by one's lights

介词短语
中文释义

英文释义

介词短语
  1. According to one's understanding. idiomatic
    — Once you allow yourself and you open the door to letting outside pressures of any kind influence or dictate — especially dictate — your decisions, then it’s over. Therein lies madness. Because my oath requires fidelity to the Constitution and to decide these cases by my best lights.

词源

Chiefly by the metaphor of lights as sources of illumination (e.g., lamps, lanterns, candles, torches) (thus, how something looks depends on the quality and quantity of the available light), but the sense of light as sightedness or vision is cognitively adjacent, setting up an interpretation of lights as referring to the eyes themselves (compare in my view); the potentially variable figurativeness behind punch someone's lights out is comparable here.
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