Drink like a fish

    豪饮

    这个短语的字面解释是“像鱼一样喝”。这是什么意思呢？请看对话：

    A: Why, Jake is late for our weekly training session again. What's up?

    B: He drank like a fish at the party last night. I guess he's still in bed or struggling with a hangover.

    Note: This idiom means to "drink heavily, especially of alcoholic drink." Clearly it's an allusion to fishes' close association with water and their continuous open-mouthed taking in of water to obtain oxygen. The phrase is known since 1640 and appears in Fletcher and Shirley's "The night-walker." It read, "Give me the bottle, I can drink like a fish now, like an elephant." Obviously, "drink like an elephant" didn't catch on. Interestingly, Chinese never think of a fish when they see people drinking. Instead, there is a Chinese saying "牛饮," which literally means "drinking like an ox."