常時英心:言葉の森から 1.0

約10年間,はてなダイアリーで英語表現の落穂拾いを行ってきました。現在はAmeba Blogに2.0を開設し,継続中です。こちらはしばらくアーカイブとして維持します。

have fingers in many different pies

和式トイレが徐々に姿を消しているようです。

Squat toilets’ popularity fading as parents call for them to be abolished in Japanese schools

As you can infer from its lengthy name, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology has its fingers in a lot of different pies. It turns out that one of those pies is school toilets (apologies for the disgusting metaphor).

The governmental organization, which also goes by the much more compact name MEXT (apparently someone decided that “X” was a good enough abbreviation for culture, sports, and science) recently conducted a nationwide study of the bathroom facilities at elementary and middle schools across Japan. The results of the investigation, which encompassed places of pooping at some 29,000 places of education, were made public on November 10, which is also Toilet Day in Japan.

https://www.japantoday.com/smartphone/view/national/squat-toilets-popularity-fading-as-parents-call-for-them-to-be-abolished-in-japanese-schools

今回取り上げる表現は、 “have fingers in many different pies”です。
ジーニアス英和辞典』(第五版,大修館)で調べたところ、 “have a finger in the [a, every] pie”または “have one’s fingers in many different pies”の形で、それぞれ「どの事業にも参加する」、「余計な手出しをする」と載っておりました。

インターネット辞書Cambridge Dictionaryには、“have a finger in the [a, every] pie”の形で “to be involved in something, often when your involvement is not wanted”そして “to be involved in and have influence over many different activities, often in a way that people do not approve of”と定義されておりました。

またDictionary.comの情報では、 “have fingers in many pies”の形で “To be involved in multiple businesses.”と定義されております。

ちなみに似たような表現で “have one’s fingers in the till”があり、意味は「勤め先の金を盗む」とのことです。(『新英和大辞典』第六版,研究社)(Gomez)