| 词源 |
chickens come home to roost. Malcolm X stirred up a hor- net’s nest when he said this about John F. Kennedy after the president was assassinated, possibly alluding to alleged C.I.A. attempts on Fidel Castro’s life. But the saying is an old one, dating back to at least 1810 in the form of “Curses are like young chickens; they always come home to roost,” which ap- pears to have been the invention of English poet laureate Robert Southey as the motto of his poem “The Curse of Keha- ma.” The idea, of course, is that every curse or evil act returns to its originator as chickens return to their roost at night. |