纯巧克力、黑巧克力,哪种你更喜欢?估计你在“纯”或“黑”上稍加犹豫后,还是会毅然地选择“黑”。为什么?因为“黑”字听着酷!殊不知“纯”者、“黑”者本来就是一种东西。
Have you bought any chocolate digestives[1] lately? If you have been looking for plain chocolate[2] ones, rather than milk, you may have discovered that they are hard to find. What you will have found are dark chocolate digestives. “Plain” chocolate! Who could hope to sell such a thing in this day and age? “Dark” is what people want—biscuits full of mystery and romance.
We are living in a new age of euphemisms[3], all working of course, just as before, to persuade us that something is a little better than what it really is. A more sinister[4] one that has come into use lately is to be heard from firms trying to lend us money. What we are offered now is “flexible interest rates[5]”.
That “flexible” is quite subtle[6]. It really just means “variable”—but everyone knows that “variable interest rates” are almost bound to go up.[7] The phrase is a fairly honest warning that that might happen.
But “flexible”—that sounds like something quite different. We associate the word with people or proposals that are not rigid, that will bend a little to please us or accommodate us.[8] Who would not sooner have flexible rates than variable ones? But there is no difference.
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