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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to《词源考古研究所》 It Means What?
So 安澜 with the silly voice again.
Yes. Hi, everyone.
Hi. What are we going to talk about today? Which word or which phrase are we going to focus on to explore its origin?
Today, I thought we could focus on “steal someone's thunder”.
Thunder. You mean like thunder lightning?
That's it.
就是打雷吗? “偷走某人的雷”。 Sounds a bit weird. It's not mythological, is it?
No. It's sounds a bit of a weird phrase. But that's what we're gonna talk about today. We can talk about its story. But first of all, what does it actually mean? So to steal someone's thunder means to take credit for someone else's idea or to undermine their success.
No, hang on a minute. So these two are two slightly different meaning. So the first one ‘to take credit for someone's idea’, for example, if I say my boss takes credit for my idea, this means it's my thoughts, but he or she claims it to be their own. That is take credit就抢别人的功劳. Or did you say undermine?
Yeah. So undermine someone's success or someone's achievement.
To undermine means to make whatever they have achieved seems smaller or insignificant.
Exactly. So a good example is in the UK, during a wedding, people have to be very careful when they go to a wedding because they don't want to steal the bride's thunder. So they don't want to dress in something that is even more attractive or even more expensive than the bride.