dumpster fire（垃圾箱火灾）是什么意思？

今天看到一则旧新闻标题：Trump’s “Dumpster Fire” of an Energy Policy a Roadmap to Climate Calamity。句子中出现了一个“能看懂，却不知是何意味”的单词“dumpster fire”。

Dumpster是大型垃圾桶，那么“在大型垃圾桶内发生的火灾”又是什么意思呢？让我们先查一下字典：

Webster： an utterly calamitous or mismanaged situation or occurrence

Collins: If you describe a situation as a dumpster fire, you mean that it is in a very disordered state, especially because it has been dealt with very badly.

Dumpster fire是 American Dialect Society 选出的2016年度词汇，其本意是“垃圾箱之火”，引申为“彻底失控的糟糕局势”，即A complete disaster。

现在再来看几个例句：

1. he politician failed because his bill was a dumpster fire. 那名政客失败了，因为他的法案如垃圾桶之火般彻底失控

2. This project is a complete dumpster fire. 此项目是个彻头彻尾的灾难。

此外，与dumpster fire意思相近的另一个美语词汇是train wreck（something that fails completely or goes extremely badly），如：The movie was a train wreck。

您学会了吗？