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宛落尘
What does “reach for the elephant-gun or the smelling-salts”mean?
Jul 31, 2017 5:01 AM
Answers · 3
2
As John said, it definitely needs more context to make sense, and what you provided was not enough for that, even with the added part. But I found the text with Google.
The context needed would be something like: "A writer wrote a letter to Alan Rickman, saying that he was thinking of writing a biography of him, and wrote the line: "I informed....salts".
An Elephant Gun is a suggestion that Rickman might want to shoot him for suggesting such a preposterous idea. The smelling salts would be a suggestion that Rickman might want to try to 'bring him around' from his delusional state - i.e. that the writer was dreaming, or deluded, to suggest such a strange thing, and the smelling salts might 'revive' him.
July 31, 2017
It would depend on context. An elephant gun is a large caliber, powerful gun for killing elephants. Smelling salts are a substance that releases ammonia gas and can cause a person who has lost consciousness to regain consciousness by triggering an inhalation reflex. It's not clear, without more context, why the author is referring to these two (seemingly unrelated) things.
July 31, 2017
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宛落尘
Language Skills
Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, Japanese
Learning Language
English, French, Japanese
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