Reader’s question:

Wall Street really led the charge this year. God only knows if they’ll be on it next year. It really just depends on what the market does. Could you explain “God only knows”?

My comments:

“God only knows” means, yeah you guessed it, only God knows.

And that means nobody knows.

I don’t mean to equate “God” with “nobody” – not in a blasphemous way at any rate, me being a non-believer – but that’s what this phrase means.

Ok, let’s put it in a nicer way. “God only knows” means God alone knows. Nobody else knows. When it comes to something only God Almighty knows, mere mortals such as you are naturally kept in the dark.

Alright, rephrasing the sentence from the top:

Wall Street led the charge this year (pushing many wealthy onto Forbes magazine’s richest Americans list). Nobody knows whether these same people will make it to the list again next year (because only God may know anything about that).

In other words, it depends on the market (Wall Street).

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

Zhang Xin has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.