本栏目是由世博英语Starry_Night原创编写！
第五篇
这一天大伙又像往常一样坐在一个名叫 Central Perk 的咖啡屋里闲聊，Phoebe刚约会回来：
Phoebe: (entering) Hi guys!
All: Hey, Pheebs! Hi!
Ross: Hey. Oh, oh, how’d it go?
Phoebe: Um, not so good. He walked me to the subway and said ‘We should do this again!’
All: Ohh. Ouch.
Rachel: What? He said ‘we should do it again’, that’s good, right?
Monica: Uh, no. Loosely translated ‘We should do this again’ means ‘You will never see me naked’.
Rachel: Since when?
Joey: Since always. It’s like dating language. Y’know, like ‘It’s not you’ means ‘It is you’.
Chandler: Or ‘You’re such a nice guy’ means ‘I’m gonna be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them to you’.
Phoebe: Or, or, y’know, um, ‘I think we should see other people’ means ‘Ha, ha, I already am’.
Rachel: And everybody knows this?
Joey: Yeah. Cushions the blow.
【世博视角】
Ross 问Phoebe她的约会(date)怎么样 (how did it go?)，Phoebe 回答说不怎么好，那人送她到地铁(subway)后说了句( We should do this again!)就结束了。大伙听到这都心知肚明了，只有不谙世事的Rachel还转不过弯来，于是大伙便给Rachel补习了一下 “约会语言(dating language)”，比如刚才的这一句 We should do this again. 就可以理解为You will never see me naked. (我们永远不会 “赤诚” 相对啦！)。Rachel显然还不太相信每个人都知道这种约会语言的弦外之音，Joey给了肯定的答复，并说了句Cushions the blow. 要理解这句话什么意思，还得先来看看cushion这个词，作为名词,它就是我们日常用的 “靠垫”。大家平时肯定有过和朋友或兄弟姐妹在家打打闹闹的经历，虽是闹着玩，但有些人的手脚特别重，这时我们就会随手抓起一个靠垫去遮挡一下，这就是cushion the blow, 其引申出来的含义就是 “减少（不愉快事物）影响”，例如：He has lost his job, but he’s got a lot of money in the bank, so that will cushion the blow. 当然cushion也可单独做动词用，表示 “减缓…冲力、效力”，如：They had put mattresses on the ground to cushion his fall.
相信那些有过恋爱或相亲经历的人都用过所谓的dating language, 其目的只是为了不使对方太过难堪而已 (cushion the blow)。