of its variant “I’ll make daylight shine through you,” is recorded in America as early as 1774 and is probably much older. Sayings like “I’ll fill him full of holes” replaced the older expression when modern weapons like ma- chine guns made wholesale ventilation easier, but it lived on in the form of I’ll beat the living daylights out of you—I’ll beat you to a pulp, punish you unmercifully. Unlike the old swordsman’s words, this makes no sense literally. It is merely the ghost of an imaginative phrase.
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