Take a country full of people who frequently loathe¹ each other, then impose a social system of extreme politeness to ensure nobody can ever say what they mean without offending somebody else – and you’ll start to understand why these British insults are so unnecessarily weird².

如果有一个国家的人们总是互相嫌弃，而在社会上又无与伦比地礼貌，没人想去开门见山地得罪别人，这极大程度上是种矛盾——看了这个解析，你就会懂得为什么下面这些拐弯抹角的英式奚落方法这么奇怪了。

“BLOWING HIS OWN TRUMPET³”

自吹自擂

This, of course, refers to the ancient English practice of having a trumpet blown when somebody important arrived at court. The implication is that the person being insulted thinks he’s important, but in actual fact is so unimportant that he has no-one to blow a trumpet to announce his arrival; embarrassingly, he has to announce his own importance by ‘blowing his own trumpet’. Really, this is reflective of how much the British hate the smarminess⁴ of self-promotion, which is probably why we all feel so uneasy about going into sleazy banking⁵ jobs.

此说法当然来自古代英国的风俗——凡是有贵人驾到宫廷，必奏小号（trumpet）。个中内涵是被侮辱的那人自以为很重要，但其实微不足道，没有人为他吹小号来迎驾；令人尴尬的是，他得“自吹自擂”来广告自己有多重要。这个短语反应了英国人有多讨厌油腔滑调的自荐行为，这就是大家都抵触进入金融行业的原因吧。

“THINKS HE’S GOD’S GIFT”

觉得自己是上帝的礼物

As I revealed in another article for KanDongSee, most of Britain’s insults come from Christian⁶ references, and here we see another example. God gave humankind many gifts, but it’s pretty pompous⁷ to assume that you’re one of them. The phrase is usually said of a man who thinks he is “God’s gift to women” (and he probably blows his own trumpet about it), and subtlyundermines the man in question is a classically British fashion. He will no doubt return home to curl into a ball and flounder in his own tears.

我在看东西另一篇文章中曾披露，大多英式的奚落方式来自基督教，这条也不例外。上帝给予了人们许多礼物，但要是你觉得自己就是其中之一，就不只是一点点的浮夸了。这个说法一般用在男人身上，这人认为自己是“上帝给女人的礼物”（这些人应该也会自吹自擂），而经典的英式做法就是用这句话微妙地贬低他。你这一说，他肯定会灰溜溜地回家，蜷成一团嚎啕大哭的。

“EGGHEAD”

蛋头

If there’s one thing the British love more than slyly insulting each other, it’s food – so it’s not surprising that they’ve combined the two things into one (also note “bad apple”, “sour grapes” and “couch potato”). An “egghead” is an annoyingly intelligent person, so-called because smart people are thought to have larger heads which look like upside-down eggs. If they get much more big-headed, they might end up scrambled⁸.

除了拐弯抹角地骂人，英国人最喜欢的就要数食物了——所以他们把两样合并起来也不足为奇了（此外还有“bad apple（坏苹果）”, “sour grapes（酸葡萄）”and “couch potato（沙发土豆）”）。“蛋头”用来描述一个极为讨厌的聪明人，说他是蛋是因为大家觉得聪明人的头都比常人大，而且看起来像是倒置的蛋。如果他们头再大一点就会被炒来吃掉了吧。

“GOT A FEW SCREWS LOOSE”

几个螺丝钉松了

This common put-down has a number of siblings⁹, including “few spanners short of a toolbox”, “few cards short of a deck”, “not the brightest crayon in the box”, “the light’s on but no one’s home” and my personal favourite: “fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down”. All of these link to the easily-imagined idea that stupid people are somehow missing bits of their brain. It’s certainly a more comfortable way for the British upper class to think about it – it means they don’t have to bother reforming the education system again.

这个常见的骂人方式还有几个亲戚，包括“few spanners short of a toolbox（工具箱里少了几个扳手）”, “few cards short of a deck (一副牌里少了几张)”, “not the brightest crayon in the box（不是盒子里最鲜艳的蜡笔）”, “the light’s on but no one’s home（空房子里亮着灯）”, 还有我自己最喜欢的：“fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down（从笨树上掉下来的时候还撞到了每个树枝）”。所有这些说法都和同一个想当然的主要思想有关——傻人脑子里缺根筋。这样想对英国上层阶级人士来说可能是件好事，这说明他们就不必大费周章地改革教育系统了。

“I DO DESIRE WE MAY BE BETTER STRANGERS”

我们最好做陌生人

Admittedly, this isn’t too commonly heard these days, but this brilliant put-down from Shakespeare’s As You Like It was too good to miss. Said by Orlando, this excellent little quip is so cleverly worded you might think you were being complimented if you weren’t paying attention. The play actually has a wealth of put-downs that encapsulate the British idiom – consider “Let’s meet as little as we can”, “By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you”, or the oddly scathing¹⁰ “Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.”

虽然现在并不常用, 但这个源于莎翁作品《皆大欢喜》的绝妙说法, 不提一下太可惜了。作为剧中奥兰多的台词，这句嘲讽的修辞简直聪明绝顶，你不注意还以为对方在夸你呢。此剧中有诸多包含英国谚语的奚落方式，比如“Let’s meet as little as we can（让我们尽可能少见面吧）”，“By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you（我发誓，我在找一个傻瓜，不料遇到了你）”，或者像下面这难得尖刻的一句“Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side（你真该死，就像一个煎坏了的蛋，一面全焦了）”。