前天晚上我去参加本地校董会的公开例会。大家一晚上都在谈责任的问题。学校管理人员说老师要为教学质量负责；家长说校董要为纳税人的钱负责；有些老师说学生要为自己在学校里的表现负责。最后听得我头都大了。不过，这倒让我想起了一个习惯用语：run into the ground。
run意思是跑，ground意思是地面。run into the ground这个习惯用语的意思是“彻底讨论或是去做一件事情”。
刚才说到，在校董公开例会上，所有人都大谈责任的问题，一直讲到没有什么好讲了为止。这就可以说，they had run it into the ground。在下面这个例子里，一群抗议示威者也又类似表现。
- Protesters have been arguing for months that the mayor is a racist. They assert that that's why he doesn't have more minorities working for him. And why he doesn't deserve to be re-elected. They've talked about racism so often that they've run it into the ground! They need to find something new to say.
几个月来，抗议示威者一直指责市长种族歧视。他们指出，这就是为什么市政府里没有更多的少数族裔，因此他不配连任市长。他们已经把种族歧视的话题说烂了，得找点儿别的新鲜话题说说了。
也许他们没有意识到，一件事情说得太过头就会失去效果。我正在上高中的侄女最近一直吵着，说自己需要一个 iPhone。
- She's been running the topic into the ground.
今天学习的习惯用语run into the ground，还有另外一个意思，指彻底摧毁某个人或是某件事。我们一起来看看下面这个员工讲述他所在的部门发生的事情。
- Kathy should never have been promoted to supervisor. Her bad decisions led to poor sales and the loss of many talented employees. She almost ran the department into the ground. Fortunately, a replacement was hired, who slowly returned us to profitability.
Kathy压根儿就不应该被提升为部门主任。她的一些错误决策造成了销售额的下跌和优秀员工的流失。她差点儿把这个部门搞垮。幸好换了个新领导，才慢慢让我们转亏为盈。
或许，这个Kathy给自己手下的员工压力太大，she ran them into the ground，让他们疲惫不堪，这些人被逼无奈才会辞职。我的邻居Tom曾经告诉过我，他从来不会把开了几年的旧车卖掉，每次都是买新车，使劲开，直到he run it into the ground，开不动了为止，然后索性扔掉。
