| 词汇 | on the fritz |
| 词源 | on the fritz. No one seems to have discovered where the fritz comes from in on the fritz, which means out of working order, in disrepair, worthless, or ruined. Since on the fritz isn’t record- ed before the 1920s, it may have something to do with the de- rogatory term “Fritz,” for a German soldier in World War I. Fritz is the nickname for the common German name Fried- erich, and was popularized in the nickname of Frederick the Great of Prussia—Old Fritz—long before World War I. Some- one out of working order or ruined, could have been compared to the defeated Germans. Another wild guess is that fritz is a corruption of “frittered,” in its old sense of broken or torn into pieces—as in “the sail frittered in a thousand pieces.” Maybe the phrase even refers to little Fritz of the early comic strip “The Katzenjammer Kids,” who along with his twin brother Hans put a lot of things on the fritz. |
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