美语词汇掌故第 52 课：Baloney: It's Just Not True-3

The Irish castle now is famous for its Blarney stone. Kissing the stone is thought to give a person special powers of speech.

One who has kissed the Blarney stone, so the story goes, can speak words of praise so smoothly and sweetly that you believe them, even when you know they are false.

A former Roman Catholic bishop of New York City, Fulton Sheen, once explained, "Baloney is praise so thick it cannot be true. And blarney is praise so thin we like it."

Another expression is pulling the wool over someone's eyes . It means to make someone believe something that is not true.

The expression goes back to the days when men wore false hair, or wigs, similar to those worn by judges today in British courts.

The word wool is a popular joking word for hair. If you pulled a man's wig over his eyes, he could not see what was happening.

Today, when you pull the wool over someone's eyes, he cannot see the truth.