【往期回顾】

【本期内容】

Where did the phrase 'a skeleton in the closet' come from?

“家丑”这个习语是怎么来的？

We tend to see this expression on the television or in newspapers after a scandal comes out and we tend to take for granted what it truly means.

丑闻曝光后，我们往往会在电视或报纸上看到这个习语，我们往往会想当然地认为这个习语就是表“家丑”的意思。

What it means to have a skeleton in your closet

壁橱里有骨架意味着什么

The idiomatic expression “a skeleton in the closet” refers to a hidden source of something scandalous or shameful. This is most commonly used when referring to something in the past that will cause potential ruin to a person or group of people when exposed. It also signifies an undisclosed fact about a person that would damage his social standing among the community were it revealed.

“壁橱里的骷髅”这个习语指的是丑闻或可耻的东西的隐藏来源。这最常用于指过去的事情，当被揭露时，会对一个人或一群人造成潜在的损毁。这也意味着一个人的一个未公开的事实，一旦被揭露，就会损害他的社会地位。

In simple words, to have a skeleton in the closet means you have secrets and other past memories that you’d prefer to keep hidden from the world.

简单地说，壁橱里有一具骨架意味着你有秘密和其他过去的记忆，你宁愿对世界隐瞒。

A skeleton can vary from things you’ve done such as one-night stands, to group feuds or betrayals, or even to extreme situations of something seen or done to you such as theft and murder. It doesn’t always have to be dark. Some “skeletons” may be of the embarrassing nature, such as awkward moments that are too awful to think about.

骷髅所指的内容会有各种可能性，可能是你做过的事情，比如一夜情，也可能是世仇或背叛，甚至可能是你所看到或所做过的极端情况，比如盗窃和谋杀。骷髅所指的不总是不好的事情。有些“骷髅”可能有些尴尬，比如一些想都不敢想的尴尬时刻。

It was in 19th century England that the phrase was first used. At that point, the English used the word “closet” to mean a water closet or a lavatory - a seemingly possible hiding place for skeletons, hypothetically speaking. The phrase later developed into “a skeleton in the cupboard” for the people of England, while “skeleton in the closet” refers to a hidden place in a wardrobe became more common in the States.

这个习语是在19世纪的英国首次使用的。当时，英国人用“壁橱”一词来表示抽水马桶或厕所——假设来说，这似乎是骷髅的藏身之地。这个习语后来发展成了英国人所使用的“橱柜（cupboard）里的骷髅”，而“橱柜（closet）里骷髅”指的是衣柜里隐藏的地方，在美国变得越来越普遍。

Where ‘a skeleton in your closet’ comes from

“壁橱里的骷髅”来自哪里

There are several theories about the origin of the expression. No matter where you trace it back to, the phrase came to mean the same thing and insinuated a dark past in the life of a seemingly innocent individual, waiting to be exposed to the public. The closet or cupboard as fixed imagery gives a sense of the constant risk of discovery.

关于这个表达的起源有几种理论。无论你追溯到哪里，这个习语的意思都是一样的，它暗示了一个看似无辜的人生活中的黑暗过去，等待着被公众曝光。壁橱或橱柜作为固定的意象，给人一种随时可能会被发现的危机感。

The exact origin is vague enough that all uses deserve exploration when considering how a skeleton, a symbol of death or mourning, became used as a phrase to refer to something embarrassing or scandalous.

确切的起源非常模糊，当考虑到象征死亡或哀悼的骨架是如何被用作表示尴尬或丑闻的习语时，所有的用法都值得探索。

There are numerous citations and stories of the usage of this popular phrase.

关于这个流行习语的用法，有很多引用和故事。

The Eclectic Review

《折衷评论》

One of the first instances of this phrase occurred in the early 1800s. It was printed in an article by William Hendry Stowell, published in the 1816 United Kingdom monthly periodical The Eclectic Review. It was used to discuss the shame of a disease that is infectious or hereditary.

这个习语的第一个例子出现在19世纪初。它刊登在威廉·亨德利·斯托维尔的一篇文章中，发表在1816年英国的月刊《折衷评论》上。它被用来讨论传染性或遗传性疾病的耻辱。

He explained in the excerpt that there are two great sources of panic in the situation of carrying a hereditary disease: the danger of contagion and the anxiety of leaving a legacy for later generations by way of a hereditary disease. The dread of passing along a disease often won out and caused men to conceal those skeletons in their closets.

他在摘录中解释说，在携带遗传性疾病的情况下，有两个很大的恐慌来源：传染的危险和通过遗传性疾病为后代留下后患的焦虑。对传播疾病的恐惧往往会胜出，导致人们把那些骷髅藏在壁橱里。

Gothic origins

哥特式起源

A similar turn of phrase was used in Gothic novels of the Victorian era. A master of such tales, Edgar Allan Poe, used it quite effectively.

维多利亚时代的哥特式小说也使用了类似的措辞。这类故事的大师埃德加·艾伦·坡非常有效地运用了它。

There are two instances where Edgar Allan Poe used the imagery of skeletons in the closet to drive a point home in his prose. In his piece called “The Black Cat” from 1845, he recounts the way a character dispelled the suspicions of others regarding his wife’s mysterious death. Seemingly unafraid of any further consequences, he smacked the wall that hid his wife’s corpse. In a turn of story, the wall fell and his accusers saw the literal skeleton in his closet or, in this case, wall.

有两个例子，埃德加·爱伦·坡在他的散文中使用了壁橱里骷髅的意象来传达一个观点。在他1845年的作品《黑猫》中，他讲述了一个角色如何消除其他人对他妻子神秘死亡的怀疑。他似乎不害怕任何进一步的后果，拍了拍藏他妻子尸体的墙。故事的转折点是，墙倒了，指控他的人看到了他壁橱里的骷髅，在本案中是：墙。

Edgar Allan Poe was also known for using this turn of phrase in his poetic masterpieces including “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” which areic poems about regret.

