英语词汇that won’t wash的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

that won’t wash. That (usually exaggerated) excuse, story, or alibi won’t do. Though it seems like a recent coinage this ex- pression dates back to about the early 1840s in England. It was originally said of poor fabrics that wouldn’t hold up to washing. “That willn’t wash, miss,” is said by a character in Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley (1849), set in the time of the Luddite riots when the Yorkshire wool industry suffered great losses. “He won’t wash,” the didactic British novelist and poet Charles Kingsley (1819–75) said about the poet Robert Browning’s literary repu- tation in a letter to a friend.

词汇	that won’t wash
词源	that won’t wash. That (usually exaggerated) excuse, story, or alibi won’t do. Though it seems like a recent coinage this ex- pression dates back to about the early 1840s in England. It was originally said of poor fabrics that wouldn’t hold up to washing. “That willn’t wash, miss,” is said by a character in Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley (1849), set in the time of the Luddite riots when the Yorkshire wool industry suffered great losses. “He won’t wash,” the didactic British novelist and poet Charles Kingsley (1819–75) said about the poet Robert Browning’s literary repu- tation in a letter to a friend.
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