Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the segment of It Means What?

Yay.

Hi, 安瀾.

Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone

歡迎回到【詞源考古研究所】where we talk about the interesting origins of words, phrases and idioms. So 安瀾, what idiom are we going to talk about today?

Well, I want to actually ask you a question first.

Okay, ask ahead.

What was the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you?

Sorry, need to answer this phone call.

Saved by the bell.

Saved by the bell?

Yes. So saved by the bell means to be rescued from a difficult situation at the last possible moment.

So you're saying that I was saved from your embarrassing question or having to answer your embarrassing question by the bell from my phone, by the ringing.

But it doesn't have to be a literal bell. It can be you were saved by the bell by someone come in to help you at the last minute.

So either way, it doesn't have to be a literal bell. It's just something happened that saved you from a difficult or embarrassing situation.

Yeah, at the very last moment.

And the other person would say saved by the bell, it can be doorbell, phone call or just anything or anyone.

Absolutely.

I wonder where it came from.

There are two theories. The first one is related to boxing.

就拳擊, is it the bell they ring?

So it could be that when a fighter who is very close to losing is saved by the ringing of the bell

Ding-ding-ding, and the match is over

Not the match, the round is over.

The round is over就是一個回合結(jié)束了.

A fighter who is originally near defeat, 快輸?shù)哪莻€人是saved by the bell, 因?yàn)檫@一個回合結(jié)束了.

So that's the boxing thing. To be honest, I heard something much more gruesome.

I know the one you mean.

So this one is from the fear of being buried alive.

Buried alive, when they were trying to bury people like instead of cremation, they would just bury people in a coffin. I mean we did that for ages and ages.

就這種土葬, 然后不會火化的那種整個的棺材埋進(jìn)去. There were slight chances, but they were a slight chance still of people actually not dying but just wrongly pronounced as dead. 就可能是假死現(xiàn)象, 然后就被人訂了棺材就埋下去了.

I know to us it sounds a bit ridiculous, but in the 18th and 19th century, people were terrified of this. And that's because there were a few very well-known cases of people who were in a coma. They appear to be dead. But actually they weren't.

I think this is like a very sort of popular type of story. Some like straight from horror films or horror books is when you finally open the coffin like you keep hearing rattling and scratches and you finally open the coffin, yes, the person is dead, but you could see broken fingernails and the scratches on the board. 當(dāng)時確實(shí)是有被活埋了, 然后大家沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)的人. I guess that would... I can't even imagine that you said for people back then it was scary.

Now, if you think about it, it is still really scary,

But medical science is obviously a lot better. One of the things they used to do was they buried people with a string attached to a bell above ground.

The idea was that if they were buried alive, they could pull the bell to let people know that they were safe.

I see it's kind of like an alarm system or mechanism, but it's also pretty gruesome to think about you walk past the cemetery middle of the night and you just hear the ding, ding, ding.

And also if it's windy as well.

It's true.

So if there's a lot of wind, then how do you know it's not just the wind or how do you know it’s actually somebody buried alive in their graves -

or they already died, but it's them coming back to haunt us.

Could be.

But either way, if they were actually buried alive, they could ring potentially ring that bell and get rescued. So this is saved by the bell.

Yes.

I see. I prefer the second explanation. It's just more exciting.

I thought you might.

More dramatic.

Yeah, I have to admit I do like the second explanation, but chances are I think it's probably the first one that's true.

I don't know, stranger things have happened. So 安瀾, when was the last time something awkward or difficult happened to you and you were saved by the bell, so to speak.

Err...r, where's my mobile phone?

I suppose this is an awkward situation for you then. Can I give you one, for instance, have you ever done that like when you're going on a blind date, you arrange for your friends to call you like half an hour into it, into a date and they would call you for having the pretend emergency.

If you like the person you're dating, you'd be like, yeah, I'll talk to you later, but if you don't like them and then you are saved by the bell. Have you never done that really?

I've not done that.

I've done that quite a few times

If I was on a blind date, what I would do because to be honest, everyone knows what that means. I would actually just say at beginning of the day, I'm really sorry, I've got an early morning tomorrow.

And if the dates going well, I'm just go, I'm having such a good time, it doesn't matter, let's carry on. But if it's going badly, then I can say I'm really sorry, I gotta go.

I also had the opposite experience. It was kind of like ruined by the bell. So I forgot what the situation was. I was pretending to talk on the phone and then my phone rang. It was ruined by the bell

So that will end today's etymology segment. It Means What? 今天的【資源考古研究所】就到這里. So were you ever in the situation that you got saved by the bell?

By the way, our new idiom course talks a lot about different types of idioms and origin我們新上線的一個習(xí)語的課程, 對吧? 安瀾我們一起打造的課程里面有非常多有意思的idioms,

Don't forget to check it out.

大家可以來微信視頻號【璐璐的英文小酒館】來看看我們的新課和直播. So If you have any specific request for any idioms or phrase that you want us to talk about, leave us a comment in the comment section.

So until next time

We'll see you next time. Bye.

Saved by the Bell

(To be rescued from a difficult situation at the last possible moment.)

a. There are two popular theories about the origin of this phrase.

b. One is related to boxing, where a fighter who is near defeat is saved by the ringing of the bell, signaling the end of the round.

c. The other theory is more macabre, stemming from the fear of being buried alive in the 18th and 19th centuries.

d. People were sometimes buried with a string attached to a bell above ground, allowing them to signal for help if they were mistakenly buried alive.