"Smell a rat" nghĩa là gì?

I smell a rat baby!!! Photo courtesy guillermo varela.

'Smell a rat' có smell là ngửi, và rat là chuột (ngửi thấy mùi chuột chết?) -> cụm từ này nghĩa là nghi ngờ có âm mưu, hay nghi ngờ có sự dối trá.

Ví dụ
“When the second one asked her all over again what she wanted for Christmas she began to smell a rat,” he told me wearily (mệt mỏi), a man clearly struggling to hold back the tide. “I just had to tell her that Santa’s getting on a bit and his memory isn’t what it was.”

How can anyone who hit a pothole (ổ gà) complain about infrastructure spending? But people feel they've been had when they discover that the economics is about wasted spending, and infrastructure was a veneer (vỏ ngoài) to get the bill (dự luật) passed (được thông qua). And they smell a rat when they hear economic arguments shaded for partisan politics.

Now the CAFOs are doing their best to make it legal for millions of gallons of excrement (phân) to leak into our groundwater. These terrible conditions, combined with recent revelations of animal abuse and worker wage theft at New Mexico dairies, are enough to make me think that I smell a rat.

ANZ workers smell a rat over employment rights: More than 50 union members, and a giant inflatable rat, protested outside the ANZ's headquarters in Wellington this morning. ANZ workers from First Union are protesting against rotating shifts and a pay rise of 2-3 per cent, compared to the 14% they claim management got.

Phạm Hạnh

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