In article <1182083473.035157.47540@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
MarketaT <marketice@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> I'm trying to translate a part of John Irving's novel The Cider House
> Rules and I've come across several expressions I can not cope with....
> Could enyone help me with those:
> "They had corned the gossip market."
"Cornered." To "corner a market" means to have all of the available
commodity, such that one can then set any price they want to sell. It's
a stock-exchange term so, for example, if I have cornered the
pork-bellies market, that means I have so many pork bellies (and, by
inference, everyone else has so few) that I can set any price I want and
people can either pay my price or go without. It's slightly more
complicated than that, as grain & pork-belly markets are "futures"
markets, but you get the idea.
"They had cornered the gossip market" is slightly awkward slang meaning
"they had all the gossip. If you wanted some gossip, these guys were
the place to go."
> "...a retired physician who thought that President Teddy Roosevelt was
> the only other man in the world besides himself who had not been made
> from a banana." (?be made from a banana?)
Uh... is the translation you're translating not an original English
translation? Might the phrase have been "thought that Teddy... besides
himself who was not completely bananas"? For a person to be "bananas"
means that they are crazy, whacko or "totally out there."
> "The town's wounded now sported stitches instead of bruises and broken
> bones;..."
To "sport" something means to have it visible and conspicuous. "Sally
is sporting a new tattoo", "Tom is sporting a new jacket", etc.
It seems that the wounded formerly had bruises and broken bones, but now
were "sporting" stitches. I'd take this as an indication that they're
on the mend and getting medical treatment.
--
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