[讨论][原创有奖竞猜 - 随时加些新单词[人大经济论坛]

第 17 楼

[Q] From Ian Woofenden, USA: “How about a segment on the phrase bail out, meaning to escape from some difficult situation? I'm guessing it is spelled that way, but I don't know why. I wonder if it was originally used for leaving an aircraft before landing, or if there is some other origin.”

[A] Presumably you’re in part unsure whether it’s bail out or bale out? In this, you join lots of other people who are unsure when to use which spelling in several of the senses of both words. Is it a bale of hay, or example, or a bail? Do you bail water out of the bottom of a boat, or do you bale it? You can easily find examples of both spellings in both these senses. When you’re referring to an emergency exit from an aircraft by parachute, or the sense you give, the position is even more complicated, because British and American usage differs.

Let’s clear the ground a bit. Bale is the correct spelling when we’re referring to a large bound parcel or closely pressed package of some substance, such as cotton, hay or paper. This comes ultimately from an old Germanic word that’s related to ball. On the other hand, when we’re clearing water from the bottom of a boat, we correctly bail it out, from French baille, a bucket. And if we’re speaking of the temporary release of a person from prison while awaiting trial, that’s bail, too, but it comes from yet a different source, an Old French word meaning custody or jurisdiction, itself from Latin bajulare, to bear a burden: when someone bails a person from prison, he’s taking on the responsibility of ensuring that the accused person will turn up for his trial. Among other senses, British readers will know that the crosspieces bridging the stumps in cricket are also called bails; this is from the Old French baile, meaning a palisade or enclosure, perhaps from Latin baculum, a rod or stick. The common figurative sense of getting somebody or something out of trouble (“the government had bailed the company out with the equivalent of 2.7 billion euros in aid”) most probably comes from the legal sense, since it usually involves paying over money.

And that hasn’t exhausted the various senses of the two words by any means. No wonder people get confused.

There’s little doubt in anybody’s mind about the legal or cricket senses: both are always bail. There’s more confusion about the “tote that bale” and “bail that boat” senses, though dictionaries are clear those spellings are the correct ones. The aircraft one is rather more of a problem, perhaps because its connection with the other senses is less than obvious. There’s little doubt from the early evidence that aviators were thinking that telling the crew to escape from an aircraft in danger was like bailing water out of a boat, the important image being that of throwing the water over the side. For example, Eric Partridge, in A Dictionary of Forces’ Slang, published in 1948, gives this as the origin. However, to muddy the waters still further, he spells the term as bale out. The Oxford English Dictionary concurs in that spelling, and suggests that people may have been influenced in spelling it that way by the image of an escaping airman being a bale or bundle thrown through the aircraft door. (Or could it be that the parachute itself was viewed as such a bundle?)

The current position is that when the idea concerns escaping from some potentially difficult situation, American English virtually always uses bail out, perhaps under the influence of the legal sense of bail. British English seems to be divided about 50:50 between that and bale out, and it’s easy to find examples of baled out in the English press: “Von Brauchitsch threw the steering wheel out of the car and baled out” (Independent, 18 Feb. 2003); “‘He was heading for a stone wall and I didn’t fancy jumping that so I baled out,’ he said after the horse had been caught and returned safely” (Daily Telegraph, 11 Feb. 2004). Most, but not all, British dictionaries give this form either as the main one or an acceptable alternative.

Bosses should pay for bail-outs

RESERVE Bank governor Glenn Stevens has drawn a line under his independence, declaring that any decision to bail out a failing bank or other financial institution would rest with the Government.

Shareholders and top executives of any failing financial institution should be made to pay dearly for any public support, Mr Stevens said yesterday.

In a speech at the Australian National University, he flagged that the Reserve Bank would be much more conservative than the US Federal Reserve in managing a financial crisis.

However, he expressed confidence in the strength of Australia's banks, which he said had managed the housing boom without the excesses of the US.

The Reserve Bank's board minutes, released yesterday, praised banks for insulating the Australian business sector from the global financial crisis.

When companies lost their access to world bond markets last August, banks had stepped into the breach, increasing the amount of money they raised offshore and keeping funds flowing to business.

The minutes show the Reserve Bank believes that the combination of its own rate rises and the additional increases from private banks will be enough to bring inflation under control.

Mr Stevens said that after the public bail-outs of the Northern Rock building society in Britain and the Bear Stearns investment bank in the US, it was time to draw some lessons.

He said the only circumstances in which a bank should be bailed out were when it was solvent (with more assets than liabilities) and holding good collateral but was facing a run from depositors.

Some observers have suggested the US Federal Reserve organised the bail-out of Bear Stearns without satisfying itself of the quality of its assets because it feared a domino collapse among other financial institutions.

Mr Stevens said it was vital for the central bank to obtain a clear idea of the solvency and collateral of a bank quickly, and that co-operation with the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority was essential. He said the Government needed to be involved early.

"Any decision to extend support to an insolvent institution on systemic or national interest grounds would be one properly taken by a government under advice, not a central bank itself," he said. "If support for an institution in difficulty were to turn out to be more than just temporary, the public sector would face difficult issues of how to structure that support.

"Any such support should, however, come at considerable cost to the private owners and managers of the troubled entity. Public sector support should not be used to 'bail out' private shareholders or those who were responsible for running the troubled institution."

The US Federal Reserve agreed to accept asset-backed securities, including sophisticated instruments known as collateralised loan obligations, as security for emergency funds to banks.

Mr Stevens said the Reserve Bank would reject security that could not be easily valued and lacked enough excess collateral. "This probably rules out exotic instruments except under the most dire of circumstances."

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