On the fence?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

On the fence?

Suppose, then, someone has an idea. Those who support John should get off the fence and stand in Farmer John’s courtyard whereas those who think Farmer Doe is right should jump off the fence and stand in the yard of Doe.

Sure enough, it becomes obvious pretty soon whose courtyard has more people. Doe has 20 supporters whereas there’s only one other person in John’s yard, other than John himself, that is.

Doe wins the argument, of course and that is that.

But wait. There are still three farmers sitting on the fence during all this time, never stepping down.

Needless to say, for one reason or another, these three fence straddlers have refused to take sides. Either they are truly stupid and have no idea who’s right, who’s wrong or they just want to remain neutral, hoping by doing this they can remain friendly to both farmers.

Whatever the case, you get an idea of what it means to be sitting on the fence over an issue or on and about a certain dispute.

To sit on the fence, in short, is to remain neutral or to stay undecided or to be unable to take a side at all.

Or something like that.

Now, let’s read a few more media examples in case you need more contexts to get a firm handle on the age-old, proverbial fence:

1. THE GUILT-STRICKEN confession of an ex-Luftwaffe pilot, the schoolboy memories of an Irish-born British army officer and a pile of 50-year-old intelligence files have conspired to re-open the great mystery of Irish neutrality in the Second World War: why did Germany bomb the “open” city of Dublin on the night of 31 May 1941?