| 词汇 | over a barrel |
| 词源 | over a barrel. Here the person over the barrel is in the other person’s power or at his mercy. In the days before mouth-to- mouth resuscitation and other modern methods of lifesaving, lifeguards placed drowning victims over a barrel, which was rolled back and forth while the lifeguard tried to revive them. Victims were certainly in the lifeguard’s power, and the process is probably the origin of the Americanism to have someone over a barrel. |
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