to fight like Kilkenny cats血战到底

【使用地区】：爱尔兰

【释义】：

To fight bitterly until the end．During the Irish rebellion of 1798，Hessian mercenaries stationed in Kilkenny amused themselves by tying two cats by their tails and throwing them over a clothesline to fight to the death．Just before an officer interrupted their banned“sport”unexpectedly one day，a quick—thinking trooper reportedly cut off the two tails and let the cats escape，telling the colonel that the soldiers had nothing to do with the fightthe two cats had just devoured each other except for their tails．The above tale may have inspired the expression to fight like Kilkenny cats，but most authorities go along with Jonathan Swift，who，more conservatively，prefers the explanation that cats in the phrase refers to men．It seems that in the seventeenth century，residents of Englishtown and Irishtown in Kilkenny—which was bisected by a stream—were constantly fighting over boundary lines and were compared to battling cats．

此词意义如上所示。在1798年爱尔兰叛乱中，驻扎在基尔肯尼的黑森雇佣兵把两只猫的尾巴系在一起，然后把它们扔过凉衣绳，使之交战而死，以此取乐。一天，有位军官欲阻止这种被禁的“游戏”。据说有个机灵的士兵割断了猫的尾巴，让其逃走，并告诉这位上校，猫的交战不关士兵们的事。这两只猫除了尾巴外都互相吞吃了。上述传说可能是该词语产生的原因，但大多数权威人士赞同Jonathan Swift(1667－1745)的解释。他较为谨慎地认为，这一短语中的cats指的是人。可能是在17世纪，基尔肯尼的英格兰镇和爱尔兰镇被一条溪流分隔，两镇的居民不断地为边界线而交战，因而他们常被比作互相争斗的猫。