- 1靠不住的、來路不明的（形容公司或商人只想撈一票就跑，接近台灣說的「詐騙公司」「一夜跑路」）
Used about a company or a businessman you should not trust: they have not been around long, they are only chasing quick money, and they may well disappear before you can complain. It suggests both newness and together — a shop that opens, takes deposits, and is gone next month. This is a strong criticism, so people use it about others, never about themselves. It goes before the noun: 'a fly-by-night operation', 'fly-by-night dealers', 'some fly-by-night outfit'. The tone is informal and rather , common in news stories about scams and in warnings from older people. The image behind it is someone who leaves in the middle of the night — the way a tenant used to slip away without paying the rent.
fly-by-night 用來形容不值得信任的公司或商人，他們成立不久，只想快速撈錢，隨時可能消失。它同時帶有「新」與「不老實」的意味，例如店開張收了訂金，下個月就不見了。這是很重的批評，所以只用在別人身上。它放在名詞前，例如「a fly-by-night operation」，語氣口語、帶點嘲諷，常見於詐騙新聞。它的畫面就是半夜溜走、不付房租的房客，中文大致是一夜跑路。
組成Three words joined with hyphens: fly + by + night — 'flying away by night', that is, running off in the dark so nobody can find you.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
fly-by-nightnoun
- 1
A creature which flies at night; a nocturnal flier or traveler.
- 2
One who departs or flees at night in order to avoid creditors, law enforcement etc.
- Do not give your credit card number to that fly-by-night operation.
- 3
derogatoryA person or business that appears and/or disappears rapidly, appearing untrustworthy, or giving an impression of transience.
- The automobile industry rose almost overnight. Orders poured into the offices of companies already organized; new companies were formed by dozens, capitalized at millions of dollars. Fly-by-night concerns sprang up like mushrooms, flooded the country with stock-selling schemes, established factories where parts of motor cars, bought elsewhere, were assembled.
- True, it was a good advertisement at Boosters' Club lunches, and all the varieties of Annual Banquets to which Good Fellows were invited, to speak sonorously of […] a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker, and a fly-by-night.
- 4
derogatoryA traveling businessman or tradesman.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。