前天晚上我去參加本地校董會(huì)的公開例會(huì)。大家一晚上都在談責(zé)任的問題。學(xué)校管理人員說老師要為教學(xué)質(zhì)量負(fù)責(zé)；家長(zhǎng)說校董要為納稅人的錢負(fù)責(zé)；有些老師說學(xué)生要為自己在學(xué)校里的表現(xiàn)負(fù)責(zé)。最后聽得我頭都大了。不過，這倒讓我想起了一個(gè)習(xí)慣用語，叫，run into the ground.

Run意思是跑。Ground意思是地面。Run into the ground, 這個(gè)習(xí)慣用語的意思是徹底討論或是去做一件事情。

剛才說到，在校董公開例會(huì)上，所有人都大談責(zé)任的問題，一直講到?jīng)]有什么好講了為止。這就可以說，they had run it into the ground. 在下面這個(gè)例子里，一群抗議示威者也又類似表現(xiàn)。我們一起聽報(bào)道：

例句-1：Protesters have been arguing for months that the mayor is a racist. They assert that that's why he doesn't have more minorities working for him. And why he doesn't deserve to be re-elected. They've talked about racism so often that they've run it into the ground! They need to find something new to say.

這個(gè)記者說：幾個(gè)月來，抗議示威者一直指責(zé)市長(zhǎng)種族歧視。他們指出，這就是為什么市政府里沒有更多的少數(shù)族裔，因此他不配連任市長(zhǎng)。他們已經(jīng)把種族歧視的話題說爛了，得找點(diǎn)兒別的新鮮話題說說了。

也許他們沒有意識(shí)到，一件事情說得太過頭就會(huì)失去效果。我正在上高中的侄女最近一直吵著，說自己需要一個(gè) iPhone. She's been running the topic into the ground.

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今天學(xué)習(xí)的習(xí)慣用語run into the ground, 還有另外一個(gè)意思，指徹底摧毀某個(gè)人或是某件事。我們一起聽下面這個(gè)員工講述他所在的部門發(fā)生的事情。

例句-2：Kathy should never have been promoted to supervisor. Her bad decisions led to poor sales and the loss of many talented employees. She almost ran the department into the ground. Fortunately, a replacement was hired, who slowly returned us to profitability.

這個(gè)員工說：Kathy壓根兒就不應(yīng)該被提升為部門主任。她的一些錯(cuò)誤決策造成了銷售額的下跌和優(yōu)秀員工的流失。她差點(diǎn)兒把這個(gè)部門搞垮。幸好換了個(gè)新領(lǐng)導(dǎo)，才慢慢讓我們轉(zhuǎn)虧為盈。

或許，這個(gè)Kathy給自己手下的員工壓力太大，she ran them into the ground, 讓他們疲憊不堪，這些人被逼無奈才會(huì)辭職。我的鄰居Tom曾經(jīng)告訴過我，他從來不會(huì)把開了幾年的舊車賣掉，每次都是買新車，使勁開，直到, he run it into the ground. 直到開不動(dòng)了為止，然后索性扔掉。