- 1武力恫嚇、秀肌肉（帶「虛張聲勢、未必真打」的意思；新聞常用）
Sabre-rattling is when someone — often a country or a leader — talks loudly about using force, shows weapons, or makes angry threats, but you do not find them very , and you may not even believe the fight will start. The picture is an old army officer shaking his sabre, a curved sword, to look dangerous. News writers use the phrase a lot, usually with a slight smile: they think the show is bigger than the danger. It is not a kind word. If you respect the warning, you say a show of force; if you think it is mostly noise, you say sabre-rattling. British spelling keeps sabre; American papers often write saber-rattling. You will hear it about governments far more than about two people in a street.
組成sabre (a curved sword; the British spelling) + rattling (shaking something so it makes a noise). From the early 20th century, when an officer would threaten to draw his sabre.
同家族的字
- saber-rattlingthe same phrase in American spelling
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。
sabre-rattlingnoun
- 1
A flamboyant display of military power as an implied threat that it might be used.
- 2
Any threat, such as one company threatening another with a lawsuit.
sabre-rattlingadj
- 1
Bellicose; threatening military action.
- But it excited much discontent in sabre-rattling court circles which regarded Austrophilia as the most un-French of diplomatic perversions.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
- sabre-rattle
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。