【英语习语】

a bolt from the blue

【习语注释】

该习语中的bolt本义表示“门闩”，在这里表示“闪电”，the blue代指the sky，即“天空”。所以该习语主要用来喻指“a complete surprise, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky”，即“彻底的惊讶，就像晴空霹雳”，相当于汉语里的“晴天霹雳；出人意表；出乎意料；始料不及；令人吃惊；大感意外”。

【习语运用】

The news that the president was murdered came like a bolt from the blue for many people in this country.

总统被谋杀的消息对于这个国家的许多人来说就如同一个晴天霹雳。

We had been sure he was in New York, so his sudden appearance was a bolt from the blue.

我们大家都认定他在纽约，因此他的突然出现完全出乎我们的意料。

Miss Anne has just got her salary raised ， so her decision to resign was a bolt from the blue

安妮小姐刚被加薪，所以她的辞职是我们始料不及的。

Bill did not see it coming at all. It was a complete bolt from the blue, the person said.

比尔一点也没想到会出现这种情况。该人士称，这完全是晴天霹雳。

【闲话习语】

该习语中还存在其他几种说法，如out of the blue或a bolt out of the blue。较早使用该习语的书面记录来自Thomas Carlyle的《The French Revolution》（1837）：

"Arrestment, sudden really as a bolt out of the Blue, has hit strange victims."

一说该习语源自罗马的抒情诗人Quintus Horatius Flaccus，即Horace（贺拉斯，与维吉尔、奥维德并称为古罗马三大诗人），他在自己的作品《Ode 34》中这么写道：

“My prayers were scant, my offerings few,While witless wisdom fool'd my mind;But now I trim my sails anew,And trace the course I left behind.For lo! the Sire of heaven on high,By whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven,To-day through an unclouded sky”

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那么，你还知道英语里“晴天霹雳”的其它说法吗？欢迎留言探讨。