形容一件事情遙遙無期，我們總是會說要等到猴年馬月啊？，可是大家知道嗎？猴年馬月真的來了！有網(wǎng)友表示：終于等到你！還好沒放棄！

猴年馬月的英文怎么說呢？比較惡搞的一種譯法是god knows when，但地道的表達(dá)應(yīng)該是俚語till the cows come home.

Cows are notoriously languid creatures and make their way home at their own unhurried pace. That's certainly the imagery behind 'till the cows come home' or 'until the cows come home', but the precise time and place of the coining of this colloquial phrase isn't known. It was certainly before 1829 though, and may well have been in Scotland. The phrase appeared in print in The Times in January that year, when the paper reported a suggestion of what the Duke of Wellington should do if he wanted to maintain a place as a minister in Peel's cabinet:

實際上，猴年馬月并不是真的遙遙無期，而是每逢12年就有一次，今年的猴年馬月開始于2016年6月5日，結(jié)束于2016年7月3日。

我們都知道老祖宗的12生肖紀(jì)年法，而12生肖不光能紀(jì)年，還可以紀(jì)月。每年農(nóng)歷正月到臘月對應(yīng)的屬相依次是：虎、兔、龍、蛇、馬、羊、猴、雞、狗、豬、鼠、牛。

因此，每年都會有一個馬月，而正巧遇到了猴年，就有了猴年馬月。

雖然我們中國人說猴年馬月，而在英語中，卻是驢年：donkey's years。驢年是個啥？讓老外給你們解釋一下吧！

A query asked if the British slang term for 'a very long time' was donkey's years or donkey's ears. My first thoughts were, "donkey's years of course - what would ears have to do with it?". It turns out that I was being rather hasty. Donkey's years is now the more commonly used slang term when meaning 'a long time', but donkey's ears, although used little in recent years, has been a jokey alternative for some time - from the early 20th century.

一份問卷調(diào)查了英國描述很長時間的俚語俚語是donkey's years還是donkey's ears。我的第一反應(yīng)就是：當(dāng)然是donkey's years，這和耳朵有什么關(guān)系？但事實證明我還是太草率了。donkey's years在現(xiàn)在，普遍被用作表示很長時間，donkey's ears雖然如今用的很少，但從20世紀(jì)初期開始，被用作一種滑稽的替代。

Donkey's ears works as rhyming slang whereas donkey's years doesn't. In rhyming slang the last word of a short phrase is rhymed with the word that gives the slang meaning.

donkey's ears作為一種同韻俚語，然而donkey's years卻不是。在同韻俚語中，短語中的最后一個詞和俚語意思的詞押韻。

注：為什么老外形容時間長用的是驢子呢？因為驢走路總是緩慢拖著步子，要完成一段旅程實在要花上太長的時間了！于是這個詞就應(yīng)運而生了！

例句：I haven't heard that one for donkey's ears.（我已經(jīng)很久沒聽說過這事兒了）

猴年馬月都到了，從前的承諾都兌現(xiàn)了嗎？從前的愿望都實現(xiàn)了嗎？