on the nail

介词短语
中文释义

英文释义

介词短语
  1. immediately, without delay Ireland,UK
    — Tell me, have you a mind to anything in the Doctor's book? Speak the word, and I will help you to it upon the nail.
  2. exactly Ireland,UK
    — Six o'clock on the nail. She wasn't going to be late.

词源

Allegedly from the tradition of striking bargains by placing cash on the nails in Bristol, Limerick and Liverpool. The Oxford English Dictionary, however, cites an Anglo-Norman phrase from c. 1360, "payer sur le ungle" to pay on the (finger)nail meaning "to pay immediately and in full", and the Latin "ad unguem", exactly. It quotes parallel usages from 17th century French, Dutch and German sources and adds that "N.E.D. (1906) notes that: ‘the explanations associating it with certain pillars at the Exchange of Limerick or Bristol are too late to be of any authority in deciding the question’."
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