KuaiLe
Member
- Joined
- May 21, 2006
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Chinese
- Home Country
- Taiwan
- Current Location
- Taiwan
I read this from "Free Radicals", a short story by Canadian writer Alice Munro. This part is describing a burglar who sat in his victim's kitchen and wouldn't leave.
"Under the kitchen skylight she saw that he wasn’t so young. When she opened the door she had just been aware of a skinny body, a face dark against the morning glare. The body, as she saw it now, was certainly skinny, but more wasted than boyish, affecting a genial slouch."
I'm confused about what "affecting a genial slouch" means here. The dictionary says genial means "friendly and cheerful" and slouch is "a lazy, drooping posture". Combined together, I have a hard time imagining how he looks like. Does this mean that he pretends to be friendly or simply mean that he is showing a slightly slouched posture?
"Under the kitchen skylight she saw that he wasn’t so young. When she opened the door she had just been aware of a skinny body, a face dark against the morning glare. The body, as she saw it now, was certainly skinny, but more wasted than boyish, affecting a genial slouch."
I'm confused about what "affecting a genial slouch" means here. The dictionary says genial means "friendly and cheerful" and slouch is "a lazy, drooping posture". Combined together, I have a hard time imagining how he looks like. Does this mean that he pretends to be friendly or simply mean that he is showing a slightly slouched posture?