习语可以是一个词或短语，要理解习语的意思不能脱离其文化背景。习语一词的含义甚广，其蕴含的意义往往不能从词或词组的字面意思推测而得。习语在所有语言中都很常见。英语习语是日常英语的重要组成部分。在英语的书面语和口语中，存在海量的习语。
儒琴今日习语（Idiom of the Day）
take the wind out of sb’s sails
英文解释
to cause someone to lose confidence or energy；(also knock the wind out of sb’s sails, knock the wind out of sb) to make someone feel less confident or less determined to do something, usually by saying or doing something that they are not expecting.
中文解释
take the wind out of someone’s sails 字面意思是：为了阻止帆船前进，让帆船逆风航行，从而帆船无法借力自然风的动力航行。该习语出现在1800年开始使用。其引申意思：失去了动力；使丧失优势； 使（某人）泄气；使（某人）不坚定；失去了信心；釜底抽薪；抢先占某人上风；使某人气馁；使狼狈, 挫败…
原文举例
I was all ready to tell him that the relationship was over when he greeted me with a big bunch of flowers – that took the wind out of my sails.
我已经准备好要告诉他我们分手吧，可他捧着一大束花向我迎来——这让我的心又软了下来。
The White House was a late adopter of many of the safety proposals it recommended, eager to project a sense of normalcy even as it relied on strong testing capacity not available to the rest of the nation. Now Trump, who watched the human and economic toll of the virus take the wind out of his campaign sails, sees even greater urgency in returning to how things were — no matter the state of the virus. (tampabay.com/news/nation-world/2020/06/12)
白宫很晚才采纳了它所建议的许多安全建议，急于表现出一种常态感，尽管它依赖的强大测试能力是美国其它地方无法获得的。现在，特朗普看到了病毒造成的人员伤亡和经济损失，使他的竞选活动失去了动力，他认为，无论病毒的状况如何，恢复正常的紧迫性更大。
Under Davidson’s stewardship, the party turned their single Scottish seat in Westminster into 13, taking the wind out of the sails of the rival Scottish National Party.
在戴维森的领导下，该党将其在威斯敏斯特的单一苏格兰席位变成了13个，让竞争对手苏格兰民族党(Scottish National party)丧失优势。
“Game over,” the Republican congressman Mark Sanford, a Trump critic, told CNN, saying Trump’s tweet “takes the wind out of the sails in what might have been a fairly productive week of looking for a compromise”.
批评特朗普的共和党国会议员马克·桑福德(Mark Sanford)告诉CNN，“游戏结束了。”他说，特朗普的推文“在寻求妥协的相当富有成效的一周中，让各方失去了信心”。
