2018年欧元区的经济增长黯然收尾，12月采购经理指数继续下行，而欧洲央行也在累计购买2.6万亿欧元债券后结束债券购买计划。请看本报昨日的报道：

Eurozone growth finished 2018 with a whimper.

Europe’s top economies ended 2018 weaker than they started it, with business surveys pointing to slower growth and concerns about both the trade war as well as Britain’s imminent departure from the European Union.

Key purchasing managers’ indexes from across the eurozone suggest momentum was still slipping away in December, when the European Central Bank took a long-awaited decision to shutter its 2.6-trillion-euro (US$3.38 trillion) asset purchase program.

报道中的with a whimper就是“黯然（结束）”的意思，这个说法来自T.S. Eliot的一首诗“The Hollow Men” （《空心人》），原文是: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper” （这就是世界结束的方式/并非一声巨响，而是一阵呜咽）。 这个短语通常描述事物以反高潮的方式结束。