招牌上寫的那件事
字面的一層:付錢進去,真的做按摩。
noun · B1
A shop where you pay someone to rub and press your body, especially your back, neck and shoulders, to help you relax or to ease sore muscles.
按摩店
Picture a small shop front with one service written on the sign. That is what the words say: massage inside, pay at the desk. The whole of this page turns on the gap between that sign and what is behind it. Read straight, the sign is simply true. Read the way most English news readers read it, the sign is a polite screen over a business that sells sex — and the screen only works because the plain meaning is so ordinary.
Two branches
招牌上寫的那件事
字面的一層:付錢進去,真的做按摩。
noun · B1
A shop where you pay someone to rub and press your body, especially your back, neck and shoulders, to help you relax or to ease sore muscles.
按摩店
招牌底下的那件事
同一塊招牌,被拿來當遮擋:字面越平常,遮得越自然。
noun · B2
A place that sells sex, called a 'massage parlour' so that it looks like an ordinary massage shop.
掛按摩招牌的性交易場所