Nancy Matos

Reader Question:  “The Nobel committee's decision, like earlier awards to Amartya Sen and Daniel Kahneman, is a welcome shot in the arm

for research that crosses disciplinary boundaries in the social sciences.”

Could you explain “a welcome shot in the arm”?

My comments: Unlike the painful shots in the arm many are getting nowadays as flu season rears its ugly head, the “welcome shot in the arm” discussed in the example above is strictly metaphorical, meaning a boost, encouragement or stimulus.

For example, the success of the Chinese animated movie “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf” was a “welcome shot in the arm” for China’s animation industry, whose films are usually trumped at the box office by American cartoons like “Kung Fu Panda”.

The term comes from the sensation one gets from injecting drugs. A “shot” is slang for an injection from a needle, also known as a “jab” in the UK. Literally, one would get a “shot in the arm” when taking a drug like heroin, which isn’t exactly welcoming due to its powerful addictive properties and overdose rates.

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。

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Nancy Matos is a foreign expert at China Daily Website. Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Nancy is a graduate of the Broadcast Journalism and Media program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Her journalism career in broadcast and print has taken her around the world from New York to Portugal and now Beijing. Nancy is happy to make the move to China and join the China Daily team.