cloak 復習
北京で再び「赤色警報」が発令されました。
Beijing Issues a Second ‘Red Alert’ on Pollution
BEIJING — The Chinese capital issued a “red alert” for air pollution on Friday morning, saying it was enacting for the second time the highest-level emergency pollution plan in advance of a prolonged spell of smog that is predicted to smother Beijing and elsewhere in northern China this weekend. The crisis measures were expected to start Saturday and last for four days.
Beijing first issued a code red on air pollution last week. The measures further raised awareness of toxic air in this city of 22 million and underscored for the rest of the world the dismal state of the environment here. The measures took effect from Dec. 8 to Dec. 10, and they included the shutdown of more than 3,200 schools, the pulling of about half the city’s five million cars off the road each day and the temporary closing of factories and construction sites in the municipal area. The same is expected to be in place during the second crisis period.
But those measures did little to curb the smog the first time. Toxic air cloaked Beijing until strong winds blew the pollutants south. The main source of foul air in the capital comes from coal-burning factories in surrounding provinces, not from activity in the city itself, and cities in those provinces did not take the same drastic emergency measures that Beijing did. Many parts of northern China, including the provinces of Hebei, Henan and Shanxi, regularly have air quality that is worse than that of Beijing
今回取り上げる表現は “cloak”です。『ジーニアス英和辞典第4版（大修館書店）』では「…を〔…で〕(ごまかそうと)覆い隠す」と「〈人〉にマントを着せる」とあり、LDOCEでは “to deliberately hide facts, feelings etc so that people do not see or understand them – used especially in news report”，第二義として “literary to cover something, for example with darkness or snow”と定義づけられていました。
“cloak”は中世ラテン語clocca（鐘）より．マントは鐘の形に似ているところから来ています。（Inaho）
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/A30/20140401/1396300493
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/A30/20130312/1363023220
