Reader question:
Please explain this sentence: Fortunately, this was taken in good part.
My comments:
“This” refers to an offending joke or harsh criticism or something of that nature.
Fortunately, “this was taken in good part”, causing no offense or uproar – he or she or they, those who are on the receiving end of “this” accepted it in good grace, without getting upset and making an uncomfortable scene.
Fortunate, that is, for the deliverer of “this”.
All of this, no pun intended, is what we can safely infer from the idiom “taking (something) in good part”.
“Good part” here refers to the good manner in which something unpleasant is taken, be it criticism or ridicule.
In other words, people who are on the receiving end of it is generous and large-minded enough to remain calm and composed, allowing decorum to be maintained.
Here’s more explanation, from UltimateLexicon.com:
Etymology: The phrase dates back to the late 16th to early 17th century. The word “part” in this context can refer to an attitude or manner of acceptance. “Good part” here essentially implies a positive or favorable manner of receiving something.
Usage Notes: The expression “take (something) in good part” suggests an attitude of tolerance and understanding. This phrase often highlights a person’s ability to remain good-natured when confronted with criticism, teasing, or feedback.
Got it?
No?
Well, never mind. The thing with English idioms is even though we may not fully understand one particular expression initially, we always are able to get the hang of it after encountering the same expression a few more times.
Always.
Yes, let me say it again, always.
And “taking (something) in good part” is no exception.
All right, here are a few examples culled from the media from over the years:
1. Nowhere was Diana’s ability to inspire adulation more evident than on her early tours abroad as Princess of Wales. While her mother-in-law the Queen had dazzled overseas, Diana took it to new heights, attracting fans on a scale formerly reserved for pop stars and Hollywood idols. “The arrival of the Waleses in America was the most frenzied British invasion since The Beatles,” Newsweek quipped of the couple's 1985 tour.
Indeed, who can forget the image of the young Princess, stunning in her off-the-shoulder midnight-blue gown, taking to the dancefloor with John Travolta in Washington, D.C? That now-legendary night at the White House etched Diana into pop culture history. It also encapsulated her magic. Making official engagements as much about pleasure as duty, as much about rule-breaking as tradition, had already become a hallmark of the Princess’s reign of popularity.
Diana’s determination to breathe new life into an old institution was clear from her very first tour abroad in 1983, when she and Charles travelled to Australia and New Zealand. Diana had insisted she wouldn’t endure a six-week separation from nine-month-old baby Prince William, and the public adored her all the more for it.
Disembarking from the plane at Alice Springs with little William in her arms, the 21-year-old Princess of Wales exuded a carefree spirit that was infectious. A smiling Prince Charles, 34, waved his hand around his son's face. “His first Australian fly,” the Prince jokingly explained. Less than two years into their marriage, the royal couple appeared very much in love. It was a fairytale sprung to life, and the world was captivated.
Barely taking a breath after their trip Down Under, in June 1983 Charles and Diana embarked on a tour of Canada – where Diana Mania was much in evidence. “It’s really the royal visit of the Princess of Wales,” observed one official to the Toronto Star. “The Prince is playing second fiddle.” Charles took it in good part, noting in his Canada Day speech in Edmonton, Alberta, that it was Diana’s first visit to the country. “I have a feeling, of course, that if my wife hadn’t married me, she wouldn’t have met nearly so many Canadians,” he added humorously.
It was July 1st, Diana’s 22nd birthday. Many years later, on 1 July, 2011 – what would have been the Princess’s 50th birthday – her newlywed son Prince William and his wife Kate were on their ‘honeymoon tour’ of Canada. Fans, who had taken William to their hearts, particularly after his mother’s death, were poignantly reminded of Diana – especially when Kate mingled with the crowd on walkabouts. “We had a longing to come here together,” said William. And when the royal couple made their Hollywood debut at a glamorous gala in LA, Kate outshone every celebrity – just as Diana had done on that starry night in Washington.
The People’s Princess might be lost to the world, but her magic is still very much alive.
- Global icon: Princess Diana’s impact felt around the world, HelloMagazine.com, August 1, 2017.
2. The EU’s final words to the UK as it departed the union after nearly half a century were “thank you, goodbye, and good riddance”.
