| 词源 |
big wheel, etc. Big wheel, first recorded in 1941, is the latest in a long line of similar earlier expressions. Of these bigwig, big shot, big cheese, big gun, and even big noise are still heard, while big bug, big fish, big dog, and big toad in the puddle are all but dead. The “wheel” in the term could come from the huge wheels in textile mills, or the phrase may derive from the mid-19th- century expression “to roll a big wheel,” used by mechanics as a synonym for “to be important or influential.” |