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ニュースの英語を解説する" In the News"シリーズ
第48回の本日は"Saved by the Gel"です。
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In the News #49 - Saved by the Gel
On Mar. 6, the Daily Yomiuri ran the story “Saved by the gel: shoes that ease pain for ballerinas”.
The story in the article this time is very straight-forward – Capulet company has developed a new ballet shoe that uses a special gel to protect the dancer’s feet when they dance standing on their toes (called “pointe”). As stated in the article, the gel is flexible under normal conditions, but stiffens up under impact (much like modern bullet-proof vests).
(c) yuya ｜写真素材 PIXTA
To understand the wordplay of the headline, we need to look at both the first half and the second half of the sentence. In the second half, we have “shoes that ease pain for ballerinas”. Here, the shoes “save the ballerinas from the pain of dancing on pointe”. When someone or something works to lessen the harmful effects of a particular source, we say that it “saves us”.
Examples of this usage are:
“Using the elevator saved me from having to go up the stairs.”
“Thanks for driving me to school – you saved me from arriving late this morning.”
“Bill helped me finish writing the report – he saved me from having to do the editing myself.”
Ok, so the shoes “save the ballerinas from having painful feet”. Next, we have “saved by the gel”. This is a pun based on the idiom “saved by the bell”. Originally, this idiom comes from boxing, where the end of each round is signaled by the ringing of a bell. Occasionally, one boxer will knock out (KO) the other just at the end of the round. Because the round ends when the bell rings, the knock out doesn’t count and the fallen boxer has time to recover before the next round starts. In this sense, the fallen boxer was “saved by the bell”. Americans rarely use this idiom in daily speech. It’s more common to see it used by newspaper writers in reference to some kind of near-disaster.
Example:
“Politician saved by the bell from losing the election when last minute voters cast 1000 votes for him.”
The wordplay in today’s headline starts with “saved by the bell”, and substitutes “gel”, which has a similar pronunciation. The pun works because the gel from Capulet company “saves ballerinas’ feet from pain”.
When you read the newspapers this week, look for other examples of people being “saved by the bell”.
- Curtis Hoffmann
Unfortunately , the Daily Yomiuri has chosen to not include this story on their website .
Capulet Company website: http://www.capuletworld.com/
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