Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.
这里是美国之音慢速英语词汇典故。
Baloney is a kind of sausage that many Americans eat often. The word also has another meaning in English. It is used to describe something – usually something someone says – that is false or wrong or foolish.
baloney是美国人常吃的一种香肠。这个词在英语里还有另外一个意思，经常用来形容某人说的某些事是假的，错的或者是荒谬的。
Baloney sausage comes from the name of the Italian city, Bologna. The city is famous for its sausage, a mixture of smoked, spiced meat from cows and pigs. But, boloney sausage does not taste the same as beef or pork alone.
baloney香肠这个名称来源于一个意大利城市博洛尼亚（Bologna），该城市以香肠著称，这种香肠用烟熏并调味过的牛肉和猪肉混合而成。但是，boloney香肠吃起来和牛肉或猪肉原本的味道不太一样。
Some language experts think this different taste is responsible for the birth of the expression baloney. Baloney is an idea or statement that is nothing like the truth...in the same way that baloney sausage tastes nothing like the meat that is used to make it.
一些语言学家认为，这种味道的差异就是baloney这个说法的出处。baloney是一种并非事实的想法或说法，就像baloney香肠吃起来的味道和通常用到的原材料的味道完全不同。
Baloney is a word often used by politicians to describe the ideas of their opponents.
baloney常被政客用来形容其对手的观点。
The expression has been used for years. Fifty years ago, a former governor of New York state, Alfred Smith, criticized some claims by President Franklin Roosevelt about the successes of the Roosevelt administration. Smith said, "No matter how thin you slice it, it is still baloney."
这个词已经用了多年。50年前，纽约州前州长阿尔弗雷德·史密斯（Alfred Smith）曾批判罗斯福总统（Franklin Roosevelt）关于其政府执政成功的说法，史密斯说道：“No matter how thin you slice it, it is still baloney”（不管你切得多薄，香肠就是香肠。引申含义：不管你如何狡辩，都是胡扯。）
A similar word has almost the same meaning as baloney. It even sounds almost the same. The word is blarney. It began in Ireland about sixteen hundred.
还有一个和baloney意思非常相似的词，甚至发音也几乎一样，这个词是blarney（花言巧语，奉承话），起源于1600年的爱尔兰。
The lord of Blarney castle, near Cork, agreed to surrender the castle to British troops. But he kept making excuses for postponing the surrender. And, he made them sound like very good excuses, "this is just more of the same blarney."
靠近爱尔兰科克（Cork）的Blarney城堡的主人同意把城堡移交给英国军队，但是他一直找借口推迟移交时间，而且这些借口听起来理由都非常充分，“只是更多的花言巧语”
The Irish castle now is famous for its Blarney stone. Kissing the stone is thought to give a person special powers of speech. One who has kissed the Blarney stone, so the story goes, can speak words of praise so smoothly and sweetly that you believe them, even when you know they are false.
这个爱尔兰城堡现在以Blarney石头著称。人们认为，亲吻这块石头就会获得非比寻常的语言能力。故事的发展就是，亲吻过这块石头的人，能说出非常动听的奉承话，哪怕你明知是假的也还是会相信。
A former Roman Catholic bishop of New York City, Fulton Sheen, once explained, "Baloney is praise so thick it cannot be true. And blarney is praise so thin we like it."
纽约罗马教堂的前主教Fulton Sheen曾经解释说，“baloney（胡扯、瞎说）如此夸张，它不可能是真实的；而blarney（奉承话）如此单薄（意思是极易被看破），我们却都喜欢。”
Another expression is pulling the wool over someone’s eyes. It means to make someone believe something that is not true. The expression goes back to the days when men wore false hair, or wigs, similar to those worn by judges today in British courts.
另一个短语是pulling the wool over someone’s eyes，意思是让某人相信一些不真实的东西（意为欺骗，蒙蔽某人）。这个短语的历史要追溯到男人戴假发的时代了，就像现在英国法庭上法官们的装扮。
The word wool was a popular joking word for hair. If you pulled a man’s wig over his eyes, he could not see what was happening. Today, when you pull the wool over someone’s eyes, he cannot see the truth.
wool这个词是头发的戏谑语。如果你把一个人的头发拉到遮住眼睛，他就什么都看不到了。当你蒙蔽了一个人（pull the wool over someone’s eyes），他就看不清真相。
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