埃德加·艾伦·坡也因在他的诗歌杰作中使用这一措辞而闻名，包括关于遗憾的经典诗歌《乌鸦》和《安娜贝尔·李》。

The body snatchers theory

抢尸者之论

Another assumption suggests that the expression came from the infamous era of body snatchers. Before 1832, the use of corpses for medical research was frowned upon by British royalty and parliament. In order for doctors to study anatomy and teach their students, they had to steal dead bodies for their studies. The theory goes that the doctors would hide illegally obtained corpses and skeletons in cupboards or closets.

另一种假设表明，这个习语来自臭名昭著的抢尸者时代。在1832年之前，使用尸体进行医学研究受到英国皇室和议会的反对。为了让医生学习解剖学并教授学生，他们不得不偷尸体进行研究。理论上讲，医生会把非法获得的尸体和骨架藏在橱柜或壁橱里。

While this theory has no real evidence, the claim has been widely told. To this day, there are occasional discoveries of hidden skeletons inside house walls.

虽然这一理论没有真正的证据，但这一说法已被广泛接受。直到今天，偶尔会发现房屋墙壁内隐藏的骨架。

Criminal imagery

犯罪意象

‘A skeleton in the closet’ later developed into the idea of referring to grim evidence of a crime or murder. Famous Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray adopted the phrase and used it in his literature pieces and novels.

“壁橱里的骷髅”后来发展成了指犯罪或谋杀的确凿证据的概念。维多利亚时代著名作家威廉·马克皮斯·萨克雷采纳了这个习语，并在他的文学作品和小说中使用了这个习语。

In an 1845 piece, he referred to “a skeleton in every house” and in another piece from 1854-55 explicitly mentioned the exact phrase “skeletons in closets.” It was never known whether Thackeray was suggesting actual skeletons were inside people’s homes, or whether he was merely using a turn of phrase to aid his readers’ imagination.

在1845年的一篇文章中，他提到了“每家每户都有骨架”，在1854-55年的另一篇文章里，他明确提到了“壁橱里的骨架”这一确切习语。人们永远不知道萨克雷是在暗示人们家里有真正的骨架，还是他只是在用一个习语来帮助读者想象。

As much as this idiom is generally seen as figurative, one English philosopher decided to give it a literal turn. Jeremy Bentham, a mid-18th to 19th-century philosopher is the world’s only real skeleton in the closet. In his will, Bentham decided to preserve his skeleton in a wooden closet with a glass front, which would then be publicly displayed in University College in London.

尽管这个习语通常被视为比喻，但一位英国哲学家决定将其从字面上加以改变。18世纪中期至19世纪的哲学家杰里米·边沁（Jeremy Bentham）是世界上唯一一个真正的壁橱里的骷髅。在遗嘱中，边沁决定将他的骨架保存在一个正面为玻璃的木制壁橱中，然后在伦敦大学学院公开展出。

The expression “skeleton in the closet” was later widely used in America and morphed from referring to hiding something criminal, to being used for those who decided to “come out of the closet” in the 1960s. By the 2000s, it was shortened to “come out” which implied being true to yourself, though the original phrase and meaning are still used and understood.

“壁橱里的骷髅”一词后来在美国被广泛使用，并从指隐藏犯罪分子演变为在20世纪60年代用于那些决定“走出橱柜”的人。到2000年代，它被缩短为“出柜”，这意味着忠于自己，尽管最初的习语及其含义仍在使用和理解。

Does everybody have a skeleton in their closet?

每个人的衣橱里都有骷髅（丑闻）吗？

A skeleton in the closet in the traditional sense is admittedly not a desirable part of our life or past. However, they are still an inevitable part of life.

无可否认，传统意义上的壁橱里的骷髅不是我们生活或过去的理想部分。然而，它们仍然是生活中不可避免的一部分。

There are many reasons why we keep a part of ourselves hidden and private be they social, legal, moral, or spiritual. With the rampant use of social media and nearly every part of life being exposed to the world, hiding skeletons in the closet remains the last way for many people to bury their past so they can live free of shame and humiliation that could become exposed on the internet’s stage.

我们隐藏自己的一部分是有很多原因的，无论是社会的、法律的、道德的还是精神的。随着社交媒体的广泛使用，生活的几乎每一部分都暴露在世界面前，把骷髅藏在壁橱里仍然是许多人埋葬过去的最后方式，这样他们就可以生活在没有可能在互联网舞台上曝光的羞辱和可耻的环境中。

As humans, we probably all have some sort of skeleton in our closet. The skeletons we have may not be murder or a disastrous scandal, but are often some piece of our past we would simply prefer to remain hidden.

作为人类，我们的衣柜里可能都有某种骨架。我们所拥有的骨架可能不是谋杀或灾难性的丑闻，但往往是我们过去的一部分，我们宁愿隐藏起来。

No one goes through this life completely perfect. The important thing to remember is that those who own such skeletons are just like the rest of us. If a skeleton happens to come out into the light of day, the issue should be acknowledged and restitution made where possible, but the person should still be seen for who they are and who you know them to be.

没有人的一生是完美的。重要的是要记住，拥有这些骨架的人和我们其他人是一样的。如果一具骨架碰巧曝光了，背后问题应该得到承认，并在可能的情况下予以追责，但这个人仍然应该被看到，看看他们是谁，你知道他们是谁。

【Source】www.joincake.com

【Translated by】Spark Liao (廖怀宝)

【Illustration】From Bing

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