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分享一个知识点： Reader question: What is a “spin doctor”? My comments: A spin doctor is not to be confused with a medical doctor who treats patients to cure them of disease. A spin doctor on the other hand is someone who “treats” a story (or mistreats it, but we’ll come to that later). He “spins” a story, you see, as in the phrase “spin a yarn”, meaning to tell a long and winding story. A “yarn” is a strand of thread, long and winding as a result from being spun from, say, a spinning machine. For centuries, though, “spinning a yarn” has also been an idiom for telling a tale, especially a long and winding tale as told by sailors and other seafaring people. As they relate their stories, these people, everyone a Robinson Crusoe, tend to exaggerate over their adventures abroad. Hence, spinning yarns became synonymous for telling fabricated stories, too, that is, stories that might not be entirely true. Not to stray too far, let’s get back to the term “spin doctor”, who is generally speaking a media relations advisor to a government or a political party or a PR expert hired by a company. The jobs of these people are essentially to “treat” information (to suit their propaganda needs), much in the way a doctor “treats” a patient. Have you ever heard of phrases like a “doctored photo”, for example? That means the photo is not genuine, not the way it originally looks like, but edited. Similarly, spin doctors often purge unfavorable facts and figures from stories to be released to the public. | 
