Xiaohua: Hello and welcome to Roundtable’s Word of the Week. This week we are talking about something that is related to making money or the stock market or something like that, because you know, apparently everyone is in the stock market.
John: Everyone and their mother in fact. So we are gonna look at some idioms...starting off with taking a look at idioms that have specifically to do with stock. So to put stock in something- if you put stock in something, you have a high opinion of that person or of that thing. For example, we’ll take the opposite approach, I don’t think that CNN is a credible news source. I don’t put much stock into their news reports.
Xiaohua: 當你要買一家公司的股票肯定說明你非常信任這家公司，所以put stock in something就是“信任，看重”的意思。
John: Yeah, or you know, Xiaohua she always tells the truth, so when she gives me a juicy rumor, I put a lot of stock in it.
Xiaohua: Thank you, but I never do that.

John: Then to take stock- so to take an assessment or appraisal, as in we have to take stock of our finances before we can start a new project, or the career counselor advised Mark to take stock before changing his plans.
Xiaohua: take stock本來是商業用語，意思是“盤貨”，現在也可以用作“梳理”或者“評估”的意思。So if you take stock of something, you want to evaluate something.
John: Exactly. And laughing stock- so a person or thing that is regarded as very foolish or ridiculous. You know, unfortunately, many of the Chinese football teams have become the laughing stock of the country.
Xiaohua: No one wants to be a laughing stock. 因為laughing stock是“笑柄”的意思。
John: Then lock, stock and barrel- an expression that means “everything”. So if someone buys a company lock, stock and barrel, they buy everything to do with the company. Also, there is a very famous movie by Guy Ritchie, if you remember very famous for the movie Snatch, the movie right before that that he wrote and directed was called Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Xiaohua: Yeah, that’s right. Lock, stock and barrel-鎖，存貨，還有桶，加起來的意思就是“所有的東西”。
John: Then my two cents- basically saying that you are going to give your opinion, so you can say “I’m going to give you my two cents.” or “my two cents is that you should do something.”. You can also say, it’s a bit of...not so much an idiom, but a term or a phrase that some people like to use sometimes. When they are giving advice when it is not asked for, so you can say “I’m going to give you advice worth a nickel for free.”.
Xiaohua: my two cents-我的兩分錢，就是說我的意見，我的拙見的意思。你想給對方意見，但是對方可能并沒有想要聽取你的意見，所以你就會說my two cents，意思是說我的一點點淺見。
John: And then ballpark figure- so basically it is an approximate number or a rough estimate of the cost of something. I don’t know how much exactly that is going to cost, but a ballpark figure would be around a hundred thousand dollars.
Xiaohua: ballpark figure就是大約的數字。
John: Cash cow- so a product or service which is a regular source of income for a company and is easy to maintain. His latest invention turned out to be a real cash cow.
Xiaohua:現金牛，這個意思有點像是搖錢樹，比如說一個公司里最賺錢的那塊業務就是這個公司的cash cow。
John: And if you are hard up, you have very little money. We were so hard up that we had to sleep in the car.
Xiaohua: 下面這幾個詞跟“窮”都有關系。Hard up 就是經濟情況非常不好。
John: And in order to keep the wolf from the door, you need to have enough money to buy food and other essentials. My grandparents barely earned enough money to keep the wolf from the door.
Xiaohua: keep the wolf from the door實際上是講維持最基本的溫飽線的意思。
John: Yeah, to keep your head above water means to try to survive by staying out of debt or by trying to stay in business...try to sustain whatever activity you are doing. So business has been really slow, but we’ve managed to keep our head above water.
Xiaohua: keep your head above water可不是講不要被淹死，其實它是在講不要負債，要保持經營狀況的良好。
John: Yeah, then a license to print money- so basically something that enables people to make a lot of money without very much efforts. So the contract to supply computers to school was a license to print money.
Xiaohua: 講完了窮，下面該講富了。License to print money-給了你印錢的執照,基本上就是說你有無數的賺錢的好機會。
John: Then hand over fist- basically when we are talking about money, it just means to be able to make a lot of money very, very quickly and very, very easily. So, you now, government contracts allow companies to make money hand over fist.
Xiaohua: hand over fist這個短語當用在講賺錢的時候呢，就是說賺錢賺得盆滿缽滿，忙不過來了。And we hope everybody will be making money hand over fist in the stock market. And that’s all we have for the edition of Word of the Week, here on Roundtable.