| Change log entry 44139 | |
|---|---|
| Processed by: | richwarm (2012-11-01 22:44:06 UTC) |
| Comment: |
<< review queue entry 43018 - submitted by 'xiaoxiong' >> usually used in a negative sentence, e.g. 你真不是省油的灯 see ABC, nciku, examples on Baidu etc Editor: Thanks for this interesting submission, evidently a very common expression. "sb who causes the least trouble" (and ABC's "fellow who causes the least trouble") isn't a very clear way of putting it, though. It makes it sound like "the person in a group who causes less trouble than anyone else". As Dennis once mentioned, there is a Dutch saying which is related to this expression: "That guy comes with a user manual" (i.e. he's difficult to deal with). e.g. "Mijn man is een man met gebruiksaanwijzing, wat vandaag goed is is morgen fout als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel en dat is heel lastig om daar mee te leven." So I suppose a 省油的灯 is "someone who has an intuitive, user-friendly interface"! :-) You could say 省油的灯 (形容也是麻烦的人,因为也需要油) is also somewhat related to the English expression "high-maintenance". |
| Diff: |
# 省油的燈 省油的灯 [sheng3 you2 de5 deng1] /sb who causes the least trouble/ + 省油的燈 省油的灯 [sheng3 you2 de5 deng1] /sb who is easy to deal with/ |