The misspoken farewell, spoken by the Croatian ambassador to her UK counterpart, Tim Barrow last week, perhaps sums up 47 years of the Britons being lost in translation in Brussels.
Irena Andrassy, the Croatian ambassador, was chairing the UK’s final meeting of EU envoys as a member state because her country holds the six-month EU presidency. She assumed “good riddance” was akin to “good luck”, said diplomats present in the room.
Despite some feelings running high towards the UK over Brexit, the goodbye was not a barb in disguise, they insisted.
The meeting came two days before the UK’s formal exit from the EU at 11pm last Friday – which marked the end of Britain’s involvement in key institutions in Brussels including the European Parliament and the European Council.
The two sides are now racing to agree a new trading relationship which must be signed off by the end of a standstill transition period which runs out at the end of the year.
The comment by the Croatian envoy was taken in good part by Sir Tim. “The Brits saw the funny side and understood how it was meant. But history will show that these were the last words from the EU to the UK’s ambassador before Brexit,” said one official in the room.
- ‘Thanks, goodbye and good riddance’ – EU’s parting words to UK, FT.com, February 4, 2020.
3. The Cartoon Museum’s new show of Boris Johnson cartoons, This Exhibition Is A Work Event, chronicles Johnson’s time as prime minister through the work of 50 different cartoonists (including a lot of regular Guardian contributors). But there is a question that, even now – as Liz Truss self-detonates and Tory members talk about the possibility of bringing him back – we must ask: were any of us actually delivering the coup de grace to Britain’s Worst Ever Prime Minister (Up Until Then) by caricaturing his defining ridiculousness? Or did we merely frantically scramble to keep pace with the madness his premiership added in spades to the preexisting madness of the past six – or arguably 14, or even 5,000 – years?
Many US cartoonists faced the same dilemma with Donald Trump. You couldn’t, as many of them have told me, make this shit up. What are you meant to do when the targets of your satire are the masters of their own absurdity?
I once described Trump and Johnson to an American audience as two cheeks of the same arse (and then took another 10 minutes explaining what I meant), because both successfully controlled the laughter agenda, more or less from the beginning. And I mean from when they could first walk and fall over for comedy effect. Trump and Johnson are both sociopathic narcissists who feed, like vampires, on our horrified attention, using arsing about like any class clown. But herein also lies their Achilles heel. Almost their whole purpose in life is to get us to laugh with and not at them.
To give him his due, Trump can crack fairly effective, if brutal, jokes, whereas Johnson is merely a Tory or newspaper editor’s idea of funny and lands punchlines like the Hindenburg. Nonetheless, he has always understood the importance of the arsing about, hence the whole contrived “Boris” act. Twenty years ago, commissioned to produce a Spectator cover when Johnson was editor, and increasingly enraged by his failure to confirm the precise specs I needed, I phoned him and got the usual Johnsonian harrumphing noises. I told him, maybe intemperately, for once in his life to drop the PG Wodehouse bollocks, to which he replied: “What you call the PG Wodehouse bollocks has served me very well thus far.” And yet a couple of years later, when he was by then London mayor and was leaving a party at the Spectator’s offices, I encountered him standing on the pavement. “What’s it like having responsibility finally thrust on your shoulders, eh, Boris?” I quipped, and his reply this time was abject. “All these awful people like you keep doing these terrible drawings of me,” he whined, pouting.
Part of the car crash of Johnson’s personality is that he’s a terrible liar. Not just like that, but because you can see in his face the precise truth as to his mood at any time. On this occasion he wasn’t joking, he was whingeing, seemingly incapable of understanding why everyone everywhere wasn’t laughing gratefully at his hilarious antics. Similarly, seven years later he was due to open an exhibition of cartoons I’d drawn about London politics over a decade and a half. He pulled out of the event an hour before we opened, clearly unable to cope in real time, with TV cameras present, with the prospect of me pointing to a cartoon of him caricatured as a fatberg and be expected to take the joke in good part.
- Johnson on the way back? Truss, Trump … when politics is this crazy, only cartoons can do it justice, by Martin Rowson, TheGuardian.com, October 22, 2022.
本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。
About the author:
Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.
（作者：张欣）
