| 词汇 | pour oil on troubled waters |
| 词源 | pour oil on troubled waters. To soothe or calm a situation by tact and diplomacy is the figurative meaning of the above phrase. The ancients, Pliny and Plutarch among them, believed that oil poured on stormy waters reduced the waves to a calm and allowed a vessel to ride through a storm. The Venerable Bede says in his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (731) that Bishop Aidan, an Irish monk, gave a priest, who was to de- liver King Oswy’s bride to him, holy oil to pour on the sea if the waves became threatening; his miraculous oil would stop the wind from blowing. A storm did blow up and the priest saved the ship and the future queen by following this advice. Later, Benjamin Franklin mentioned the practice of pouring oil on troubled waters in a letter and it said that the captains of Amer- ican whaling vessels sometimes ordered oil poured on stormy waters. |
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