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Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “He waited in the wings before being called to speak at the conference.” In the wings? What wings? My comments: If you’re doing translation work and want to put this into Chinese, all you need to do is to say that “he patiently waited for his turn to speak”. In other words, you won’t miss much by ignoring “the wings”, at least in this case. “The wings”, you see, is an old idiom which originated from theatre. They refer to both sides of the stage where actors do their makeup, rehearse their lines before taking center stage. The center stage, of course, is where the limelight is, where performers entertain the audience and get applauded for what they can do. The wings, in short, are the backstage. Two things to note about this idiom, wait in the wings. First, Wings, not wing. Wings, in plural form. Plural because, as a bird has a pair of wings, the stage, too, has two wings. One on each side of the center stage, behind each curtain. Second, since actors waiting in the wings are ready to perform, this idiom metaphorically often implies that those who are “waiting in the wings” are ready to take action once the opportunity comes for them to do so. Or it may imply that they are patient, as it is the case in the above example, where “he” has to patiently wait for his turn to speak at the conference, just as an actor would need patience while waiting for his turn behind the curtains because he’s not supposed to show up before the actor before him finishes performing. If he did, the other performer would have been upstaged (yes, that’s the word), which would turn both of them into a laughing stock of the audience. | 
