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儒琴英语词汇（English Words and Phrases of the Day）
feckless
adjective /ˈfek.ləs/ formal
Definition
Merriam Webster defines feckless in two senses: “weak, ineffective,” and “worthless, irresponsible”
Cambridge: weak in character and lacking determination
无气力的, 无能; 没有价值,不负责任; 软弱，缺乏决心….
Origin
Feckless comes adding the adjective suffix -less to the Scots word feck (“effect, majority”), which is itself an alteration of the Middle English effect.
The adverb is fecklessly, and the noun fecklessness. Additionally, there are the somewhat obscure words feckful, meaning “efficient, effective” and feckly (“almost, nearly”).
Citation
MICHAEL STEELE ON NATIONAL EMERGENCY: ‘IT IS A PATHETIC DISPLAY OF FECKLESS LEADERSHIP’
STEELE: “It will come back in ways that this party will rue for a generation. This is a short-term political gain. It is a pathetic display of feckless leadership. I mean, how ridiculous is that? You can’t even do feckless leadership well when you give in to the president this way, when you seed authority that is duly given to the Congress under the Constitution to the executive branch, just outright say, ‘If you want to go ahead and just re-appropriate money, have at it.’ All because we just don’t know what to do with you. We’re just so flummoxed by this man in the White House. We have no idea as a party how to reign in or control his crazy. So here we are. The reality for the — I think for the country is this may work its way through the courts, but in the end I think Donald Trump wins on this.”
——- By Grabien Staff Feb 15, 2019 5:30 PM Grabie News
Phrase of the Day
lean on sb
— phrasal verb with lean /liːn/ verb [ I or T, usually + adv/prep ] leaned or uk also leant, leaned or uk also leant
to try to make someone do what you want by threatening or persuading them
向（某人）施加压力，威胁（某人）
We may have to lean on them a little if we want our money.
我们如果想把钱拿回来，就必须要对他们施加一些压力。
Why lean on administration officials — including deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — to turn over sensitive materials regarding the origins of Mueller’s Russian interference probe to Trump’s conservative allies in Congress, as the Times reports Trump did?
And on and on it goes. Trump’s actions are not seemingly those of someone who is fully convinced of his innocence or unworried about what these investigations might find.
———- Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated at 5:36 PM ET, Tue February 19, 2019
Slang of the Day
jack sth up
（disapproving）to increase the price of something suddenly and by a large amount
（突然大幅地）提高（价格）
Once the tourists arrive, the restaurants jack up their prices.
游客一到，餐馆就大幅提价。
2009 Putin was trying to jack up the prices for Russian energy and remind everyone of his power. The move sent a chill across Europe.
Big Pharma companies are announcing that they are jacking up drug prices just months after President Donald Trump took to Twitter and boasted that they would roll them back or hold them down at his request.
Idiom of the Day
true to form
Someone who does something true to form or type behaves as other people would have expected from previous experience.
一如往常，不出所料
True to form, when it came to his turn to buy the drinks, he said he’d left his wallet at home.
像往常一样，轮到他买饮料时，他就称钱包忘在家里了。
True to form, President Trump’s tax plan is short on details and long on giveaways to big corporations and billionaires. America cannot afford a…
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