【词汇大师】前进，诞生于海洋。

英语自学网

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生命诞生于海洋，不仅如此，人类的发展也离不开海洋，语言亦然。当人类高扬起风帆，前进就诞生了。
Alan Hartley
Oxford
Great Lakes
MinnesotaLots of nautical expressions have washed ashore into everyday English. Alan Hartley researches them for the Oxford English Dictionary. That is, when he's not supervising the loading of grain onto foreign ships in the Great Lakes. We called him at his office in Minnesota, and immediately made headway.
When you make headway, you're making progress forward. Way is usually the forward motion of a ship. It could also be rearward motion, and that was called 'sternway.' But there are a lot of analogous terms in English that never made it into the general vocabulary. 'Headway' and 'sternway' are a good example of a pair, one of which made it and the other didn't.
Maritime metaphors lend themselves to all kinds of situations on land. Let's say you're making headway on that big project at work, going full steam ahead. It's all smooth sailing toward that big promotion. Or so it seems. All of a sudden you're weathering a storm. You reach the end of your rope (anchor rope, that is). You look for safe harbor. You go overboard to make things better. The last thing you want is to scuttle your career and wind up on the rocks, all because you've run afoul of the boss.