ar-fetched 復習

来月開幕予定のリオ五輪でテロを企てていたとして, ブラジル人10人が逮捕されました。世界各地でテロが多発していることを受け, 警戒が高まっています。

10 held for Olympics terror plot

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Ten Brazilians who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant group were arrested Thursday, authorities announced, describing them as “amateurs” who discussed on social media the possibility of staging attacks during next month’s Olympics.

Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said in the capital, Brasilia that the 10 were being held on two terrorism-related charges and that two more people were being sought.

Authorities said any attack plan would have had little chance of coming to fruition, citing the group’s lack of resources and skills.

中略

The possibility of an attack is not so “far-fetched” even though Brazil has never been a target for terrorism, said Alex Kassirer, a counterterrorism analyst at Flashpoint, a New York-based intelligence group.

“The Olympics is a really unique opportunity to be able to target a concentration of all of the enemies in one area,” she said.

Kassirer pointed out ISIL launched a channel in May on the messaging app Telegram to disseminate jihadi propaganda specifically in Portuguese. On Sunday, another channel vowed allegiance to ISIL, although its authenticity has not been determined, she said.

以下省略

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0003097073

本日気になった表現は “far-fetched” です。

『リーダーズ英和中辞典』(研究社)で調べると, 「こじつけの, 無理な( forced ), ありそうもない」とありました。Merriam-Webster.comには “not likely to happen or be true” と定義されています。つまり今回は, これまでテロの対象とされてこなかったブラジルが, 今後狙われる可能性は否定できないということがわかります。

さらに, 動詞 “fetch” について調べると, 多義語で「<まれ>推論する( infer )」という意味があったことから, “far-fetched” で上記の意味を示すようになったのではないかと思います。(Cayu)

以前, “far-fetched” の関連記事が取り上げられていました。
It has all the ingredients of the most far-fetched spy story. - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森から