Reader's question:

“Shoo” is the sound one makes when they herd, say, chickens, to the coop. As verb, people are said to shoo donkeys away from the lawn, shoo cattle and sheep out to graze, and shoo all of them back into the barn for the night.

Shoo-in as a noun refers to a clear winner and that is believed to have come from the sport of horse racing. If a horse is so fast that you’re absolutely sure that it’s gonna win, you say it is a shoo-in because all you need to do is shoo him across the finish line and into the barn – in other words, he’d win effortlessly.

For persons, if they are considered a shoo-in, they’re readily picked as comfortable winners in a race or for a certain job.

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本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He 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.