"Have a wolf by the ears" nghĩa là gì?

Đăng bởi lovebird21c - 08 May, 2019

Photo by Nancy Stapler on Unsplash.

'Have a wolf by the ears' = có con sói ngay bên tai (= ngay sát người) nghĩa là ở trong tình huống khó khăn, làm việc với người (mạnh, quyền lực) có thể mang tính đe dọa hoặc rắc rối/phức tạp; ra cũng dở, ở lại cũng dở.

Ví dụ

Beijing has no fondness for Kim, but it prefers to hold a wolf by the ears than to release it. China cannot permit a U.S. occupation of its southern buffer zone (vùng đệm, vùng "xôi đậu") and will mobilize forces (huy động lực lượng) to prevent (ngăn chặn) it, just as it did in 1950 when U.S. forces crossed the 38th parallel after driving the North Koreans out of the South.

When the stock market swooned earlier in the year I remembered an adage, attributed to Emperor Tiberius, about holding a wolf by the ears. Now that you have him, what are you going to do? Continue to hold and experience discomfort? Or let loose and pray you are not harmed in the process? Either way, your options seem unpleasant. It certainly does not feel good.

As we've seen right here at home, the central bankers have — to quote an old expression from the American frontier I spotted the other day — "a wolf by the ears." Letting go would be dangerous. Even though Canada's chief central banker Stephen Poloz knows low rates are driving up real estate prices in an unhealthy way, raising rates is out of the question. Even while Japanese and European central bankers know their actions may be leading to instability, just as Haldane insisted on Friday, stimulus is the only obvious answer.

Phạm Hạnh

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Tags: phrase