"Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash" nghĩa là gì?

"Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash" = quá nghèo không thể quét sơn, quá tự trọng (không thể hạ mình) quét vôi -> nghĩa là nghèo nàn, cơ cực.

Ví dụ

Too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash: In the old days, like way back in the 1950’s, people who were poor used to mix lime (vôi) with water to paint their houses because they were saving their real paint money for a rainy day (khi gặp khó khăn). When it did rain, the drought was broken, the crops laid by, the white wash gone, and they found a saloon (phòng khách lớn) then painted the town red.

Whitewash was far less expensive than paint and became associated with the poor, giving rise the expression “Too poor to paint but too proud to whitewash.” Readers may remember that classic eastern Pennsylvania stone farmhouses were typically covered with a thin coat of plaster (trát vữa) and lime wash. More prosperous later owners have gradually moved away from that custom (phong tục), but the website The Prairie Homestead still offers helpful guidance on whitewashing your barns (kho thóc) and chicken coops (chuồng gà).

Roberta embraced the peripatetic (người theo phái tiêu dao, đi rong) lot of a Navy spouse that Archie and Myrtle Wright worried wouldn’t suit her, making the best of the frequent dislocations and her husband’s long absences at sea. Her son, the future senator (thượng nghị sĩ) and my husband, recalled his parents’ early years in the smaller and more insular (hẹp hòi, ở đảo) prewar Navy as “something out of the The Winds of War.” When the McCains were stationed at Pearl Harbor, he said, his parents dined in formal attire (quần áo) even when they were at home. At John Jr.’s insistence, the family lived on his Navy salary. Roberta recalled the romance and the deprivations (túng thiếu, nghèo khổ) of those years with the phrase, “We were too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash.”

Bài trước: "So poor their Sunday supper is fried water" nghĩa là gì?