Hi everyone, and welcome back to our new segment 【It means what】.

欢迎回来我们新的一个小板块叫做【词源考古研究所】, 在这个板块里我和安澜会跟大家分享一些英文常见的词和习语它们背后的历史故事.

Hi, 安澜.

Hi Lulu, hi everyone.

What is our idiom or word of the day？

Our idiom today is Turn a Blind Eye.

Blind means you cannot see, so To Turn a Blind Eye is actually a very common idiom, it means?

Well, it means to refuse to acknowledge that something is true.

Or just basically pretend not to see it. 中文里我们也有一个一模一样的词, 就是睁一只眼闭一只眼, 安澜也知道吧？And I bet it has a specific historical background.

It does. So Turn a Blind Eye comes from British history. It comes from the story of one of our most famous war heroes, Admiral Lord Nelson.

Nelson, 就是特法拉加广场上的雕塑.

That's the one.

You probably can’t see the statute, because it's high on the top of Nelson column. But if you could, you would see that Admiral Lord Nelson only had one arm and also one eye.

He lost those in battles.

he lost those in battles.

Now this story comes from when he was fighting a naval battle and one of his Admirals sent a message telling him to stop fighting.

What do you mean by sending a signal, using...?

In those days they would use flags.

But Nelson really believed that he could win this battle. So what he did was when he was told that there was a signal, he took his telescope, but instead of putting it to his working eye, he put the telescope to his blind eye.

So it's like I'm still looking at it, but it's not my fault. I didn't see it with my blind eye.

So Nelson didn't see the signal, he carried on fighting, and ultimately he won the battle.

It's literally turning a blind eye, turning his blind eye to it.

Now, to this day, we might say, doesn't he's doing something wrong, but I'm gonna turn a blind eye to it.

Turn a blind eye basically pretending I'm not seeing it or refusing to acknowledge. 看见假装没看见.

I'm gonna ask you安澜, if you see your friends doing something bad like you don't approve, would you turn a blind eye?

That's a really tough question, I would say it depends on what they're doing to be honest.

If I'm doing something that you don't approve.

I’ll never turn a blind eye. I'm sure if you're doing something wrong, it's probably gonna be dangerous.

You're gonna point it out. I'll point it out. You could just shout, police.

Exactly.

But what about people who have really irritating behaviors, for example, on public transport, if they are, let's say playing music really loud.

I hate that, I really, really hate that.

I always turn a blind eye to that.

I can't. If someone plays music out loud on a train, particularly if it's one of the high speed trains, it's a long distance train, I always will say something because I find it so annoying.

And also people were jumping the queue, 就插队的人, and I know for a fact that 安澜cannot turn a blind eye to that.

I cannot turn a blind eye to that.

This is our idiom of the day and its origin, Turn a Blind Eye starting with literally turning a blind eye.

So what kind of things would you turn a blind eye to.

What sort of things would you not turn a blind eye to.

Leave us a comment in the comment section, or you can request any specific words or idiom that you are interested in.

So until then.

We'll see you next time. Bye.