Fast and loose with facts?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Fast and loose with facts?

Now, if you play “fast and loose” with facts instead of a rope or belt or string, what does it mean?

Metaphorically speaking, of course, it means you’re not reliable with facts. You treat them as if they were a rope you can fasten round a stick at any moment, thinking you can loosen up any moment later.

In our example involving Trump, that means, in plain truth, that he lies a lot, thinking he can do whatever he wants with truths and facts as if he were playing a cheating game with them.

In short, the Tweeter or rather Commander in Chief is fickle and capricious when it comes to calling a spade a spade.

In other words, you can’t take him seriously.

All right, here are more examples of people playing fast and loose with facts or other objects:

1. The BBC adaptation of And Then There Were None is right to show drugs, murder and “fruity language”, its writer has said, as she argues it is “absolute rubbish” to claim they did not exist in Agatha Christie's day.

Sarah Phelps, who has adapted the Christie novel for BBC One, said her television version did not play “fast and loose” with the original novel, with everything she put on screen “there in the book”.

The adaptation, which is due for broadcast on Boxing Day, was criticised after a preview screening after experts took issue with bad language and violent onscreen deaths.

Then, Dr John Curran, who has written books about Christie, told a newspaper: “If her work has stood the test of time for almost a hundred years, I can’t see the point of tinkering with it like this.”