英语词汇bitter pill to swallow的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

bitter pill to swallow; pill-pusher. Figurative bitter pills were being swallowed more than two centuries before Horace Wal- pole used the expression in 1779. The phrase may have been proverbial ever since apothecaries began making the round lit- tle pellet that the Romans called a pila (ball) and from which our word pill derives. Though many pills were coated with hon- ey and spices (and later sugarcoated), some bitter ingredients could not be masked. The intensely bitter chinchona bark, which contains quinine and was used to treat malaria, is one example. (Chinchona, incidentally, was named for the Condesa Ana de Chinchon, wife of the Spanish viceroy of Peru, who was stricken with a tropical fever in 1639 and cured by chinchona bark.) Bitter pills are also responsible for the expression an old pill for a grouchy person, first recorded in about 1880, and pill- pusher, early 20th-century slang for a doctor, which has a de- rogatory connotation but has its roots in old, nonobjectionable British military slang for a doctor, a “pill,” that goes back to about 1860.

词汇	bitter pill to swallow
词源	bitter pill to swallow; pill-pusher. Figurative bitter pills were being swallowed more than two centuries before Horace Wal- pole used the expression in 1779. The phrase may have been proverbial ever since apothecaries began making the round lit- tle pellet that the Romans called a pila (ball) and from which our word pill derives. Though many pills were coated with hon- ey and spices (and later sugarcoated), some bitter ingredients could not be masked. The intensely bitter chinchona bark, which contains quinine and was used to treat malaria, is one example. (Chinchona, incidentally, was named for the Condesa Ana de Chinchon, wife of the Spanish viceroy of Peru, who was stricken with a tropical fever in 1639 and cured by chinchona bark.) Bitter pills are also responsible for the expression an old pill for a grouchy person, first recorded in about 1880, and pill- pusher, early 20th-century slang for a doctor, which has a de- rogatory connotation but has its roots in old, nonobjectionable British military slang for a doctor, a “pill,” that goes back to about 1860.
随便看	thersitical the same dog bit me thesaurus the scene opens the schilder technique the screw plot the second city of the world the sensation is momentary and the position ridiculous the september night the settlement of the west the sheik the silent t you’re mar-got asquith aren’t you screen siren the skipper swallows the anchor the smythe report the spanish lady thespian the splendid drunken twenties the splendid splinter the square circle the squeaky wheel gets the most grease the stagira the stendhal syndrome the sticks the stolen generation the stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over