21. not likely 不见得;不会

　　Although you’re probably in complete control of the likelihood or otherwise of something happening if you say not likely, it’s an option for dismissing someone’s suggestion with a bit of sass.

　　如果你说not likely，你可能对事情的可能性及发生的事有一定把握。如果有人提了无礼请求，可以用这个词拒绝。

　　22. not for Joe 决不

　　The phrase not for Joe, meaning ‘not on any account’, dates from the mid-19th century and appears to use Joe as a non-specific person (although the phrase may have originally arisen from the name of the 18th-century comedian Joe Miller, and a popular jest-book published after his death).

　　短语not for Joe意思为not on any account “决不”，可以追溯到19世纪中叶，当时joe并不代表具体的个人，(尽管这个词可能最早出现是由于18世纪的喜剧演员乔•米勒，一个受欢迎的笑话集在他去世后出版)。

　　23. thumbs down 拒绝

　　Turning the thumb down is, of course, a gesture intended to indicate disapproval or rejection –and the term can be used figuratively for the same thing; i.e. a substitute for no –but it’s got a somewhat muddled history. The earliest uses of thumbs down and thumbs up relate to ‘the use of the thumb by the spectators in the ancient amphitheatre’–but in these instances, thumbs up would indicate rejection.

　　当然将大拇指反转向下的手势表示反对或拒绝，这个短语可以用来代替no——但短语的来源历史却比较混乱。最早使用拇指向下指的是“古剧场中观众大拇指指向”。但是，在这些情况下，大拇指向上意味着拒绝。

　　24. pigs might fly 不可能

　　Pigs (we hate to break it to you) don’t fly, andpigs might fly, pigs have wings, and similar expressions are used to indicate impossibility or incredulity. The first known use, in this way, of pig’s grounded behaviour is not quite synonymous with no –but has the distinction of being found in Alice’s Adventures of Wonderland: ‘‘I’ve a right to think,’said Alice sharply…‘Just about as much right,’said the Duchess, ‘as pigs have to fly.’’

　　猪当然是不会飞的，类似的pigs might fly, pigs have wings地表达用来表示“不可能;怀疑”。第一次为众所周知的以猪的行为作比喻的用法是在《爱丽丝梦游仙境》中，爱丽丝说：“I've a right to think(我有权思考)”。公爵夫人回答了一句“Just about as much right as pigs have to fly”(对，这个权利就像猪在天空飞翔一样)。

　　25. not a cat (in hell)’s chance 没有机会

　　If you think the pig did badly, the cat fares even worse: as far back as Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1796, he cited ‘No more chance than a cat in hell without claws; said of one who enters into a dispute or quarrel with one greatly above his match’. Its application now is, of course, rather wider than disputers and quarrellers.

　　如果你认为猪的表现力不够，那猫的表现更糟:早在在1796年，格罗斯的俗语词典中，他以“No more chance than a cat in hell without claws;来比喻一个人进入一个对手远比自身强大的争议或吵架之中。当然，现在的应用更广泛，不仅仅运用在争吵中。

　　26. fat chance 机会很小

　　Fat chance is an ironic use of the adjective fat in its sense ‘a large amount, a great deal’. Interestingly, this sense seems only to be used ironically, implying ‘very little, hardly anything’.

　　Fat chance是形容词fat的讽刺用法。Fat chance原意为“大量的”，有趣的是，通常都含有讽刺意味，表示“很少;几乎没有”。

　　27. catch me!

　　Catch me! and catch me at it! are also suggestive of their opposite: that is, that the interlocutor would never be able to catch the person at it, since it (whatever ‘it’is) wouldn’t happen. The sense of catch being used is ‘to come upon suddenly or unexpectedly’, which is also still used in sentences such as ‘I catch myself speaking like my mother’.

　　Catch me和catch me at it(抓住我)有时也表达相反的含义：表示对方并不能发现某人在某方面的真实状况(it可指具体的方面)，暗指这件事不会发生。Catch在这里的含义为“偶然发现、无意中发现”。这种含义现在仍然使用，例如“I catch myself speaking like my mother”。(我突然发现我和我妈妈的说话语气很像)。

　　28. no fear 不

　　Fear here originally meant ‘ground or reason for alarm’, though even in its earliest uses (including a 16th-century translation of Psalms) it appeared chiefly in (there is) no fear –that is, that there is no grounds for alarm. The usual sense now is as an informal but definite no.

　　这里的fear最初表示“惊慌/恐惧的原因和根据”，在最早的使用中(16世纪的诗篇翻译)，no fear—“没有原因和根据的惊恐”。现在no fear 是no的非正式表达。

　　29. go fish 拒绝

　　Go fishis an American card game, usually played by children, in which each player in turn asks an opponent for a particular card and is told to ‘go fish’from the undealt deck if denied. The term has taken on broader use as a playful way of saying no.

　　Go fish是美国纸牌游戏，通常由儿童参与，每位玩家轮流向对手要特定的牌，如果对方拒绝给牌就会说“go fish”，后来这个说法被广泛使用来代表示一种玩笑式的“no”。

（编辑：何莹莹）