【新鲜口语】fly by the seat of pants
昨天下午离开office之前，大家讨论了几句第二天Micron公司来人参观的事情，感觉老板什么都没有让我们准备，甚至没有让我们清理一下实验室卫生，觉得有些奇怪。我说“老板应该有他自己的计划吧。”实验室同学David笑着回答：”I guess he will just fly by the seat of his pants.” 我忍不住笑了，第一次听到这个短语，不是很确定，但大概也知道意思，不过仍觉得有点滑稽。我们老板Stu是那种很会自由发挥的人，这里David意思是说Stu也许并没有什么确定的计划，应该就是到时候看情况自由发挥，看一步走一步吧。精确的意思查了一下Freedictionary：
fly by the seat of your pants (informal)
to do something difficult without the necessary experience or ability. None of us had ever worked on a magazine before so we were flying by the seat of our pants. (often in continuous tenses)
感觉这个解释有些强调之前没有相关的经验和技能，和我上面说的例子里没有确定的计划似乎还是有些区别，不过大概的意思应该一样.
不过似乎answers.com上面的解释更贴切我经历的例子：
Using intuition and improvisation rather than method or experience, as in He ran the business by the seat of his pants. This expression was invented by World War II fliers, who used it to describe flying when instruments were not working or weather interfered with visibility. It was transferred to broader use soon after the war.
原来还是二战时候飞行员发明的，呵呵。
还有相关的一个俚语用法： by the seat of your pants, 同样来自Freedictionary：
if you do something by the seat of your pants, you do it using your own experience and ability, without help from anyone else. We found our way by the seat of our pants, but if I ever did another jungle trek I’d take a guide.
:)
