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■當人意見不合而情緒激動時，難免會互相指罵。 網上圖片
我城市民近日很煩躁，大家都指罵對方無恥。中文有成語「厚顏無恥」，原來英文也有類似的成語，那便是have plenty of cheek，例如：That young girl had plenty of cheek to claim that she had never asked her parents to bring her to this world, so it was their fault all along（那年輕少女厚顏無恥，聲言她從沒要求她的父母把她帶到這個世界，因此自始至終都是他們的過錯）。
英國作家亨特（Violet Hunt）在小說《家中的名人》（The Celebrity at Home）中這樣描述一個情景：And before George could say what he wanted to say, Mr Cook had opened the door for himself and had gone. I said he had plenty of cheek. George said so, too, and a great deal worse（而在喬治得以說出他想說的話前，庫克先生已給自己打開門離去了。我說他厚顏無恥；喬治也這麼說，但遠不止於此）。
恬不知恥 異曲同工
跟「厚顏無恥」近義的成語有「恬不知恥」，一群大學生便曾這樣痛斥質疑輕視他們的一位前校長兼前局長。英文的慣常說法是have no sense of shame，例如：The more he tries to make excuses for his wrongdoing, the more we feel that he has no sense of shame at all（他愈是替自己所做的壞事辯護，我們愈覺得他完全恬不知恥）。在他的短篇小說中，經常以加州尋金熱（Gold Rush）為題材的美國作家哈特（Bret Harte），在作品《群山一洞中》（In a Hollow of the Hills）有這麼一段內心獨白：He had no pity for man who trusted him; he had no sense of shame in taking advantage of it; he even felt an intellectual superiority in this want of sagacity in his dupe; but he still felt in some way defeated, insulted, shocked, and frightened（他不會憐憫信任他的人；他恬不知恥地利用這點；他對上當受騙者如此欠缺精明練達，甚至會感到智力上的優越感；但他在某方面仍然感到敗北、受辱、震驚和恐懼）。
我們有時很難知道他人是否無恥，但願我們至少要求自己不會淪落到這個地步。 ■余功
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