第50讲 睡在上铺的兄弟　Mess things up & Tried-and-true

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我们常说某人把某事搞砸了，在英文中，“把某事搞砸了”可以用mess up来表示。Mess本来就有“混乱、杂乱”的意思，带上介词成为词组表示“把事情搞砸了”的意思，To mess things up means to spoil or ruin something, especially something important or something that has been carefully planned. 看个例子：

Late arrival of the train messed up all our plans.
（译文：火车误点，把我们的计划的全弄糟了。）

这个片语用处很多，考试考砸了可以用，头发弄乱了也可以用，比尔﹒盖次曾经说过一句话，其中也用到这个片语，我们来看一下：

If you mess things up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about our mistakes, learn from them.
（译文：如果你搞砸了事情，那不是你父母的过错，所以不要尖声抱怨这些错误，要从中吸取教训。）

真正的友谊是应该经得起时间和空间考验的。在英文中，“经得起时间考验的”可以用tried-and-true表示. 这个片语包含的意思还有“经过试验证明是可靠的。”看下面的例句：

If the two of you treat each other sincerely, you’ll have a friendship that’s tried-and-true.
(译文：如果你们彼此真心对待，你们就拥有经得住考验的友谊)

If something is tried-and-true, it means that has been tried and tested and shown to be true, reliable or successful. For example, if a cookbook has tried-and-true recipes, it means that the recipes in the cookbook have all been tried and proven to produce the delicious food .If a cure for illness is tried-and-true, and then the cure has been tested and cured the people of the illness. A friendship is tried and true if the two of you have been through difficult times and relationship，yet have still been able to remain as friends.

This is our tried-and-true method. We’ve done it many times and know it works.
(这是我们经过证明的可靠的方法，我们已经做过许多次，并且知道行得通的。)

结束语：今天从市场上买来一条鱼，头一次做“酸菜鱼”，还请了朋友来品尝我的“杰作”。可是放盐太多，我想我是搞砸了（mess it up）。看来，下次请朋友吃饭，还是要做那些以前做过，证明是delicious的菜（tried-and-true food）才好啊！