释义 |
trial balloon  nounA tentative measure taken or statement made to see how a new policy will be received: different members of the cabinet are sending up one trial balloon after another...- In other words, the panel will have some success, for example, in serving as a trial balloon for economic policies and in cultivating a new generation of economic and financial officials.
- Buried inside the ‘Economic Report of the President’ was a trial balloon for an approach that would fix the problem of the lower manufacturing jobs numbers.
- From time to time, however, the ‘orthodox school’ of historians and academics, as Windschuttle calls his adversaries, float a trial balloon to test a different approach.
Origin 1930s: from translation of French ballon d'essai. |