欢迎来到VOA在线收网 www.voa365.com
当前位置:VOA NEWS > VOA英语教学 > 单词大师 >

[VOA单词大师] 第313课:Knowing the Lingo as Americans Cast Their Ba

2009-09-16 18:07来源:未知

 

 

AA:    I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: dictionary editor Ben Zimmer explains terms from the U.S. presidential campaign.

RS:    We start with "battleground state" and "swing state."

 
BEN ZIMMER: "Well, they're usually used pretty interchangeably. They are states where we don't whether they will go for the Republican ticket or the Democratic ticket, and that's where the election will be decided."

RS: "So the swing states or the battleground states would be Michigan. Ohio ... "

AA: "Ohio. Pennsylvania, we hear a lot."

RS: "Florida."

BEN ZIMMER: "That's right, and those are the states that have been really crucial in the past few presidential elections. One way that people have been talking about it in the past few elections is in terms of color. There are red states, which are assumed to go for the Republicans, blue states for the Democrats, and the ones that we're not sure of, people call purple states.

"The television networks actually set up a system of color-coding so that there would be no favoritism. They would actually switch the colors blue and red based on the incumbent party. So, for instance, in two thousand the incumbent party was Democratic and that color was blue.

"In two thousand four the incumbent party was Republican and they switched the color-coding so that the incumbents had red. But that meant that the Democrats were blue again.

"The system was supposed to switch over again this year, but it looks like they're just going to hold on to that. Otherwise it would just be very confusing for people, because that's the association everybody has now."

RS: "And it's good that it's not on the ballot."

BEN ZIMMER: "That's true. I'm color blind, so I would have a real problem with that if they started using colors on the ballot."

RS: "Speaking of ballots, what's an absentee ballot? We're hearing a lot about that too."

BEN ZIMMER: "This is actually becoming a very widespread phenomenon now. A lot of states are encouraging people to vote ahead of time. They don't ask you why anymore. They just say go ahead, do it by mail. And this is seen as a way to increase voter participation for people who might have a problem getting out to the polls on Election Day.

"But it's also changing things quite a lot because large numbers of people are voting by mail well before Election Day. And so the whole dynamics of the kind of endgame of the election could be very different because people are voting much earlier now."

AA: "And in fact even the campaigns are offering to send people absentee ballot applications."

BEN ZIMMER: "That's right. I mean, this is really crucial also with older voters who might have trouble getting to the polling stations. And so we've seen a big push in states like Florida to have elderly voters vote absentee."

RS: "One of the expressions we've been seeing in the news lately because we've had two political conventions is post-convention bump."

BEN ZIMMER: "That refers to the spike in the polls for a candidate immediately after a political convention. So the Democrats had their convention first this year and we saw a rise in the polls that favored Obama.

"And then the Republicans had their convention the next week and they got an even bigger bump because of all the attention mostly surrounding the vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska."

AA: "And another term we're hearing in connection with Sarah Palin is 'Hail Mary pass.'"

BEN ZIMMER: "Well, that's an interesting term that made the transition from religion to sports to politics. So a 'Hail Mary' is a devotional prayer that's said by Catholics, and then it made the transition to sports. Roger Staubach, who was a famous football player in the nineteen seventies, referred to a forward pass that he made at the end of an important football game as a 'Hail Mary pass,' which means he just threw it and said a prayer, hoping that it would be caught.

"And sure enough, the ball was caught and his team won that important game. And so that then became a metaphor for any kind of desperate move made to try to obtain a victory. So when Sarah Palin was announced, some people said 'Oh, this is just a Hail Mary pass. He's just trying to get ahead of Obama by making this unexpected move.'"

RS:    Ben Zimmer is executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus, an online thesaurus and dictionary. More terms from the campaign trail next week.

AA:    As for those post-convention bumps, we should note that as of Tuesday, the RealClearPolitics.com average of national polls had Barack Obama ahead by three points.

RS:    And that's WORDMASTER for this week. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

(责任编辑:admin)
最新新闻
  1. 网传日月光Q4产能利用率降至70%
  2. 新型存储器已经开始增长,到20
  3. 市场人士透露:联发科在汽车芯片
  4. 【VOA在线闲聊】三星收购Arm会步英
  5. Nikola召回迄今为止生产的93辆Nik
  6. 蚂蚁数科两项区块链专利完成一对
  7. 蔚来申请注册“NIO CERTIFIED 蔚来官
  8. 获小米超千万投资 改装车公司工
  9. 法拉第未来首款电动汽车FF 91再次
  10. 消息称LG显示计划明年生产920万块
  11. 宝马面向欧洲市场推出最小的跨界
  12. 美国副总统哈里斯承诺就电动汽车
  13. 知情人士透露称马斯克和推特CE
  14. 因苹果缩减订单 台积电或修改明
  15. LG推出一项新技术,以开放局域网
  16. 小米13正式上线:骁龙8Gen2发布1
  17. 米家3 KG迷你洗衣机售价699元
  18. 苹果公司官方非常兴奋:印度将生
  19. 中国广电在全国31个省区开通广电
  20. 华为 Mate 50 Pro国外上市:售价远高
  21. 特斯拉柏林超级工厂回收工厂发生
  22. 华为 Mate 50原价4999
  23. iPhone 14销售比上一代下降了11%
  24. 2021至2025中国台湾将投350亿元新台
  25. 华为Mate50Pro预定5 G芯片,苹果公司
  26. 锐龙7000核显性能实测 单核及多核
  27. 索尼PS5最新更新:6 nm制程功率与
  28. 华为会议马上就要开始了!一种全
  29. 小米再次成为了冠军!该系列产品
  30. 还能吸收病毒?!戴森首个产品也
  31. 小米又推出了一款新产品,售价
  32. Imagination携手百度飞桨创建Model
  33. 奔驰要不要再加价?2024将发布
  34. TikTok在英国或被罚款2900万美元 被
  35. iPhone15PM改用 ULTRA:笔记本和 iPa
  36. 因库存不断提升存储芯片持续降价
  37. 预计小米Civi2将推出五款新产品
  38. 可靠商务桌面电脑推荐:联想M4
  39. 受飓风影响:NASA撤回阿尔忒弥斯
  40. 《三体》影迷们疯狂了!
  41. 4090设计实在是太离谱了!
  42. Meta试图Facebook和Instagram账户添加到
  43. 苹果公司在技术上遭受重大挫折,
  44. 我国成功发射遥感三十六号卫星,
  45. 骁龙8Gen2+120 W快速充电!小米13系
  46. 屏幕下手机价格大跌,灵动岛安卓
  47. 亚马逊宣布下月举办新会员促销活
  48. 酷睿i9-13900K预告片,5.8 GHz稳定!
  49. 美国流媒体巨头Netflix宣布在芬兰
  50. 外科手术机器人 商业化将加快世