英语词汇take with a grain of salt的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

take with a grain of salt. Pliny the Elder, who of all ancient historians should most often be taken with a cellar of salt, writes that when Pompey seized Mithridates’ palace he found the king of Pontus’s fabled secret antidote against poisons that had pro- tected him from assassins all his life. It contained 72 ingredi- ents, none of them given by the historian, but the last line of the famous formula supposedly read to “be taken fasting, plus a grain of salt [addito salis granito].” The incredulous Pliny isn’t known for his subtlety, so it is doubtful that he meant the phrase in any but its literal sense. Nevertheless, the story arose in modern times that Pliny’s remark was skeptical and was the origin of the expression to take with a grain of salt, “to accept something with reservations, to avoid swallowing it whole.” People quoted Pliny’s Latin phrase incorrectly and cum grano salis was widely accepted as the ancestor of the expression. Ac- tually, the term is little more than three centuries old. Its origin is unknown, and it obviously stems from the idea that salt makes food more palatable and easier to swallow. The Romans knew this, and even sprinkled salt on food they thought might contain poison, but there is no record that they ever used the phrase to indicate skepticism. See mithridatize.

词汇	take with a grain of salt
词源	take with a grain of salt. Pliny the Elder, who of all ancient historians should most often be taken with a cellar of salt, writes that when Pompey seized Mithridates’ palace he found the king of Pontus’s fabled secret antidote against poisons that had pro- tected him from assassins all his life. It contained 72 ingredi- ents, none of them given by the historian, but the last line of the famous formula supposedly read to “be taken fasting, plus a grain of salt [addito salis granito].” The incredulous Pliny isn’t known for his subtlety, so it is doubtful that he meant the phrase in any but its literal sense. Nevertheless, the story arose in modern times that Pliny’s remark was skeptical and was the origin of the expression to take with a grain of salt, “to accept something with reservations, to avoid swallowing it whole.” People quoted Pliny’s Latin phrase incorrectly and cum grano salis was widely accepted as the ancestor of the expression. Ac- tually, the term is little more than three centuries old. Its origin is unknown, and it obviously stems from the idea that salt makes food more palatable and easier to swallow. The Romans knew this, and even sprinkled salt on food they thought might contain poison, but there is no record that they ever used the phrase to indicate skepticism. See mithridatize.
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