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"Putting socks on an octopus" nghĩa là gì?
21 Nov, 2019
Photo by Svetlana Gumerova on Unsplash.
"Putting socks on an octopus" = đi tất cho con bạch tuộc -> nghĩa là làm việc bất khả (attempting an impossible task).
Ví dụ
For Hannah, writing a play for a zany (quái gở) contest is like trying to put socks on an octopus: almost impossible! She needs the help of her best friends, Isabel and Darin, and a full cast of wonderfully weird characters -- from a narcoleptic (mắc chứng ngủ rũ) mermaid to a doomed dead king -- to get the job done.
As one American pilot put it, bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail (Đường mòn Hồ Chí Minh, Đường Trường Sơn) to a standstill (đi đến chỗ bế tắc) was like trying to put socks on an octopus, because it wasn’t just one road, but a living, breathing, ever-evolving network of tracks and trails that, stuck end-to-end, stretched over 12,000 miles and criss-crossed over into neighbouring countries (nước láng giềng) Cambodia and Laos – neutral territory, so off-limits for US ground troops.
More a maze (mê cung) than a road, the trail disappeared, returned to view, dissolved (biến mất), emerged (hiện lên), contracted, expanded, split, reunited, vanished, materialized (hiện ra). We blasted (phá được) a big chunk of Laos, the 600-year-old monarchy, the Land of a Million Elephants, to bony, lunar dust. Yet somehow the Ho Chi Minh Trail, itself the enemy, was always there. Killing it was like trying to put socks on an octopus. The truckers themselves were much admired by Misty. Their side called them “pilots of the ground,” the metaphor causing no offense.
Thảo Nguyễn
Bài trước: "Make it your business to" nghĩa là gì?
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