what gives

短语
中文释义

英文释义

短语
  1. What is wrong? Why is this happening? colloquial
    — Not even thirty minutes after leaving the shower, my head starts itching. What gives?
  2. What is happening? What is going on? colloquial
    — What gives with you and Martha?
  3. How are you? colloquial

词汇关系

相关词
what's cooking what's up with what's with

词源

First attested in 1940, in John O'Hara's novel Pal Joey. The term is considered by the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, Second Edition (2013) and several other references to be a calque of German “was gibt's?” and/or a Yiddish equivalent. Brian Joseph disputes this, and speculates that despite extremely late attestation, it and the German was gibt's may "allow[] for a reconstruction of a Proto-West-Germanic existential use of 'give', which survives marginally into present usage."
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